For Christopher Lloyd, playing Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was fun, even with the makeup and prosthetics he was required to wear for the part.

Lloyd is still a fan favorite and appears at conventions to talk about the role he played back in 1984. “[Conventions are] part of the Star Trek mystique, I guess” he said. “It’s a role that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was fun to play an evil character that has no remorse about anything he does. The conventions are very interesting. They’re a lot of fun. It means a lot to the fans to come and meet the people from the shows and the films that they appreciate. It’s a chance to say hello and to have something signed.”

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Tom Hardy, best known to Star Trek fans for his role as Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis, will be appearing in the third Batman film.

The delay in Mad Max: Fury Road, in which Hardy will be playing Mad Max, left room in Hardy’s schedule to take on another role.

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The actress who played Vixis, the first officer aboard Captain Klaa’s Klingon Bird-of-Prey in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, wanted to turn down the role at first.

Spice Williams-Crosby was disappointed when she found out that she was not going to play the love interest of Captain Kirk as she had hoped. “I was so excited because I just knew that I was finally going to play Capt Kirk’s love interest,” said Williams-Crosby. “Once I got the script I asked the casting director, ‘Could you please tell me a little bit about Vixis?’ Bill Shepard, the casting director said, ‘Well, Vixis is the first office Klingon on the Bird of Prey.’  I gasped! Oh no, not a Klingon.”

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After Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Harve Bennett was called in to see if he could make a better movie for less money. The result was the critically acclaimed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan followed by three Star Trek movies after that.

Bennett was a successful television producer with shows like Mod Squad, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman already under his belt. When asked if he could do a better Trek movie for less money by Gulf & Western boss Charles Bludhorn, he told them he could make four or five such movies. “Do it,” said Bludhorn.

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Tom Hardy, best-known to Trek fans as Shinzon in 2002′s Star Trek: Nemesis, will be replacing Sam Worthington in This Means War.

Hardy will play one of two spies who wages black-ops warfare on each other when they both fall for the same girl (Reese Witherspoon). The other spy will be played by another Star Trek alum, Chris Pine.

This Means War is expected to be released in 2011.

Leonard Nimoy was once worried about Zachary Quinto taking on the role of Spock. William Shatner‘s concerns from an earlier movie were about Nimoy himself.

Nothing was wrong with Quinto, according to Nimoy, but he had concerns when he heard that the actor had landed the role.

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Being overweight is no fun, but the road from slim to overweight was enjoyable according to Kirstie Alley.

Alley weighed 114 pounds when she appeared as Lt. Saavik on Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, and she felt the pressure that Hollywood puts on women to be slim. “Being thin does make a difference, I told myself,” she said. “In my head I got that role because I was 114 pounds, not because I was a good actress or looked like a Vulcan.”

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Kirstie Alley, the former Lt. Saavik, is due to star in a new reality series, in which her struggle to lose and keep off the seventy-five pounds she gained since her time on Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan will be shown.

Most actresses in Hollywood who gain a lot of weight after being thin choose to fade away into obscurity, but not Alley. She is including her experiences with weight gain and loss in Kirstie Alley’s Big Life, a new reality show set to air on A&E on Sunday.

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A ten minute behind-the-scenes “making of” documentary featurette reel for Star Trek: The Motion Picture has been posted to YouTube.

“Space, the final frontier. Gene Roddenberry invites you to go where few have gone before, behind the scenes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” says the narrator of featurette, before taking fans on a trip to the movie-making world of 1979.

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Robert McCall, best known to Star Trek fans for his work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, passed away Friday, February 26 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

McCall was also well-known for his space paintings that have appeared on U.S. postage stamps, for NASA mission patches and for his 2001: A Space Odyssey posters.

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Kirstie Alley‘s new reality series, Kirstie Alley’s Big Life, will air on the A&E cable channel beginning next month.

Best-known to Star Trek fans for her role in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (Lt. Saavik), Alley went on to work in Cheers, Veronica’s Closet and Fat Actress, as well as the Look Who’s Talking series of movies.

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Comcast customers can watch Star Trek movies through January 13, while fans of the original series can watch episodes from all three seasons for free by going to Fancast.com.

For fans looking for something to watch while at home during the holidays, if they are signed up with Comcast, all eleven films plus Galaxy Quest will be available via Comcast’s On Demand system.

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In a recent interview, Leonard Nimoy spoke about wars taking place during the time frame during which Star Trek and Star Trek XI were being made, and how the original series dealt with war. Nimoy also explained the process of trying to find a place for Eddie Murphy in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

The original series aired during the Vietnam war and Star Trek XI was made in a time when Americans were shipped over to Iraq and Afghanistan. The original series occasionally addressed war and when intervention was appropriate. “The original overarching theme of Star Trek included non-intervention policy, but we did some intervening,” said Nimoy. “I think that was a concept, but I don’t think it was a reality.”

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