After years of waiting, Star Trek is being revived... again! Not as an animated series, but as an actual motion picture. It looks like Gene Roddenberry's proposed story ideas have been shot down, as have been screenplays and story treatments from the likes of Theodore Sturgeon ("Amok Time" and "Shore Leave"), Harlan Ellison ("City on the Edge of Forever"), and Robert Silverberg. But Paramount seems to be committed to making the movie and Gene Roddenberry is still working on finding the right story. The latest word is that two British writers, Alan Scott and Chris Bryant, are working on a screenplay, and Phil Kaufman has been chosen to direct. (None have any previous Star Trek-related experience.) William Shatner has apparently agreed to appear, but Leonard Nimoy has not yet signed on. The budget is expected to be in the $5 million range and Roddenberry is enthusiastic about a new special effects technology called Magicam that should allow for some spectacular effects to be filmed inexpensively. This information is courtesy of various issues of Starlog.

Meanwhile, live from New York, it's Saturday Night! "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise" aired on NBC seven years after Star Trek's cancellation with a rather different cast. Dan Aykroyd as McCoy, Chevy Chase as Spock, and John Belushi as Captain James T. Kirk face their most powerful foe as Saturday Night Live, the hottest show on television today, pays a loving but hilarious tribute to Star Trek. As the story begins, the Enterprise crew find themselves being pursued by a mysterious vehicle... a 1968 Chrysler with a California license plate registered to NBC. All the ship's systems fail and the Enterprise is boarded. Two mysterious figures step out of the turbolift and onto the bridge: NBC executive Herb Goodman, played by Elliot Gould, and his assistant Curtis, played by Garrett Morris. Goodman announces that Star Trek has been cancelled. The cast gradually slip out of the Star Trek characters and into their actor personas, with the supporting characters and, eventually, even Spock abandoning Kirk and accepting that the show is over. Kirk's final comments: "Captain's Log, final entry. We have tried to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. And except for one television network, we have found intelligent life everywhere in the galaxy. Live long and prosper. Captain James T. Kirk, SC 937-0176 CEC." (You can read the whole thing here.)

Star Trek-related coverage is everywhere. Music and popular culture magzines like Crawddady and Circus have both had Star Trek feature articles in recent issues. Maclean's, Canada's equivalent of Time and Newsweek, ran a short article on Star Trek fandom. In the newspaper comics, the school computer in Funky Winkerbean has been playing Star Trek games. Right up there with the Saturday Night Live skit, though, is the fact that the usual gang of idiots at Mad Magazine have done a new Star Trek parody... and this time it's one of their musicals. I don't know many of the songs they're referring to, but it's funny even without knowing the proper melodies.

Click on the graphic to see a much bigger scan of the two first pages of "Keep on Trekkin': The Mad Star Trek Musical."

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