in the last few months i've been watching star trek: voyager. i've never seen it before, simply because no tv channel in israel, local or foreign, aired it until now (well, except for the german SAT1, but they dubbed it to german). after watching the first season and a few episodes of the second one, i have to say, this is probably the worst star trek series ever. i just can't figure out how this lasted for seven seasons, while star trek: enterprise lasted only four, with much better story line. hell, the fact that it had a story line differs it from voyager. so far, a season and a half, nothing happened on the ship. nobody died, nobody joined, nobody fell in love, nobody had a fight. the initial conditions of every episode are not changing until the end, and no story lasts more than one episode, two at most. the only interesting things i saw so far were some revealings about the history of the star trek universe and the characters themselves, but there is just no character development what so ever. in fact, i skipped one episode because it took too long to, hmmm…. get it, and didn't miss a thing. i watched it later, and couldn't notice the difference.

oh well, i guess i'll watch it to the end anyway. i just can't call myself a trekky if i won't.

some time ago i wrote about a real warp drive in the planning. at the time New Scientist only released the first paragraph or so from the article to non-subscribers. now, about a year later, the entire article is available for free, and it's even more amazing. if the theory proves right, this engine can take us to mars and back in 5 hours, and a star 11 light years away in 80 days. that is because, it is thought, the engine will create a field in which light is much faster, so you could reach much higher speeds without going faster than light.

the main problem with it is that it introduced new concepts in physics, that need Nobel prize class scientists to figure out. i wish Boeing or some other company of this size, or maybe the US government, will put in the money to investigate the theory and see if something real can be made out of it. if you know anyone in the aerospace industry, please forward this article to him, so they'll know about it.

in an interview with SciFi Wire, Wiliam Shatner revealed that the next star trek movie, the 11th in line, will be about captain kirk and mister spok while in starfleet academy and/or shortly after that. he is also writing two books who's story takes place in starfleet academy.

ג'יימס דוהאן, שגילם את סקוטי, מהנדס הספינה ב-star trek (הדור הראשון), הלך לעולמו ביום רביעי האחרון. לבקשתו, מעט מאפרו ישוגר על טיל לחלל, וישרף בעת חזרתו לאטמוספירה.

דוהאן מצטרף אל ג'ין רודנברי, יוצר הסדרה והיקום של סטאר טרק, ואל דה-פורסט קלי, שגילם את ליאונרד "בונז" מק'קוי, רופא הספינה, שנפטר ב-1999.

קישור לידיעה ב-space.com