For Star Trek writer/producers Ronald D. Moore and Ira Steven Behr, there was no honeymoon period when it came to writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Both joined the show during its third season and had to hit the ground running.

Moore came on board after his story was found in the slush pile by Michael Piller. “Piller came aboard in the beginning of the third season, and started going through the slush pile, and found my script and bought it,” said Moore. “I got a really lucky break and I had the right script at the right time; he was looking for something like that… that started my whole career, basically.”

Being on staff for Moore meant working hard and working quickly. “Once I was on the staff, here’s the work, and you either did it or you didn’t,” he said. “There was a certain pace that the show went at. I remember very clearly, my first full day on the show. Michael gave me a memo, or a story outline that they couldn’t make work, and he said, ‘Here, go try to make this work.’

I sat down and just wrote up a new version and sent it downstairs; an hour or so later he sent it back up with a bunch of notes on it. Then I wrote up another version and sent it downstairs; the same then happened like twice more. I started putting the time up in the corner; I was literally putting the time of this draft… Michael, at some point, just laughed. ‘You don’t have to do it this fast!’

“I didn’t know what the pace was! I just assumed that when it was given to me, I had to write it as quickly as possible, and fortunately, that was a really important strength to have on a television series, to be able to do it quickly and get it out.”

Behr was hesitant to join The Next Generation because “they were cutting off writers’ heads left and right and it was a bloodbath every week,” he said.

“…it sounded like a complete and utter horror show. They were firing writers left and right; the one that killed me was you’re not allowed to go down to the set as a writer/producer, because it’s not allowed. I said that I’d never heard that anywhere before! And there’s a lawyer who goes around looking through desks at night to find things that they wrote about Gene Roddenberry, because he was Gene’s lawyer, and it was like, “Is this serious?!”

Behr had said “no” to Maurice Hurley, but a year later, Piller convinced him to come on board. He was handed a script for The Hunted and told to “rewrite act 3.”

Behr was on his own and he had to quickly brush up on Trek technology. Richard Danus, who was on his way out, “explained what a Jefferies Tube was, and I went back and literally banged out by hand on a yellow pad, Act 3, scared out of my mind,” said Behr. “There was some dialogue obviously in there, but I was just like throwing it up in the air and hoping there was a parachute attached.”

But both men managed to survive their initial experiences and both went on to Deep Space Nine.

The first expansion for Star Trek: Online, The Legacy of Romulus is now available.

In Legacy of Romulus, players can now play as either a Romulan or a Reman, with story-driven missions written “exclusively from the Romulan Republic’s point-of-view.”

In Legacy of Romulus, Romulus and Remus are gone, and the survivors of the two planets are “struggling to survive in the aftermath of unspeakable destruction.

“These are dark and dangerous times for your people, as the Tal Shiar crack down on any dissent and mysterious beings unleash terror throughout the far-flung colony worlds.

“You will be the one to reshape an empire. Gather allies, go undercover and find the proof that will rally your people to revolt.

“Together, you will rise up against an oppressive regime and demand freedom. You will fight for your people.”

Denise Crosby has returned as [Empress] Sela in Legacy of Romulus.

Two new Her Universe clothing items will be of interest to female Star Trek fans.

The items are a Command Gold tank dress, and a shirt featuring a quote from The Wrath of Khan.

The tank dress is made of 95% cotton and 5% spandex, and runs from small to 4X in size (it’s recommended to buy a size larger than normal as this item runs small). The Command Gold tank dress will sell for $35 and can be purchased here.

The Khan v-neck t-shirt features a Federation symbol and the KHAAAAAN! quote (which runs along the bottom of the shirt and continues on the back of the shirt). Selling for $28, the t-shirt comes in sizes from small to 2X. As with the Command Gold tank dress, it’s recommended to go up one size unless a close-fitting shirt is desired. The t-shirt can be purchased here.

When it comes to writing a novelization of a movie, for author Alan Dean Foster, it’s about “filling in the blanks.”

Foster is no stranger to Star Trek novels, having written the Animated Series Star Trek Log novelizations as well as the story for what became the first Star Trek movie, but after thirty years, he had thought that his Trek days were behind him.

When asked to pen the novelization for Star Trek (2009), Foster was “was surprised because it had been so long. I was not surprised because I’d been doing book versions of movies all through those decades right up and through to films like The Chronicles of Riddick,” he said. ” So it’s not like I’d been away from the work, but I’d just been away from Star Trek.”

Foster explained what he felt was the core of Star Trek into Darkness. “It’s all about personality conflicts,” he said. “There are people who love science fiction who will say it’s insufficiently science fiction, and there are people who will say that’s what makes Star Trek great, and always has. For me, good writing and good story has always been centered on characters and everything else, however well developed, is window dressing. Certainly, Star Trek Into Darkness, if anything, is even more character-centric than the previous film.”

Being able to add to the story, showing more of the characters’ thought processes during events is enjoyable for the author. “People think that one of the main things that novelizations do is to expand existing scenes,” he said. “That’s true to a certain extent, but the fun part of it, and the important people of it, I feel, is to fill in the blanks. One of the biggest blanks in any existing film, assuming it isn’t fifteen hours long, is to show what the characters are actually thinking. When they’re doing something on screen it’s just, well, ‘Sulu moved the lever forward.’ That’s about as short a sentence as you can come up with. But I get to show what he’s thinking, why he’s moving the lever, what’s going on in his head while he’s moving the lever, what the possible consequences might be for moving that lever, and on and on and on. To me, that’s one of the joys of doing it. I get to make my own director’s cut, in other words.”

The Star Trek into Darkness novelization came out yesterday.

Last night, Alice Eve was on Conan and two short clips featuring the actress on the show have been released.

In the clips, Eve reveals that she was attracted to performing from a young age, had a teacher whose negative comments made her determined to succeed in school, and was initially a bit confused during a call from J.J. Abrams to her regarding Star Trek into Darkness.

Several new Star Trek into Darkness collectibles will be offered by QMX beginning the second quarter of this year.

The collectibles include a Starfleet class ring, phaser, ship models, Starfleet division badges, and a Starfleet flag.

The class ring, as seen in the movie, will be available later this year in either limited -edition sterling silver, or open-edition metal alloy (the latter selling for $29.95).

The Starfleet phaser has updated finishes, a servo spinner, and a working power dial. The servo phaser will debut next year.

Some of the ship models seen on Star Trek into Darkness will be offered as Artisan filming miniature, or as value-priced replicas. The USS Vengeance will be offered in both prop and collector scale, the USS Kelvin in collector scale, the Ring ship in “a very limited prop-scale Comic-Con exclusive release), and the NX-01 in a prop-scale version.

Four Starfleet division badges are available now as 1:1 scale metal replicas, and a UFP flag screen-accurate replica will be released this summer.

Details will be updated when more information is released. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge. More pictures can be found at the referring site.

Damon Lindelof has taken a bit of heat lately for the Alice Eve underwear scene and now he has responded to the criticism.

The scene in question was heavily featured in ad spots promoting the movie.

The Eve scene really didn’t seem to serve a purpose in the movie other than showing a woman in her underwear, and critics and others have lambasted the writers over the gratuitous scene, to which criticism Lindelof has responded via his Twitter feed.

“I copped to the fact that we should have done a better job of not being gratuitous in our representation of a barely-clothed actress,” Lindelof said. “We also had Kirk shirtless in underpants in both movies,” he said, attempting to justify the Eve scene. “Do not want to make light of something that some construe as mysogenistic. What I’m saying is I hear you; I take responsibility and will be more mindful in the future. Also, I need to learn how to spell ‘misogynistic.’”

When asked by MTV News‘ Josh Horowitz why Eve was in her underwear, Lindelof said, “Why is Alice Eve in her underwear, gratuitously and unnecessarily, without any real effort made as to why in God’s name she would undress in that circumstance? Well there’s a very good answer for that. But I’m not telling you what it is. Because … uh … mystery?”

Trivie, the leading trivia app for mobile has launched a new category of games, Spotlight, that features officially licensed trivia games, with one of the new games being a Star Trek-themed trivia game app.

The Star Trek game will feature “tens of thousands of exclusive trivia questions.”

Trivie is a multi-player, turn-based game. “Each game includes three rounds of trivia that increase in difficulty with each round. The questions are timed, so the faster one answer, the higher the score, and the more tokens are awarded. The last round is Final Trivie, with just one question that could change it all. Each player can place a bid to select the category and increase his or her chance of winning.”

“Trivie is free to play, but players can purchase tokens to get cool upgrades — like new question packs, and more points for each answer.” The Star Trek question pack will cost ninety-nine cents.

The Star Trek Trivie game app is compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and the iPad. The game requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5 or later.

Trivie and the Star Trek game app can be downloaded from the iTunes store.

A new video shows Star Trek as performed as a musical by middle schoolers.

Exploring strange new worlds with the original series crew was never like this! See pint-sized performers show their take on the classic series.

In Star Trek: The Middle School Musical, Spock sings about Vulcan logic (and tap-dance too!), the crew transports down to the surface of a planet, a redshirt security guard bemoans his impending fate, and Kirk takes on the Gorn.

If they had had plays like this when I was in middle school, I’d have joined the drama club back then!

Some interesting interviews from Star Trek actors and people associated with the show can now be seen at the Archive of American Television website.

The interviews, other than one with LeVar Burton, are from the original series.

Included are regulars Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, LeVar Burton, Nichelle Nichols, and George Takei; as well as guest actors Elinor Donahue (Metamorphosis), Ricardo Montalban, Diana Muldaur, William Schallert (The Trouble with Tribbles), and Jane Wyatt (Journey to Babel).

Some topics include: Shatner on why Star Trek had such a strong following, Nimoy on Spock’s make-up, Burton on getting cast for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Takei on Star Trek going off the air, and Montalban on Khan.

Others associated with the franchise; including writers, composers, directors and special effects people include: Joseph M. Wilcots, Fred Steiner, Herbert F. Solow, Ralph Senensky, Hank Rieger, Richard Matheson, Robert Justman, Gerald Fried, Dorothy Fontana, George Clayton Johnson, Robert Butler, Leo Chaloukian, Alexander Courage, Elinor Donahue, and Gerald Perry Finnerman.

The interviews can be found here. Specific Trek-related parts of the discussion are highlighted, but fans can go back to the beginning of the interviews (which are usually several parts long) and watch the entire interview, which will include non-Star Trek work.