The two issues, featuring the work of thirty contributors, will debut with issue #36 releasing today and the second part of the Ultimate Guide, issue #37, to debut on September 29.

Each issue will contain detailed episode synopses and reviews, essays, Top Ten lists, and new photos. Star Trek Magazine Editor Paul Simpson explained why he wanted to do “Ultimate Guides” for Star Trek. “One of the things that I’ve felt is missing from the printed Trek universe is a full guide to the shows,” he said. “Paula [M. Block] and Terry [J. Erdmann]‘s Star Trek 101 did finally give us something that covered Enterprise, but what wasn’t there was a complete list, in broadcast order, with writers, directors and date of release.

“Back in 2009, Brian Robb had asked me to come up with ideas for a special issue of the mag to be published in the fall of 2011, to mark the 45th anniversary of Trek, which is when I pitched this idea and started the preparatory work. I then emailed out to the various writers who had contributed to the mag in recent times, and asked them to pick their favorite season… I wanted each of these to be written by people who weren’t going to complain about re-watching up to twenty-six hours of TV because it was stuff they enjoyed.”

Simpson explained what readers might expect to see when it comes to the Ultimate Guide. “The absolute minimum any episode gets is title, writer, director, airdate and a mark out of five, but the vast majority get a lot more than that,” he said. “The production overviews are, deliberately, subjective: what I might have picked out from that season’s history isn’t necessarily at all what the writers have. And it’s very important to note that no one has been asked to change what they said: it means that occasionally we have the same person awarded the MVP in successive seasons, or that what one person suggests in their piece will be a fantastic year of a show is revealed in the next article to be one of the less successful ones, in the next author’s opinion.”

Star Trek literature will not be included in the Ultimate Guide. “Some people – noticeably those who wrote books which might be eligible! – asked if we were including books and comic strips, etc., in the Ultimate Guide, and the sad answer had to be ‘no,’” said Simpson. “We’re already using 168 pages of issues over this – the only regular features in the issues are the news, Trek Life, Treknology and Lost and Found – and if we’d expanded it to the novels, I’m not sure exactly how we could have coped.”

Issue #36, the first part of the Ultimate Guide, debuts on newsstands today and will sell for $6.99. The second part of the Ultimate Guide, out next month, will sell for $9.99.

In Star Trek Magazine #31, as well as interviews with Dawson and Masterson, there will be a “look at the Haynes Enterprise Manual” and an article on Star Trek‘s strong females, featuring Lieutenant Uhura.

Dawson spoke about her days on Star Trek: Voyager, including a discussion with Brannon Braga which led to the episode Extreme Risk. “The episode Extreme Risk actually came out of a conversation I had had with executive producer Brannon Braga,” said Dawson. “He was wondering where B’Elanna would go next, and I began talking about her life and that maybe she was at a point where the conflict between her Klingon and human sides was so great that she began taking risks to know what it was like to feel. B’Elanna wanted to pit one side against the other and see which would win as far as her fears and vulnerabilities went. It was a very private thing that wound up obsessing her.

“I love what they did with that script. It was an emotional and exciting episode to do because it was so psychologically risky. In fact, I’ve spoken with a number of people who have gone through moments like that. They’ve taken undue risks to test the boundaries of life for one reason or another, whether because of something that has happened in their own life, or even due to clinical depression. Sometimes people will do things just to reaffirm to themselves what it means to be alive. So I thought it was a risky as well as wonderful thing that the writers were willing to go there with B’Elanna and really show this sort of psychologically tormented side of her that was crying out for some help, and I was thrilled to perform that.”

In the article about Star Trek‘s strong women, authors Kevin Dilmore and Dayton Ward show how one character, Uhura, set the bar for those who would follow her. Fans of the original series were aware of Uhura’s resourcefulness, from language skills to the ability to repair the systems with which she worked, but a new generation of fans saw a younger Uhura in Star Trek XI, who showed that same skill and resourcefulness as a young Starfleet cadet.

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“The successful operation of Starfleet depends on a strict adherence to rules and regulations, an understanding of and compliance to command structure and the obedience of orders from superior officers. Except, of course, when it doesn’t.” A preview of this lead article compares two successful and popular Star Trek captains, James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.

“Several of Starfleet’s finest, even legendary, figures have been known to disregard rules from time to time. James Kirk certainly falls into this category, with a longtime reputation for flouting authority and taking bold, even aggressive action at the slightest provocation, regardless of the consequences. However, a careful examination of his career shows that even when Kirk disregards Starfleet’s highest law, the Prime Directive, it’s never for aggrandizement. Be it rescuing a stagnant civilization caught in the grips of oppressive rule (The Return of the Archons, A Taste of Armageddon, A Piece of the Action, Bread and Circuses, or The Apple), or acting to thwart an enemy’s attempts to undermine a budding society (Friday’s Child or A Private Little War), Kirk always acts for what he believes to be a greater good. In the eyes of some, this makes him an amoral rebel, whereas others see him simply as ‘unconventional.’

“In contrast, Jean-Luc Picard often is regarded as one who always follows the rules, or at the very least is more thoughtful and restrained with respect to stepping outside the parameters of protocol and duty. Of course, as a younger man, Picard was more carefree, most notably by eschewing tradition and leaving the family home and vineyard for a career in Starfleet. It wasn’t until the Academy’s venerable groundskeeper, Boothby, took the young cadet into his stewardship that Picard truly started down the path to maturity. Even then, overconfidence and even recklessness came to the fore on occasion, such as him being unafraid to charge outnumbered into a fight with Nausicaans (Tapestry), an action which ended with him stabbed through the heart and requiring an artificial replacement. That event is viewed by many – including Picard himself – as a turning point in his life, after which he developed a more introspective nature.

“Picard’s later reputation for deliberate judgment and action often serve him well, especially during occasions where he finds himself forced to set aside the rules to accomplish his mission and protect his ship and crew. Showing the primitive Edo that the aliens they worship aren’t gods (Justice), helping someone in distress in defiance of non-interference directives (Pen Pals, Homeward), or defying Starfleet and even the Federation itself in defense of the seemingly helpless Ba’ku (Star Trek: Insurrection) Picard demonstrates a willingness to defy the letter of the law in order to uphold its spirit. While certainly not as impulsive or cocky as Jim Kirk might’ve been in similar situations, Picard still comes across – on occasion – as a bit of a rogue when required by circumstances.”

To read more of this article as well as other features in Star Trek Magazine #30, pick up the latest issue on the newsstand, or subscribe to either the print version or a digital version of the magazine which can be found by heading to the following links: To subscribe to Star Trek Magazine, go here. Star Trek Magazine is available digitally for the PC, Mac or IPad.

According to McNeill, there is an important difference between the two troublesome characters. “Fundamentally there’s a huge difference between the two of them,” said McNeill. “Nick Locarno was somebody who appeared to be a really good guy to the Starfleet teachers, faculty and staff, but deep down was a rotten guy. I think Tom Paris was the complete opposite of that. He appeared to be a little rotten on the outside, but was really a good guy underneath it all. Initially, Voyager’s creators might have conceived the character to be very much like Nick Locarno, but it became clear to me quite early on that he had to be very different.”

“Nick Locarno was someone who was there for one story and to serve a very brief purpose,” explained McNeill. “But for Tom Paris to last, as well as be relevant, he had to be a real hero and a character who, underneath all his warts, faults and weaknesses, was someone that viewers would want to come back to every week. That’s why I felt it was necessary to bring a sense of humor to Paris. To me, Star Trek was its most successful whenever it had a bit of irony and tongue-in-cheek quality along with a sense of fun and adventure. So I tried to bring the spirit of that into everything I did, even if it wasn’t scripted.

For Tom Paris, being stranded on Voyager in the Delta Quadrant meant a second chance, but he had to prove himself to his captain and fellow shipmates.

“What was really important for our show was that this mismatched group of people came together with their strengths and became a team,” said McNeill. “That was a challenge, though, with Tom Paris, because he was initially meant to be a lone wolf. So I looked for opportunities to showcase his value as a team player.

“That began in the pilot with Harry Kim [Garrett Wang], where I wanted to show Tom as being sort of the wiser, older brother to this character. Even if it was lightly scripted, I tried my best to emphasize that while Tom might look like he doesn’t care about anybody else, he actually does care about Harry, who’s a little less experienced and needs a bit of help. The more I did that, the more, I think, our writers started writing to it.

“Something else I feel was unique about Tom was the fact that he was kind of a down-to-earth straight talker. With all the technobabble, sci-fi talk and complicated stories and situations, I tried to be the one who had a sense of plain speak and be a little folksy with my character.”

To subscribe to Star Trek Magazine, head to the link located here. Star Trek Magazine is available digitally for the PC, Mac or IPad.

From the beginning days of Star Trek, not everyone in Starfleet was a stickler for the rules and sometimes this worked out well, as in the case of many of Captain James T. Kirk’s actions, but for others, breaking the rules was problematic for the “bad boy” as was the case for Tom Paris prior to his assignment to the USS Voyager.

Actor Robert Duncan McNeill spoke about the two characters he played, Tom Paris and Nick Locarno, and the difference between the two “bad boys.” “Fundamentally there’s a huge difference between the two of them,” he said. “Nick Locarno was somebody who appeared to be a really good guy to the Starfleet teachers, faculty and staff, but deep down was a rotten guy. I think Tom Paris was the complete opposite of that. He appeared to be a little rotten on the outside, but was really a good guy underneath it all. Initially, Voyager’s creators might have conceived the character to be very much like Nick Locarno, but it became clear to me quite early on that he had to be very different.

“Nick Locarno was someone who was there for one story and to serve a very brief purpose,” said McNeill. “But for Tom Paris to last, as well as be relevant, he had to be a real hero and a character who, underneath all his warts, faults and weaknesses, was someone that viewers would want to come back to every week. That’s why I felt it was necessary to bring a sense of humor to Paris. To me, Star Trek was its most successful whenever it had a bit of irony and tongue-in-cheek quality along with a sense of fun and adventure. So I tried to bring the spirit of that into everything I did, even if it wasn’t scripted.”

Being so far from home gave Tom Paris a second chance, although his path wasn’t easy at first. “What was really important for our show was that this mismatched group of people came together with their strengths and became a team,” said McNeill. “That was a challenge, though, with Tom Paris, because he was initially meant to be a lone wolf. So I looked for opportunities to showcase his value as a team player.”

To subscribe to the Official Star Trek Magazine, follow the link located here.

Beginning with the June issue, readers can purchase single issues ($4.89 each) or spring for a subscription ($39.99 for eight issues) at the Zinio website.

For fans on a budget, the subscription price for the digital version of Star Trek Magazine is a bargain, saving thirty-five percent off of the single-issue cover price, or ten dollars off of a paper subscription.

To see a preview, head to the link located here and click on the magazine.

Some of today’s Star Trek authors and artists got started in fanzines, which lead some to professional careers.

In the latest Star Trek Magazine, issue #25, available now, the history of fanzines is detailed, and some familiar names of today were contributors to those eagerly awaited publications. “Although fans probably know her best as the co-writer of many Star Trek non-fiction titles and co-editor of Pocket Book’s Strange New Worlds, Paula M. Block was at one time a contributor to Warped Space, a fanzine that lasted an impressive ten years with more than fifty issues.”

Another famous Star Trek fan name is that of Bjo Trimble. “The famous Star Trek Concordance (1976) written by superfan Bjo Trimble began life as a fanzine publication by Dorothy Jones Heydt in 1968.”

One of Star Trek Magazine‘s own wrote regularly to a popular fanzine. “Larry Nemecek (author of The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion and co-writer of the story for the Voyager episode Prophecy) was known to write letters during the 1970s to TREK: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans. In fact, his TNG guidebook began as a fanzine concordance and was read by the writers and producers of the television show (the shuttle Nenebek from TNG’s Final Duty was named for Larry by Jeri Taylor).”

The quality of fanzines varied, from ones that looked like they came from the mimeograph machine in the teacher’s lounge at school, to slick professional-looking magazines. “Sometimes fanzines became so professional in editing and design that they were difficult to distinguish from licensed publications. TREK was edited by Walter Irwin and G.B. Love, and is arguably one of the most successful and professional Star Trek fanzines.

“Beginning in 1975 and running for nearly 20 years, TREK produced consistently impressive art, parodies, poems, interviews, behind-the-scene treatises, academic articles, and fan fiction. The most popular articles were eventually collected into 18 The Best of TREK books published from 1978 to 1996. Some of the features of TREK, such as ‘Reader’s Mysteries’ where fans would write in to ask about inconsistencies between episodes or just nitpick were so popular that modern and official Star Trek publications continue to have similar columns.”

Giving his best performance in Imperfection meant working himself up to get ready for his emotional scene with the EMH and Captain Janeway.

Star Trek Magazine #25 is on sale at newsstands now and included in this issue is an interview with Manu Intiraymi, who played Icheb, a young former Borg. Intiraymi described the challenges and thrills of working on the seventh season episode in which Seven of Nine’s life is in danger and Icheb is desperate to save her.

“There was an intense conflict in this story and some intense acting as well,” explained Intiraymi. “Near the end of the episode, Icheb disengages his cortical node and is dying. At the same time, he’s yelling at the Doctor, Captain Janeway and Seven to give his node to Seven.

“All these emotions are going on inside me, and [as the character] I’m thinking, ‘Am I going to die? Why won’t these people listen to me? I know I can save Seven.”

Preparing for the role was different for Intiraymi as he needed to be more emotional than usual. “It was the only time during my Star Trek experience that I had to walk off to the side of the set before we began to do that scene and really build myself up emotionally and convince myself that I was dying,” said Intiraymi. “It was the one time when I really had to act. Of course, in the other episodes I was acting, but here I had to yell, cry, scream and maintain that emotional intensity for take after take and keep it fresh for that scene. It was really difficult, but extremely fulfilling as well for me as an actor.”

In addition to being extremely fulfilling as an actor, Intiraymi was paid a compliment by someone he admired. “And the best thing that happened to me with this episode had to do with Robert Picardo,” he said. “I’d looked up to him for quite a while and it’s a kid’s dream to come to Hollywood and work with someone like him. After we shot that scene, Robert came up to me and said, ‘Because we’ve been doing this for so long, we’ve got it down and things don’t seem as new. Every once in a while, though, a guest star comes along who’s good and who wakes us up. And you’re a good actor, kid.’ My heart jumped. To get a compliment about your acting skills from someone as talented as Robert is a total thrill. So that episode was definitely a big plus for my soul, my career, everything.”

The key to Star Trek: Online was figuring out what had happened to everyone’s favorite races, then deciding where to go from there.

According to Star Trek: Online‘s Christine Thompson, there was a “metastory to the game.” “We needed to figure out what happened with the Romulans, the Klingons, the Cardassians, etc.,” she said. “And once we had all those pieces in place, we needed to figure out where they move from there. There are things you go through in the game tutorial that are relevant later on, when you’ve ranked up to admiral. There are things we’ve set up that run all the way through the game, and beyond.”

“Beyond” means planning for the game’s future, which will be evolving and changing. “Because this is an MMO, the cool thing is, we’re never done developing it,” explained Thompson. “We’re always going to be adding new stuff and new story to it. So I’m already thinking six months out, twelve months out, ‘Okay, what are we going to do next? How will the story move forward? When the players find out, for example, what was really behind the destruction of Romulus, how will that affect everything else?”

“The first three major areas of the game each have fourteen episodes,” said Thompson. “Those episodes each constitute about forty-five minutes to an hour and a half of play, and they’re strung together to tell a larger coherent story. In addition, we have all the patrol content and exploration content, and those are little one-act tasks players can perform, but they’ve given me opportunities to drop in a little more story for the overall game.”

If the Star Trek: Online structure seems like a new season of Star Trek, that’s not accidental, according to Star Trek: Online Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich. “All of the content in Star Trek Online, the vision of the content in the game, is to make it feel as though you’re in an episode or a movie,” he said. “And like those, you’re never in one place for any period of time. You’re in space, you receive a distress call, you beam down to a planet and rescue some scientists, beam up to a space station, collect vital data, get back to your ship in time for a climactic space battle. That is really what we want the content to feel like, players constantly moving back and forth between environments. You’re constantly moving, constantly exploring.”

Star Trek Magazine issue 24 arrives at newsstands on February 9.

In addition to the Klingons, Star Trek Magazine issue 24 will give readers “exclusive access” to the Star Trek DVD launch party with comments from some of the stars of the movie, and “Tribble Tweets,” a new way at looking at The Trouble with Tribbles.

J.G. Hertzler shared his memories of playing General Martok in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, admitting that he didn’t know much about the Klingons when he first began. “Well, first of all, I didn’t have any depth of knowledge about Klingon culture or behavior, so whether or not I could ‘be’ a Klingon and fill those boots was a question for me,” he said. “However, I’m a former college football linebacker, so I figured I had a shot at it. I don’t know how much you know about football, but you have to play it in a state of controlled frenzy, which is not unlike being a Klingon.”

Part of being a Klingon was intimidating the non-Klingons so that Martok could do what he needed to do in a scene where the regulars were being tested to make sure that they were not shapeshifters. Hertzler explained how he went about doing that. “As a recurring actor or guest-star coming onto the show, to try to intimidate the likes of Avery Brooks on anything is impossible, but I took a whack at it. I had to risk making these people hate me in order to be effective in the scene, and I think I succeeded.”

“I have to admit that I underestimated their ability to separate actor from character,” said Hertzler. “Nana Visitor [Major Kira] was one of the first people to say how enjoyable it was to have me play Martok. She was extremely supportive and made me feel good about being there. It’s hard to walk into the middle of a well-oiled machine like Deep Space Nine and fit in. It takes a little machete and stiletto action, or should I say Klingon bat’leth wielding, to carve out a comfortable niche for yourself. It was hairy for a few minutes, but it turned out okay.”

Martok was there to stay and Hertzler had plenty of time to figure out his character. “I had almost four years to work on my character and develop various aspects of Martok,” he said. “And as the writers got to know me, they began adding new character traits with regard to my own life, gestures and outlook on things.”

Star Trek Magazine issue 24 arrives at newsstands on February 9.