The second part of Blood and Fire was released, as promised, yesterday, and can be found here, where fans can download all six parts (teaser, four acts and epilogue.)

According to the official website, Blood and Fire Part Two is “the stunning conclusion to Blood and Fire. Pursued and damaged by repeated Klingon attacks, the Enterprise crew must respond to a distress call from a Federation research ship. In a matter of hours the ship and crew will be consumed by a nearby star and the crew of the Enterprise will be consumed by an mysterious horror that threatens both ships as the Klingons watch and wait. Guest starring Evan Fowler and introducing Bobby Rice as Ensign Peter Kirk, nephew of the Captain. Written and directed by David Gerrold. Teleplay by Carlos Pedraza.”

It should be noted that Acts Three, Four and the Epilogue have temporary soundtracks as they were not ready in time for the promised release date. The updated versions will be released in a few days.

A review of Part Two can be seen over at TrekMovie.

Potts, a casual fan at best, admitted to being intrigued by Star Trek culture. “I want to confess that I’m fascinated by the idiosyncrasies of Trekkie culture in the same way some people are intrigued with Inuit or Maasai culture,” he said. “I want to admit that I have a weakness for counterintuitive travel strategies, and this seemed like a wacky, entertaining way to enjoy my first-ever sea cruise.”

When the fans found out that he would be writing about his experience, they were naturally suspicious of his motives. “I bet you want to poke fun at the weird people who bring Vulcan ears and Starfleet uniforms on their vacations,” one woman told him.

While Potts didn’t want to make fun of fans, he admitted that he was hoping for interesting behaviors. “I’m hoping this Star Trek cruise will yield a cornucopia of color and eccentricity—not just Vulcan ears and Starfleet uniforms, but Klingon-speakers and Cardassian-costumed cross-dressers,” said Potts. “I’m hoping for Trek-themed folk-band sing-alongs and angry three-hour arguments about starship registration numbers. And, as much as anything, I’m dying to know what it’s like to experience a sea voyage to Bermuda when your travel companions would rather be making a space voyage to Romulus.”

What he found instead were people who although they were passionate about Star Trek, didn’t quite fit the basement-dwelling nerd image. A couple married for thirty years renewed their vows on the ship. By initial appearances and early discussion, they seemed like the typical Trekkies that non-fans picture when thinking of Star Trek fans. But when Potts asked the couple if their mutual love of Star Trek had made their marriage easier over the years, the husband Wayne said, “Well in 30 years of marriage we’ve never had a fight. Except for tae kwon do, I guess.”

Potts was surprised by the answer. Wayne went on to explain that “…whenever we decided we needed to fight, we’d just put on the sparring equipment and go. Rita has better technique, so she’d usually win.” Both were active in martial arts and had many other interests in life besides Star Trek.

Potts also found out that there are casual fans everywhere. After asking two fans to wear Star Trek shirts for their Bermuda trip, he found out that love of Trek is everywhere as more than one person engaged them in conversation about Star Trek. A Bermudan bus driver, seeing the shirts, told them that his wife liked “that movie with the whales in them.”

Even on the ship, there were passengers not affiliated with Cruise Trek who liked Star Trek. But some of those did not want to be marked out as fans of the show. “While I’m eating my lunch by the swimming pool on Deck 12, for instance, I hear two men in the hot tub arguing about why Klingons in the original series look different from the Klingons in later incarnations of Star Trek,” said Potts. “The guys look to be in their mid-forties. “I walk over, introduce myself, and ask them if they’re with the Star Trek contingent. The instant they realize I’ve taken them for Trekkies, their eyes go blank with a look of hard-wired adolescent terror. They eventually regain their composure and explain that they’re just taking a regular cruise-vacation with their families, but for a brief moment the awkwardness is palpable: I feel as if I’ve just walked into a junior high locker room and asked a couple of boys if they’d like to kiss each other.”

A short video featuring Senior Game Designer Zeke Sparkes and Producer Daniel Stahl addresses power management, repairs after battle and how boarding parties work in Star Trek: Online.

In addition, plenty of scenes of Federation and alien ships being fired upon are included in the video which runs almost three-and-a-half minutes.

In other Star Trek: Online news, Star Trek: Online will move to open Beta beginning on January 12 and ending January 26. According to the site, keys will be given out on a “first come, first served” basis.

Star Trek XI focused more on the relationship between James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto,) but if Urban has his way, his character would have the same types of interaction with Kirk and Spock as McCoy did in the original series.

“The structure wasn’t really the traditional triumvirate that you’ve seen on the television show,” explained Urban. “It was really more a movie about establishing everybody. I certainly hope that Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and J.J. [Abrams] continue to strengthen and evolve those characters into those directions.”

According to Urban, McCoy “sort of verbalized the war going on in Kirk’s conscience.” Urban would like to see more of that as well as the McCoy-Spock bickering that went on in the original series. “I certainly would love to see more arguments of passion versus logic with Spock because they’re always fun,” he said.”

In what direction should Star Trek XII go? “I think the challenge is to come up with the most important mission, the mission that literally tears these people apart,” said Urban. “The mission that is the definitive Trek mission. We have to come up with something akin to a Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back. Something like that.”

Atari and Star Trek: Online have announced a Twitter contest where they will be giving away one copy of the Star Trek XI DVD every day through November 22.

To enter, submit a famous Star Trek quote mashed up with a Star Trek episode name (movies count) to @trekonlinegame using the tag #STOCONTEST. For examples and more information, check out Star Trek: Online’s Twitter feed, located here or their Facebook page.

Sometimes, the questions asked must make one scratch one’s head. When asked what the opening sequence of Star Trek XII would be, Lindelof laughed and said “Pan in on…there’s a crawl.  This is what nobody is expecting.  There’s a crawl and it basically says, ‘Years have passed.  Many, many, many years.  So many years, that everybody’s old and gray.’  I’m not telling you anything about that.”

Lindelof went on to talk about how he would approach the sequel. “I think we’ve had a lot of thought,” he said. “And I think we’ve reached consensus on the answer to that question and we’re certainly not going to share it with you. I mean, sometimes it works great. I remember for me, how exciting it was to see the first Bourne movie and go, oh my god, like the first half of this movie actually took place between a few of the scenes in the last movie, and now the entire context of him being across the street from Joan Allen take on…but if they had told me that before I went and saw the movie, oh this actually takes place between the cracks of the last movie, it would have made that discovery less organic.  So I think what we like to do as storytellers is drop you in the middle of something and the question you ask yourself is, ‘Where am I in relation to the last time I left these guys?  Could this be something, perhaps, something that pre-dated the adventures that they had in the last movie?  Does it happen five years later?  Is it happening two seconds later?’  Who knows?  We’re not going to tell you.”

Asked if he was “looking at a 2012 release date for Star Trek XII,” Lindelof said, “Is that what everyone who came before me said?  Yeah, I think that we would be hard pressed to get it on screens by 2011.  But if that’s the case, we’d better get to writing right now.”

One of the things Abrams would like for the sequel is to have it be more successful overseas next time. He believes that the quality of the cast and film will help in that regard. “The hope…the idea of looking at ways that hopefully the quality of the cast of the first film, the fun of the movie that that will eventually over time touch people who would not normally have gone to see the film in theaters [so] that when a sequel comes out, they’re converts because they’ve actually seen the film that was made originally,” he said.

Abrams said that it was too early to talk about themes in the sequel, and when asked about the possibility of Khan making an appearance, his answer left the door open for the genetic superman. “We’re not even at that stage yet,” he said. “The fun of where we are on the sequel is we could use some of what was done before in a new way. But we haven’t even figured out what we would use it as, it’s very early on.”

It’s looking like Star Trek XII will be released in 2012. Addressing that, Abrams said, “The more time you have, the more time you have to use to hopefully make a better movie.”

And will Abrams be back for Star Trek XII? “In theory, I would be available, it would be fun to do.” Abrams will be directing an unnamed film next year (precluding his doing Mission: Impossible IV) but would be free for Star Trek XII, if everything works out for that.

Some parents who love Star Trek plop their toddler in front of the television and pop in Star Trek DVDs hoping to make future fans, but Speers, who claims to not be a huge Star Trek fan, seems to top them all.

Speers, who graduated from Georgetown University in 2002 with a doctorate in computational linguistics, decided to speak only Klingonese to his newborn son when the boy was born fifteen years ago. He did this for the first three years of the boy’s life. “I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

Singing Klingon lullabies, such as “May the Empire Endure,” was part of his son’s bedtime ritual.

Now a self-employed software consultant, Speers jumped on the offer from Ultralingua to help create the Klingon dictionary. “It was right square in my sweet spot,” he said.

And what of the son, who is now in high school? He doesn’t speak a word of Klingonese, according to his father. Maybe he should have tried Romulan instead.

One of the behind-the-scenes features on the new Star Trek XI DVD and Blu-ray sets released this week features Leonard Nimoy being fitted for and talking about his famous Vulcan ears.

“The ears present interesting problems,” said Nimoy. “Over the years, as you can imagine, a lot of different people have made them. And There are subtle changes, from one makeup artist to the next, simply because it’s [making the ears] not a science, it’s an art form.”

Gamespot announced their Star Trek Ultimate Home Theater Giveaway, where one lucky grand prize winner can win “the ultimate at-home Star Trek experience.”

The grand prize winner will receive a new LCD HD TV and Blu-ray player, with a Surround Sound Home Theater Speaker system.

To break in the new system, the winner will also receive the three-disc Blu-ray edition of Star Trek XI.

But if that wasn’t enough, the lucky fan will receive a screen-accurate replica of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s Captain’s Chair, designed by Quantum Mechanix, Inc., valued at $2,700.

Twenty runners-up will receive a copy of the 2-disc Star Trek XI DVD set.

To enter, head here. The contest is open to U.S. residents only.