Reading Rainbow may have fallen victim to a lack of money and a change in attitude regarding educational television programming, but former host LeVar Burton had found a way to bring it back for a new generation.

Burton believes that today’s children are in need of encouragement when it comes to reading. “There is a brand new generation of kids who could definitely use the kind of spark and inspiration Reading Rainbow provided where actually becoming a reader is concerned,” he said. “As far as I can tell, reading will never go out of style, and neither will good old fashioned storytelling.”

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Star Trek‘s George Takei will be performing with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Ode to Joy later this month.

Ode to Joy will be performed on February 25 and 26 at the Robinson Center Music Hall in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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For Noel Clarke, one of the newcomers signed for Star Trek 2, the audition for the latest Trek movie was just another audition.

“It was just an audition like all the others, really,” he said. “You do your lines and see what happens, and luckily this time I got the job. It was just a standard audition.”

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Although he had a television resume dating back to the 1970s, Robert Picardo‘s life changed after signing on for Star Trek: Voyager.

Part of the reason that Star Trek was so different was the fandom associated with it. “One of the odd things about getting a Star Trek role that doesn’t have anything to do with any other kind of television show is that the moment your agent calls and says, ‘Well, you got the part,’ you also got your first two convention offers,” said Picardo.

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Just days after the news that The CW picked up Shelter, a pilot produced by J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk, comes the news that another Abrams pilot has been picked up by another network.

This time, the network is NBC and the pilot is Revolution, a dramatic thriller, to be written by Abrams, Bryan Burk and Eric Kripke (Supernatural).

In Revolution, a “group of characters” is “struggling to survive and reunite with loved ones in a world where all forms of energy have mysteriously ceased to exist.”

While an alien entity wreaks havoc with the station’s computer, Lwaxana Troi becomes romantically interested in Odo.

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When LeVar Burton couldn’t get a Twitter cybersquatter to release the Reading Rainbow name, he marshaled his Twitter followers to help him get the deed done.

Burton wanted to register the @readingrainbow handle at Twitter, but he found out that the name was already taken.

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A pilot produced by J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk is one of three ordered by the The CW.

The pilots include the Abrams/Burk Shelter pilot, The Selection and Joey Dakota.

Shelter is “set in a historic New England summer resort where the new and returning staff attend to the practical, emotional and often comical needs of the guests while navigating friendships, rivalries and romances of their own.

Shelter, a Bad Robot Productions project, is written by Mark Schwahn (One Tree Hill) and executive produced by Schwahn, Abrams and Burk.

With filming under way for Star Trek 2, two of the newcomers, Benedict Cumberbatch and Alice Eve, are settling into their jobs, and a familiar face returns briefly to the Trek set.

While promoting his latest film, This Means War, Chris Pine spoke briefly about Cumberbatch and Eve. “They’re getting on great,” he said. “We have a really good, warm, inclusive group from the first one and I think everybody’s kind of getting the hang of things and fitting in quite nicely.”

Meanwhile, if his tweet today is any indication, Leonard Nimoy has made his visit to the Star Trek 2 set, as he announced that he would do last week. “Lots of hugs and handshakes,” said Nimoy. “Like being surrounded by family. So proud to be part of the Star Trek history. LLAP.”