Happy birthday, Marina—what a great (NCIS) present!

Yes, it's been a great week for Marina Sirtis—and not just for a HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout-out today:

Congrats to her on the news this week that she's signed on to play the new fictional head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, on CBS's venerable top-draw show NCIS.

Her first episodes are set to air in April, so she should be safely full of tales too tell by the time we next cross paths with fans at Sun City Sci-Fi in El Paso April 26-28.

Marina answered my brief congrats this week with a quick email: "I'm stoked!" And for her it's not about just any new role:  Playing the head of the infamous spy agency is a far cry from Deanna Troi—and that's exactly the campaign that the beautiful Marina has been on with casting dfirectors lately: excising the memory of the iconic but soft, sensitive Starfleet counselor we all love, which can be maddening to expand an acting resume.

In fact, the news brought to mind a discussion she and I had on TREKLAND video back in 2009—ironically also filmed around her birthday, in Italy—where she recalls how thrilled she was to pay a bitchy prison matron, a role won only after her campaign to let the director know she was way more than Troi. Here's the fun little pre-HD clip (especially at 3:30), for all you newbies since then:

LA ALERT: Whoa, WonderCon: Meetup & Trek co-panels in Anaheim

Annnnd this insane month of March—from Seattle to Orlando to our Con of Wrath shoot in OK/NorTex that has depleted my postings!—comes to a close "back home" THIS weekend in Anaheim with WonderCon—via not one but three panels, plus a meet-up for the doc, of course! And you're all invited.


WonderCon, sprawling San Diego Comic-Con's little brother, is again back in Anaheim while its normal digs at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco are being renovated. As a comic-ccn it covers comics, authros and anime plus games and all things sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre—but Trek increasingly plays a bigger part, you TLers. But by not being quite the behemoth of SDCC, it's not so sold-out and intimidating—and there still are Friday and Sunday one-day passes, all at the Anaheim Convention Center just south of Disneyland.

My buddy and increasingly famous Bridge Saver Huston Huddleston has graciously offered me space in his restoration Enterprise-D bridge chair area, sure to be a high-traffic hit with all the photo posers. So, between panels on Friday and Saturday, we'll have Trekland: On Speaker CDs and fundraiser Klingon PADDs and info all about all stuff Trek Tour and Star Trek Continues for all the SoCal folk who never get where I'm at ...

PLUS I hope you can catch me at any of these panels (or support those linked)—if you use THESE links, you can "signal" you are intend to attend, and join the crowd...

FRIDAY: 1:30 p.m., Room 213

At 1:30 the psychology/fan duo of Dr. Andrea Letamendi (UCLA) and Dr. Ali Mattu (NYU) have slated "The Psychology of Star Trek vs. Star Wars," and I'm on to represent guess-what, along with writer Hugh Sterbakov (Robot Chicken, City Under the Moon). Surely we can all call "IDIC" and just get along, right? Brian Ward of Shout! Factory is along to moderate, to boot. "Join" us early on Facebook?

BONUS FRIDAY PICK! 2:30 p.m., Room 300DE

PLUS, right after that, stay in Trekland for a bonus and head over with me to Room 300DE to experience "Star Trek: Into High Definition" about all the amazing Blu-Ray remastering projects with Brannon Braga, Mike and Denise Okuda, producer Roger Lay and director Robert Meyer Burnett. Enterprise S! is out, with TNG S3 not far behind ...


FRIDAY: 6:30pm, Room 208

Later on, also be on the panel of folks with dreamer Huston and his co-hort Brian Uiga as they update fans on the non-profit "New Starship" Star Trek Enterprise Bridge Restoration and Sci-Fi Museum that has taken fandom and potential marketers by storm since we first helped break the news and vet the source and then had our follow-up.

I actually have to bow out midway through this one so as to conduct a long-delayed interview for THE CON OF WRATH on-site (yes, work!), but after being at Huston's chair/table area all day it won't be a loss.



SATURDAY: 7 p.m., Room 210BCD

After a day of seeing everybody on the floor, we'll close off the panels at 7 p.m. with our annual "Between the Cracks" Trekland show for 2013—with even an angle on that JJ thing right around the corner, plus some looks back at TNG and DS9 and ahead at our Star Trek Continues world premiere May 24 in Phoenix Comicon!


And finally ... for your after-panels, after-buying pleasure while stuck in "strip mall town"...


SATURDAY, 9 p.m., Room TBA adjacent

Somewhere along Friday we'll announce the adjacent site (a fun place with spirits, hopefully) of our first CON OF WRATH Meetup-Fundraiser for Anaheim, running Saturday 9-11 p.m. in the usual format of fun, prize trivia and rare Trek videos and doc sneak peeks that we've done the past year at my live events... like Seattle ... San Diego (right)... Vegas... and many more. If you plan to pop in your $20 and make the party, you could even "Join" the meetup Event page on Facebook, just to give me an idea ...


BONUS SUNDAY PICK: I won't be on-site Sunday, but the usual uspects are back at it with an ALIEN ARMAGEDDON debate panel 3-5 p.m. akin to the infamous Starship Smackdown at SDCC, at 3-5 SUNDAY. Treklanders will especially know Robert Burnett again and Daren Dochterman, Jeff Bond and moderator Mark A. Altman among the herd.

Now, if I ever get caught up with March—I'll tally up how Seattle and Orlando meetups have been, and thank all the folks who turned out and helped there.

From here, though, we thankfully take a breather— and I'll next see you out on the con trail over in El Paso April 26-28!

LA ALERT!: Kitty's back in a moving social play, "Ladyhouse Blues"

One of the founding aims of TREKLAND: The Blog! was to keep up with what other projects the far-flung Trek family has gone on to, both before the camera and behind it—or, back in the realm of live performance, both on stage and backstage.

Kitty Swink and husband Armin Shimerman have been among those here in our pages who have been happy to share a current project, so I'm happy to help Kitty wrap up the current run of a powerful play in L.A. she shared with us, Kevin O'Morrison's 1979 "Ladyhouse Blues." This Andak Theatre production ends next weekend, March 24, with 8 p.m. shows Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday—all at the small-house NewPlace Studio Theatre in North Hollywood. All the ticket and performance info you need is here.

Kitty plays Liz (in center at left), the widowed matriarch of four daughters who live in a  man-less 1919 St. Louis tenement dubbed a "ladyhouse," so named for the missing husbands and sons gone to war typical of urban areas during and right after World War I . The LA Times had a great interview with Kitty, where she joked to me "managed to talk more about Star Trek than the play." Kitty, of course, played twice on DS9: as Bajoran Minister Rozahn in "Sanctuary" (below right) and as a Vorta, Luaran, in "Tacking Into the Wind."



She has the only Trek connection in the all-female cast of "Ladyhouse Blues," although Antak co-founder Dakin Matthews did play Janeway mentor Admiral Patterson in Voyager's "Relativity."

This is your final chance weekend to catch "Ladyhouse Blues," so catch one of the last four performances, will you? It's a great revival of the 1976 play and and covers so many levels: rural to urban migration, labor activism, women's roles in transition—plus the never-ending crap of bureaucracy and poltics....all from the standpoint of a strong woman raising more just like her, in a time of great social upheaval.

Obama at the Gridiron: Revenge of the Vulcan?

For a guy who gave away the secret of his Trek cred even before this famous pose, President Obama sure took a lot of heat for his Trek/Wars mixup of a "Vulcan mind trick" last week. Trouble is, it came from supposedly serious pundits, not just the late-night laffmeisters. And we already know he knows full well the difference.

So now the president gets his revenge, or a chance to explain, courtesy of Saturday night's annual Gridiron Dinner roast of and by journalists in D.C. It's never televised, though some transcripts of the evening have nonetheless surfaced :

"I’ve been trying to explain this situation to the American people, but clearly I am not perfect," Obama says at one point in his monologue. "After a very public mix-up last week, my communications team has provided me with an easy way to distinguish between Star Trek and Star Wars." (Laughter.) "Spock is what Maureen Dowd calls me.  Darth Vader is what [GOP Speaker] John Boehner calls me."

And then to close—reclaiming by mocking his inner Trekkie, in public, once again:

"I want to thank everybody for just a wonderful evening … And in the words of one of my favorite Star Trek characters, Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise: ‘May the force be with you.’ ”

Don't forget—we can thank John Hodgman for a lot of this initial investigative D.C. Trek work on camera:

MegaCon, megacool: See you in Orlando!

Whoa, this MegaCon in Orlando this weekend must be a big deal. Even if they did invite me.

I mean, yet another TNG cast reunion—the first in the Southeast—is a huge draw, yes, But I've got tweeps telling me they're coming in from Europe for it! (And tickets on site and area retailers ARE still available.)

I know I've been slow to let you know what's what—but on the heels of a great weekend in Seattle for Emerald City Comicon last weekend, plus That Secret Non-Fiction Trek Book sucking up my time—there's barely been breathing room. But have no fear!—I will be all revved up and ready for Orlando, only my second trip to a Florida con after we hit the Vulcan Away Mission there a ways back—where not only did we make a lot of new friends, but the generational turn of fandom made yet another direct connection on me. Right between the eyes.

Yes it was my first trip there, but boy was everyone embracing. I already have a special in-joke Voyager script page ready this time to show @LorrieS68—and all y'all. And Nicholas Roche shocked me with this hellacious custom "Faces" photo job of me to sign for him!

Umm... yes, overwhelming is the word.


So, coming up at MegaCon, here's the scoop:

—SAT at 2 p.m. (Rm 222, Mr. Dixon) we've got our updated "Between the Cracks" Trekland show with that JJ flick only a few weeks away‚ much less all the other hot Trek stuff going on I can and cannot yet talk about! But I'm sure we can poke fun. And hopefully have some Q&A too.

—SUN at 10:10 am (Rm 224C-H) we've got a reward for all you bright-n-shiny risers: An outpost edition of our Rapid-Fire Trek Trivia with a lot of cool prizes, of course.

—PLUS— a first for NorFla*: After the TNG cast reunion at 6:30-8 p.m, I'll throw a MegaCon-sized meetup-fundraiser party from 9-11 p.m. for THE CON OF WRATH, as we have done over the past year's cons. For $20 and your usual crowd-funded screen credit, you also get a crack at prize trivia, rare Trek clips, doc sneak-peeks...  and my mouth loosened with libation for about any Trek story you can pry out of me. Meet us at the DENNY'S private room (wine and beers available), right there at 9880 International Drive just down from the OC Convention Center—and stay tuned: it's a good time to tweet with me @larrynemecek or on Facebook at Trekland to keep up as the weekend goes along.

—And I'll be at my table in the signing room, with photos, attic prizes like old scripts, my Trekland: On Speaker CDs, and Klingon PADD fundraisers for The Con Of Wrath...and a lot of Trek yack. Any requests? For relics or loose-lips topics?

The fact that a chunk of our Star Trek Continues backers and crew are all over NorFla, plus the fact our Kirk and executive producer and Good Captain JTK, Vic Mignogna, is a MegaCon guest as well, is just icing on the tribble cake for this trip. Who knows what hijinks may ensue.

I'm a little scared. This may be an awesome weekend.

If you are in the area—which apparently includes Scotland and Germany—come out an make it even awesomer!




*I don't know whether or not this is a marketing handle for the North-of-I-4 region of Florida... but it ought to be. I enjoy saying it even more than typing it.

My stardate birthdate: Have I always been doomed?

While hip-deep in the Secret Star Trek Non-Fiction Project TBA —you know, the thing that's been keeping me from posting video and blog pieces the last two months — I'm having to grab some stardates matched to actual calendar days of the year.

And naturally, my original Mike Okuda stardate memo for the VGR/DS9 writers came in handy once again. You know, the one that simply divides the 1000-unit stardate "year" by 365 (or 366) to get a three-digit range for each "real" day of a Gregorian "Earth" calendar. (And, in this case, gave the writers a usable stardate range to each of the 26 episodes of the season.) You simply paste the three-digit "day" after the two-digit "year"—where 41xxx of TNG-1 was 2364, and so on.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd look up the three digits for my birthday—which all you online stalkers know is Jan. 18. And ...

It was at that point I dropped my jaw a couple times.

And realized that my life's path, like it or not, must have always been destined to meander through Trekland.

Or at least Pomona College: