Trekkies Gone Wild, Volume XI

Put your pointy ears on folks, as the new "Star Trek" feature film has been confirmed for release on December 25th, 2008. This new project is a departure from the traditional Trek drama, previously controlled by the controversial Rick Berman, and is now produced and directed by the even-more-controversial team led by J.J. Abrams, the brain behind successful TV series such as "Lost", "Alias" and "Felicity". He also produced and directed the box-office hit that was "Mission Impossible III", although the movie wasn't very well received by all the critics, being an action movie and all.

A bit of a problem for Trek fans might be the fact that Abrams is very new to their world as he publicly admitted that he did not watch every little bit of "Star Trek" ever created and that the franchise is not exactly his cup of (Earl Gray, hot) tea anymore, therefore he is not a true Trekkie and might be lynched by an angry body-painted, pointy-eared mob after the movie pops out. Another problem is the fact that he let his most acclaimed show, "Lost", fell into the limbo of boring soap operas, with ratings declining steadily, the show losing almost two million viewers by the end of season three.

Rumors seem to indicate that the plot revolves around the ever-popular Captain Kirk, while the cast might be comprised of Matt Damon as the charming but hasty Kirk, Adrien Brody as the logic-driven and angst-ridden Spock and Gary Sinise as the frustrated "I'm a doctor, not an actor" Doc McCoy. Although none of this is confirmed just yet, as the crew is swore to secrecy (failure to comply to this oath might result in severe Borg assimilation or beaming the trespassers into space), there are strong beliefs that the cast is set and that filming might begin as early as this summer. Also some of the old cast might be showing up as special guests, thus calming the spirits of above-mentioned geek swarms and, MAYBE, with great luck, avoiding Abrams' impalement on the port-side phaser banks.

I guess Sci-Fi fans should be grateful that the movie doesn't seem to feature in the cast John Travolta as an alien overlord bent on galactic domination or Tom Cruise coming out of the closet. Or at least not yet...