As reported by Sci Fi Wire, and Action-Figure.com, there are plenty of goodies for the young and the young-at-heart Star Trek fans, including action figures, replica instruments and weapons, games, playsets and a life-sized replica of the Captain’s chair from the Enterprise bridge.For the well-heeled, the original series life-sized Captain’s chair, complete with lights, voice and sound effects, can be had for a mere &_#36;2717.01. But be sure to order this early as only 1,701 of them are being made by Diamond Select.

Fans with a more modest pocketbook can buy a remote-controlled Enterprise. Those with Klingon leanings will find a Bird-of-Prey remote-controlled ship more to their liking. The ships are made of durable foam and can fly up to fifty feet. The ships are available from Tyco and will hit the stores in April.

A Trekkie must-have is one of the replica tricorders that will retail for &_#36;50.00 from Diamond Select Toys. There is a science tricorder featuring audio dialogue from Mr. Spock, a medical tricorder with McCoy’s voice and a medical scanner with sound effects from the original series.

A replica Starfleet phaser will also appear on store shelves this year, based on one from Star Trek XI. This phaser boasts two settings; stun and vaporize and has lights and sounds.

The Star Trek XI Enterprise comes in for its share of attention, with a ship model complete with working lights and sounds, and two playsets featuring the Bridge and the Transporter Room. The Bridge set features a viewscreen, Captain’s chair and helm command center, two data screen and a floor plan playmat. The set comes with a Captain Kirk figure. The Transporter Room has dual transport controls on Scotty’s console control, a floor plan play mat, transporter pads and a transporter chamber that can be activated to “transport” a crewperson. Scotty is included with this playset.

To read more, head to the articles and pictures located here and here.

As reported by The Digital Bits, two more Star Trek DVD sets will be released on May 12th. The sets are from the original series and from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first set, The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series will include: The City on the Edge of Forever, The Trouble with Tribbles, Balance of Terror and Amok Time. These episodes will be the remastered versions.
The second set, The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation, will include: The Best of Both Worlds Part I and II, Yesterday’s Enterprise and The Measure of a Man.

In addition to the already announced seasons and films, the rumor is that the rest of The Next Generation films (Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis) will be released on Blu-Ray in time for the holidays. The films will be packaged as a four-film The Next Generation box set, and there is a possibility of an eleven-film Blu-Ray set of all eleven of the Star Trek movies, both from the original series and The Next Generation.

To read more, head to the article located here.

As reported by Book View Cafe Blog, some of McIntyre’s colleagues were appalled when they found out that she was writing tie-in novels for Star Trek. “Some of my colleagues took exception to my polluting my precious bodily fluids with evil tie-in novels,” she said. “You’d've thought they believed they had to save my soul, blathering about the improvement in my moral character that would result if instead I took an honest job as a waitress. (A job that to be done well requires character traits that I both admire and am well aware I don’t possess.)”But those tie-in novels helped subsidize her original fiction, some of which is available on her website. Plus she enjoyed writing the Star Trek books. “I’d been a big fan of the original Star Trek when I was in college (class of 1970); I wrote a teleplay that (I was told) got all the way to Gene Roddenberry’s desk.” The teleplay, The Entropy Effect, was rejected.

But that was not the end for The Entropy Effect. “Years later, the opportunity to write a Star Trek novel came along,” said McIntyre. “The folks who invited me to write it knew I’d been fond of the series and they trusted me to treat the characters with some respect.” The Entropy Effect was first published in 1981 and was reprinted several years ago.

After The Entropy Effect, McIntyre wrote three of the movie tie-in novels, beginning with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Then she wrote Enterprise: The First Adventure, a “giant novel,” for the 20th anniversary of Star Trek.