We all love Data and his quest to be more human. It makes us feel special as human beings that he would hold us in such high esteem. Watching the early episodes of Next Gen, I notice that it’s his quirky pre-programmed mannerisms, speech patterns & movements that seem to initiate this quest. In one episode he talks about a randomizing algorithm that controls his blinking so he will fit in better and put humans interacting with him at ease. It’s just these kinds of things that scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology are starting to think about while working on the latest robots.

Star Trek Voyager’s Robert Beltran is a tough cat to track down. He doesn’t do many (if any) conventions and practically never talks about his time on Voyager, so when we saw that he was starring in a new play we knew we had to report on it.

“The Devil’s Advocate”, based on a true story, has Robert in the starring role of Manuel Noriega.

Set in 1989, the play centers on Panamanian strong man Manuel Noriega (Beltran), who is being pursued by the CIA and American forces. Accused of murder, drug trafficking and corruption, he has sought sanctuary with Vatican emissary Archbishop Jose Sebastian Laboa. But the Archbishop has his own agenda to follow. The production will co-star Jacob Witkin as Laboa.

This Thursday, March 10th in Ottawa, Ontario Canada, The Shat will host the 31st Annual Genie Awards. The Genie Awards seem similar to The Academy Awards in many ways, except The Genies are given out by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Apparently there is a first come, first serve primo section of the red carpet called the Fan Zone where, at this year’s awards, The Shat will do his magic.

The Genie Awards 'Fan Zone' is a coveted and prime celeb-spotting position near the red carpet. Host, William Shatner will hand pick two lucky fans from the 'Fan Zone' to cross the red carpet and attend the Awards.

What do you think the 2 lucky fans will be more excited about? Getting to attend the Awards, or getting to hold The Shat’s hand?  We vote for the hand.  I mean, come on, it's the same hand the killed the Gorn, almost.

(sources: genieawards.com)

As we reported last week, the crew of the space shuttle Discovery woke up this morning to the sweet sounds of the Star Trek Theme (by Alexander Courage, ST:TOS). In a surprise twist, the wake up call included a pre-recorded message from the big man himself, William Shatner. In a modified version of the TOS prologue, The Shat bid tribute to Discovery's 30 year mission. Check out a transcript below.

"Space, the final frontier, These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before."

In case you missed the wake up call this morning, you can check out the Youtube version below.

Have you ever wanted to visit Jupiter Station? Or maybe Utopia Planetia Shipyards? I know that we have and if you're a Star Trek Online player, this could be a distinct possibility in the near future. Executive producer Dan Stahl answers questions about this plus playable Hirogen, more pets (like Porthos), and a visit from V'ger in this month's round of "Ask Cryptic". When asked, "Is there a chance to see something like V'ger from The Motion Picture?" Dan answered, "Someday, oh yes. There is a reason my forum avatar is V’ger." Not only V'ger, but also that whale lovin' probe from Star Trek IV. Pretty awesome!

We've gathered a sampling of questions below, but you can check out the full Q&A session here on StarTrekOnline.com

Fractal_Eye - Q: When will we get Porthos pets?

One of our readers brought a new skin repair technique for burn victims to our attention. On a segment from a National Geographic video, the inventor of this new technology calls it a stem-cell gun, although it looks more like a bulky air brush to us. It sprays stem-cells taken from the burn victim back onto the wounded area of skin. Unlike a skin graft that can take months to heal, and is prone to infection, the Skin Gun can be used to heal burn-damaged skin in a matter of days. While we watched this video we couldn’t help but think that this leap in medical technology seemed just like a real-life step toward technology we’ve been seeing on Star Trek for decades. Seeing the perfect looking new skin that healed in only 4 days, on one of the first trial patients, is so astounding it gave us goose bumps!

You can watch the video below.

Please be aware that some of the images in the video are graphic.

We don’t know how this got past our sensors, but apparently Nana Visitor’s pastry shop, Un Petit Morceau , has new bouboulette flavors. This time they are all chocolate related…weeeeeee. The Classic Fudge Collection is the newest of the three available bouboulette collections.

The Vulcan Tourism Board in Alberta Canada has been running a VulCon: Spock Days/Galaxyfest event for the last several decades. It’s held on the second weekend in June each year. They just announced this year’s special guest and it’s none other than Star Trek Voyager’s Garrett Wang. They had Garrett shoot a quick video announcing his participation which they played at a recent Vulcon Tourism/Trek Station evening event. You can check out Garrett’s video on Facebook here.

Tourism co-ordinator Catherine Pooley said Wang was asked if he would be willing to prepare the video announcement ahead of time, and he gladly accepted.

"He did a funny one," Pooley said. "Everyone got a kick out of it so we were quite pleased."

It’s so close we can taste it…the culmination of NASA’s Top 40 Song Contest is finally close at hand. Placing in the #2 position with 27.2 % of the votes, the Star Trek theme song (by Alexander Courage) will be played on March 7th for the STS-133 shuttle crew's wake up call. We can't find an exact time but they seem to be waking them up between 4:00-6:30am CST. You can watch live coverage of the shuttle mission on NASA TV's Public Channel. Dude...we're watching live space coverage right now...as we type...*excited giggles* If you can't listen to it live or if you missed it, you can go here to listen to all of the saved audio for the STS-133 Shuttle Mission including the wakeup calls.