TaxmaN

Just a general disscussion about this upcoming event

Has anyone else heard of this???

Chris

This?

Scheduled to visit:

Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY
Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Kansas City, KS
Memphis, TN
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
Montgomery, AL
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nashville, TN
New York, NY
Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, VA Omaha, NE
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence-New Bedford, RI
Raleigh-Durham, NC
Rochester, NY
Sacramento, CA
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Seattle-Tacoma, WA
St. Louis, MO
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL
Toronto, Ontario
Tucson, AZ
Tulsa, OK
Vancouver, British Columbia
Washington, DC

I don't see tentative dates yet though.

TaxmaN - Do you plan to attend?

dukesmom

I just went to ticketmaster's site and they still only have the Queen Mary Dome dates for sale. Nothing about any other location.

Chris

I couldn't find anything for the Canadian locations either. Maybe they're waiting to see how successful the first one is?

Chris

TrekGoddess

Here is more information about the tour from

MSN City Guides

To Boldly Go Where You’ve Gone Before

‘Star Trek: The Tour’ isn’t just nostalgia.

By Jim Washburn for MSN City Guides

If you were around between 1966 and 1968 and had a sense of wonder, chances are you watched “Star Trek.” New Worlds! The Future! Galaxies! Phasers! Aliens! Partially unclad aliens! Warp drive! Dr. McCoy’s mint juleps! Every week the show's international, interracial, interplanetary crew set out with the best of intentions—to gain and share knowledge—and typically wound up also sharing a few photon torpedoes or boulders-on-the-noggin with newly met life forms.

At turns hokey, gripping, campy, preachy or daringly probing of social ills, “Star Trek” also gave viewers the sensation they were watching parallel universes, seeing both a starship crew and a TV cast that clearly enjoyed the hell out of working with each other.

That formula worked for a lot of viewers, but not NBC executives who cancelled the costly show after three seasons. But like John Barleycorn, “Star Trek” thrived after being cut down, rising to spawn 10 feature films and five TV series, becoming a genuine 20th century icon.

The franchise is showing every sign it will live long and prosper through the 21st century as well, with another feature film due Dec. 25 and a new 3-dimensional incarnation in "Star Trek: The Tour," now beginning its trek across the U.S. Comprised of some 250 tons of original props, sets, models and costumes culled from the spectrum of “Star Trek” episodes and films, as well as specially-produced exhibits, video treats and interactive whirligigs, the exhibition will boldly go to your environs during its five-year mission to tour 40 U.S. cities.

"Star Trek: The Tour" was created by SEE (Special Entertainment Events) Touring Productions, which designed the long-running ‘Star Trek Experience’ in Las Vegas, and has produced ‘Trek’ events in Europe and Asia, along with exhibitions celebrating the “Titanic” movie, “I Love Lucy” and other mainstays.

The tour’s first stop—held over until March 2—is Long Beach, Calif., where it is ensconced in the world’s ninth-largest geodesic dome, originally built to house another grand flight of fancy, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. (Coming tour stops have yet to be announced; check the tour site for updates.)

SEE has done an admirable job of filling the Goose-vacated vastness with a “Star Trek”–immersed environment abounding in artifacts. Recall the Oct. 2006 Christie’s auction where chunks of “Star Trek’s” history sold for $7.1 million? Well, the exhibition’s curators had dibs on the items they wanted well before the auctioneers got near them.

There are scale models of the Enterprise spacecraft used in filming the first two series, and original costumes worn onscreen by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew and numerous crewmates and adversaries—Klingons, Borg, you name ’em. You’ll find original phasers and flip-up communicators, as well as items none but the most loyal fan might recognize, such as the Orb of the Prophets or a B’Hala Stone Tablet. But for a trip here, you might easily go your entire life without ever seeing a Ferengi ear comb.

You can ride a space shuttle simulator through a shaky space trip, experience the 360-degree, multiple-projection Encounter Theater or have yourself blue-screened into a scene from a “Star Trek” episode. For most fans, though, there’s nothing quite so thrilling as seeing and standing on the decks of the Captain James T. Kirk-era original Enterprise and “Next Generation” Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise D.

“We’re pulled in two directions here,” said fan Brian Huckeba, hardly standing out in his Captain Kirk shirt. He was there with his wife Becky and baby daughter Brooke. “I grew up on reruns of the original ‘Star Trek,’ so this feels like coming home to me,” he said of the Kirk crew’s bridge. “My wife feels the same way about the ‘Next Generation,’ so we can’t wait to see that bridge either.”

The Huckebas were in line to do the blue-screen scene, in which the three took the place of a Romulan commander threatening Kirk and crew. Reading from a script, Brian came across as perhaps more Popeye than Romulan. He said he didn’t know if he’d be buying the $40 DVD of it. (This attraction, the shuttlecraft rides, etc., are included in the exhibition’s admission cost, but purchasing a permanent record of the experience can be pricey.)

Huckeba says it wasn’t the show’s science fiction element that grabbed him. “For me, it’s about the great characters. Watching it, you get the feeling these people really did seem to be friends and have history together.”

Becky admires the “‘Next Generation’s’ storytelling, and the way it comments on our society through science fiction.” Neither was much a fan of the subsequent three series, leaving that to 5-month-old Brooke, who was also wearing a Trekshirt.

On the exhibition’s Kirk-era bridge, the captain’s chair and the navigation console where Ensigns Sulu and Chekov sat are original, while the surrounding features are largely a recreation made for a “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” episode.

Shatner parked his behind on three separate captain’s chairs over the show’s run: the one here, one that was sold at auction, and one residing at Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

On the “Next Generation” bridge, four of the five chairs are original from the show. (The fifth had been damaged in transport). Much of the remaining bridge is original, including all the Okudagrams (backlit diagrammatic control consoles originated by Next Generation designer Michael Okuda). There are plenty of Okudagrams throughout the hall—they’re even used on the cash registers—and several have Trekkie in-joke Easter Eggs hidden in them, such as a diagram of the Enterprise D showing only two restrooms for the entire ship.

While guests can get a lot out of the exhibition within an hour, those with even a moderate affinity for “Star Trek” can easily while away an afternoon. Among the attractions are video kiosks running documentaries on costuming, special effects and other production elements.

At other kiosks, you can test your knowledge of “Star Trek” trivia. Those wanting to load up on more trivia can take an audio tour via a handheld unit for an extra $6. Along with details about Star Trek’s fictional universe, you’ll learn arcane production details. The evil-looking incisor probes on the transfusion machine to which Captain Picard was strapped by his blood-craving clone, for instance, were actually made from tent stakes, garden drip-irrigation tubing and pesticide sprayer lids.

Some props and costumes look more impressive in person, some less so. Biohazard suits from a ‘60s episode look like they could double as Liberace’s pajamas. And for a race born to conflict and war, Klingons certainly had a soft spot for gold lame’.

Of course there’s a transporter room where you can watch yourself vanish on a TV screen as a Scottish-accented fellow beams you away. If you’re so inclined, you can buy a permanent record of your disintegration on a lenticular postcard.

Step into an easily overlooked doorway, and you’re in a hallway to Picard’s quarters—replete with a bottle of 2267-vintage Chateau Picard on the mini-bar—and Dr. Beverly Crusher’s sickbay.

Need a break? Kick back with some Klingon Blood Wine or a tankard or three of Romulan Ale in Quark’s Bar, with the actual bar, stool, neon tables and chairs from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” The Wolfgang Puck-supplied menu in the adjacent café includes Mama Horta’s Personal Pizzas and a Spock’s Brain sandwich (tuna, mozzarella and mayo).

It might be best not to dine before going on the space shuttles, which come in two degrees of simulation. A pair of 15-seat shuttles are akin to Disneyland’s Star Tours in that you get shaken and lurched about while a forward screen shows video game-like images of you hurtling through outer space, a planet’s magma canyons and so on. It’s a neat sensation, but nothing you couldn’t reproduce at home with a wide-screen TV and Syrup of Ipecac.

Tremendously more barfacious is the other pair of shuttle simulators, two-seat affairs that look like hi-tech maracas, and you’re the beans as they spin you 360-degrees both horizontally and vertically.

“I won’t go on it,” says Dave Riva, SEE Touring’s creative director. “I like rides that don’t require seat belts.”

Along with the shuttles providing a new experience for fans, Riva says the simulators serve another purpose. “If there’s a family of five here, one of them is not going to like ‘Star Trek,’ so it’s nice for them to be able to ride the simulator or have a hi-tech experience like the Encounter Theater, something they don’t necessarily have to love ‘Star Trek’ to enjoy.”

Riva’s been a fan since he watched the original series reruns as a kid. It’s been a dream job for him to help put the exhibition together, not that it’s been without headaches. For one thing, Hollywood tends to throw stuff out when it’s done with it. Some frequently used sets and props survived, but with many others even the blueprints had been discarded. When SEE set out to recreate the time portal from the “City on the Edge of Forever” episode, no one could find even a hint of how the original had been made, so they had to wing it, and it was only a chance discovery of a reel of tape that enabled them to reproduce the portal’s voice.

The fans’ devotion to detail also made the job harder, Riva said. “Doing ‘Titanic’ or other exhibits, not every little thing has to be perfect. ‘Star Trek’ requires a high degree of finish, because if everything isn’t exact, we hear about it. There are six people in the world who speak Klingon, and three of them have been here already. One insisted the cartouche on one of the uniforms was supposed to go the other way, but another one said it was right.”

According to SEE Touring’s president, Martin Biallas, “So far fans have only discovered one mistake. On the original bridge, there’s this thing Spock always looked into that looks like a microscope. In our exhibit its knob is on the right side, and it should be on the left.”

Riva said, “The ‘Star Trek’ Poodles (who evidently attend all Trek events, in costume, with their owners) have already been through here. Do some of fans need therapy? Yes. But I’d rather be around them than most other people who need therapy. As a group, ‘Star Trek’ fans are fiercely loyal, wonderfully intelligent, and they refuse to give up on this idea that things could be better.”

SEE Touring’s ‘Trek’ connection started in 1996, when the company was asked to organize an event in Huntsville, Alabama—the birthplace of NASA—celebrating “Star Trek’s” 30th anniversary.

“There was almost no budget, and the Internet was too young to really spread the word. We had the original cast there and thought 5,000 or 10,000 people might show up. 80,000 people came, to Huntsville, Alabama! I thought, ‘These fans are so devoted that if we could produce something great and elaborate, they’d really appreciate it.’ I went to the studio and they thought I was nuts. But we raised the money and designed it. Overseas, we did from 100,000 to 200,000 people in each venue. Now the studios greet us with open arms, and are seeing what we do as not just extra licensing revenue but a new way of reaching their end customer,” said Biallas.

Toward that end, by late February the exhibition should have a major prop from the upcoming eleventh Trek film as well as a trailer.

Something else in the works is an educational component for school kids.

“The idea is to show schoolchildren how science and ‘Star Trek’ are linked, how ideas can precede invention,” Riva said. “You only have to look at cell phones to know how much ‘Star Trek’ influenced things. And one of the scientists who invented the ion drive has said the only reason he pursued it at all was because ‘Star Trek’ had an ion drive. We’ve had NASA scientists here and they were like little kids on the bridge. It’s fascinating how so many scientists and Silicon Valley guys attribute their inspiration to what was essentially a cancelled television show.”

“People always ask why ‘Star Trek’ has endured, and none of us has an answer for that. But one element has always remained true: ‘Star Trek’ has an incredibly positive outlook for the future. No matter what the situation was, humans with all their faults and difficulties still could come together in some way and figure out how to move forward. I think everyone really appreciates that positive outlook, with all the races together, fighting injustice. I think it resonates especially now. All you have to do is listen to Obama talk for five minutes, and the little hairs at the back of your neck that have responded to ‘Star Trek’ for 30 years go up. I think that’s a real testament to the need for ‘Star Trek’.”

Jim Washburn has covered popular culture in Orange County for the OC Weekly, Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register.

Chris

Thanks for bringing that over.

I'll have to remember to check if specific dates for other cities have been announced yet.