• Jonathan Frakes (Riker), who lives in Maine, has joined the faculty at Rockport College and will be teaching acting and film directing during this upcoming term, reports Maine Media-Arts Project. Frakes will teach and mentor the 15 film students in the film program.

• Sci Fi Wire reports that Jolene Blalock (T'Pol)'s episode of Lost, originally rumoured to be the second episode of the current season, will air soon, with Blalock playing a woman from Sawyer's past.

• Yahoo! notes that Patrick Stewart (Picard)'s Mysterious Island will be released on DVD in January.

• Meanwhile, The Patrick Stewart Network reports that Stewart will appear on The Kumars at No. 42 on December 24th on BBC America, trying to avoid talking about starship saucer separation.

• Garrett Wang (Kim) greeted a group of marines leaving boot camp on the way to Iraq and other military sites, notes Slice of Sci Fi.

• Geckotech Forums has a report on and photos of scrapbook gifts presented to several Enterprise actors and information about donations to the Seattle Children's Hospital, which is Connor Trinneer (Tucker)'s charity.

• A Reuters report on the Berlin Film Festival, where Alexander Siddig (Bashir)'s Syriana will be screened, is at Sid City.

• Gaming news: The Booneville Daily News reports on strategy game Civilization IV and the "superb voiceovers by none other than Leonard Nimoy, Spock of 'Star Trek' fame."

• And Decipher has posted new articles on Starfleet ships and shuttlepods and Trek tech toys for the CCG.

• The Trek Life at StarTrek.com offers Santa a bribe to keep the web site open. The site is due to be shut down at the end of the year unless a new host is found.

• Websnark.com has an article on the inconsistencies in how Star Trek deals with evolution, incorporating both social Darwinism and a kind of intelligent design.

• "Was Spock and Austro-libertarian?" asks a writer from The Ludwig von Mises Institute, a research and educational center of classical liberalism and libertarian political theory.

• The Hollywood Reporter has a feature on short internet films like 405, created by Voyager visual effects artists Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt.

• Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot isn't getting quite the rave reviews for heist hijinks as he earned for spoofing Star Trek. The Village Voice said:

  Parisot, who exhibits little in the way of visual imagination but at least showed a flair for broad humor in 1999's Galaxy Quest, seems undermotivated...it's one thing to milk humor and pathos from a Star Trek send-up, though, and quite another to make sudden destitution hilarious without seeming like a jerk.

  The Calgary Sun agrees, saying, "Parisot directed the delightfully wacky Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest [but] is either very brave, very foolish or just plain desperate to helm a feature film."

• Creation Entertainment has announced some convention news. On the weekend of the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, September 8th, the Chicago convention will reunite William Shatner (Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (Spock). Shatner and Nimoy will also appear in Sacramento that same weekend; tickets are now on sale for autographed photos. And Avery Brooks (Sisko) has joined the lineup for the huge convention in Las Vegas from August 17-20th.

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