If you're a Trek fan in the Arlington, Virginia area, be prepared to enjoy Star Trek films in the beauty of the outdoors.  The Crystal City Business Improvement District launched an eleven week outdoor film festival featuring none other than the entire Star Trek film franchise. For those unfamiliar, Crystal City is a neighborhood in the southeastern corner of Arlington County, Virginia, south of downtown Washington, D.C.

We were literally kicking ourselves earlier for missing this, but apparently Mondo Tees has acquired carte blanche rights from CBS to create whatever merch they want within the Trek universe.  Their first release (which we didn't find out about until earlier today) is an amazing poster designed by renowned illustrator Martin Ansin.  On sale today, the limited edition poster (300 prints + 35 special edition wood variants) celebrates one of the most popular TOS episodes and villians, "Space Seed" & Khan Noonien Singh.  

Star Trek Online is slowly approaching the release of another big update called Season 2.  With this in mind, Cryptic Studios just held another round of "Ask Cryptic".  If you're not familiar with this, Cryptic invites players to ask anything and everything about STO & the STO universe.  We've picked out a few of the questions that we thought most interesting.  To read the rest, check out the link at the bottom of the article.

Q: Direphoenix: Are we going to see any adventures taking us beyond the Galactic Barrier or bringing some action from beyond it?

During the unveiling of the new Apple iPhone, Steve Jobs revealed his inner Trek Fan.  At the WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) 2010 in San Francisco, the Apple CEO debuted the brand new iPhone 4 to the world listing a cadre of new features for the handheld device.  

The new iPhone boasts a much higher resolution screen, faster processor, new form factor, two cameras, and video conferencing in it's list of features.  When showing off the new "Face Time" video conferencing app, Jobs revealed, “I grew up with The Jetsons and Star Trek, just dreaming about video calling. Now it’s real”

Leonard Nimoy's retirement may be short lived if the rumors we're hearing are true. According to a few sites around the net, William Bell may be returning to the Fox hit "Fringe" in it's 3rd season. In a video entitled "Fringe: The Next Chapter" the cast talk about the season 2 cliffhanger and what may be in-store for season 3.

In the interview Leonard jokingly had this to say about William Bell's "death".

“Do I think he’s really dead? Do I think William Bell is really dead? This is science fiction. I have died in science fiction many times and somehow magically or scientifically come back.”

Curing radiation sickness and even knocking out the occasional alien intruder, the hypospray has been a staple of Star Trek since the first season of TOS. Every Doctor from Phlox & McCoy to Crusher & Bashir have wielded some form of the all curing device. It appears that the fabled hypospray has finally made the transition from science fiction to real medical science.

A brand new course is being offered at the University of Texas, El Paso featuring our favorite SciFi series.  Called "Thinking Boldly with Star Trek", the course is meant to help first-year students strengthen their academic talents through critical thinking.  It also appears that there will be episode viewing as part of the course curriculum.  Can we sign up just this course?

A brand new SciFi Diner Podcast episode has just rocketed around the Sun and landed here, in our time and space.  Scott & Miles welcome Leo Roberts, founder of Temporal Studios and writer of the new Fan Series Star Trek Phoenix.  The SciFi Diner is one of those podcasts that you just can't wait for the episode release each week.  It's definitely one of our favorites and I had the privileged of joining Scott & Miles this week to trip the light fantastic (maybe I had to much caffeine, it's like I'm getting all poetical in this post).  

Be sure to check out the show, if you haven't already.

About the Interview:

Cryptic Studios is preparing the next update to the current Star Trek Online: Season 1.  Set for release tomorrow and Called Update 2 (catchy right?), the release will feature brand new additions to STO's gameplay as well as updates to game balancing, the fleet system and C-store.  Check out the upcoming updates below.

Accolades

Looking for more ways to challenge yourself in Star Trek Online? Do we have a system for you! The Accolades System is a brand new way to track your stats, show off your tactical skills and advance in Star Trek Online.