Hello World!

It must be book sale season or something. On Saturday I went into the city for the Lifeline book sale, which is being held over the Queen's Birthday Holiday long weekend in Brisbane. I thought the UQ Alumni book sale was huge, but the Lifeline book fest just blew it away.

I managed to pick up some real bargains while I was there. Firstly, I bought A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler for only $3, so you might actually see me write in coherent sentences from now on. For $5, I got the autobiography of Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. Graves is the author of I, Claudius and Claudius the God, but he was also a famous poet.

One of my best finds was the New Testament in Greek. I had been looking for this, scouring all the religion tables. I was nearly at my wit's end when I happened to pick up a small, battered book, and lo and behold, there it was! When I took it to the counter, they valued it at only 20 cents! To go with it, I bought a lexicon of the Greek New Testament.

But it was my father who found the piece de resistance: The Official Companion to The West Wing for only $10! It's hardback, over 300 pages long, in almost perfect condition, with only one sticky mark on the inside cover. I can't think why anyone would give this away, unless they saw "Swiss Diplomacy" and suddenly decided to end any association with the show.

Despite that low, the series has picked up with the last two episodes: "Arctic Radar" and especially "Holy Night". While the latter episode was not as good as past Christmas offerings (what is? "In Excelsis Deo" will always be a remarkable hour of television), it was a welcome return to form. Will Bailey is now substantially less annoying than I found him initially, though he will never be able to replace Sam Seaborn.

However, at least Channel 9 is still showing The West Wing every week, even if it is at 10:30 p.m., or 11:00 p.m., or 11:30 p.m. ... you get the idea. After truncating Smallville's second season after 6 or 7 episodes, they're now doing the same with Gilmore Girls! Tuesday night's episode is now billed as the "season final", which it's blatantly not, and it just shows the contempt Channel 9 has for their viewers when they insult our intelligence like that.

When you read today's poll, you may start to question my sanity, if you haven't already done so. Antony and I were discussing beards on Sisko and various other Star Trek characters, so he persuaded me to run a poll on it. So you can blame him.;)

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

- How does the Universal Translator work?

- Is Sloan really dead?

- What storylines would you like to see for Trip and/or Reed next season?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items on June 7 & 8, 2001:

• Stephen Beck Joins 'Enterprise' Writing Staff
  An insider on the Seven Days newsgroup let slip that Stephen Beck, who served on the Seven Days writing staff for three seasons, would be joining the Enterprise team. Beck later left Enterprise during the course of its first season.

• TNN To Cross-Promote 'Enterprise'
  It was reported that cable network TNN would be showing promos for Enterprise during its broadcast of TNG reruns. In other promotional news, UPN aired its revised promo for Series V, this time including Captain Sisko.

• Rick Berman Talks Series V Development
  Trek's head honcho described how the concept of Enterprise came about in an interview with the Star Trek Communicator.

  "I was approached by the studio asking for a new series. That began a process, personally, that had been in the works for awhile, something that I had been thinking about. I was not interested in just doing another Star Trek series. It had to be totally fresh and different for me. There was an idea that I felt very strongly about and I decided that the person I wanted to work with in creating this series is Brannon Braga."

More news can be found in the TrekToday archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

What extras do you like best on DVDs? Deleted scenes or alternate scenes 59.6% - (718 Votes) Bloopers 15% - (181 Votes) Director's commentary 9.7% - (117 Votes) Cast and crew interviews 8.3% - (100 Votes) Features on special effects 3.7% - (45 Votes) Both widescreen and fullscreen versions 2.2% - (27 Votes) Games or DVD-ROM extras 0.7% - (9 Votes) Galleries of images from the film 0.4% - (6 Votes) Total Votes: 1203

Thanks for voting! Please participate in our new poll, which asks which Enterprise crew member would look best in a beard.

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