The Star Trek Museum

By Wesley Regenbogen

 Ever since the first episode of Star Trek was aired on television many people have watched the series and became a fan of the science fiction story about Captain Kirk and his crew wandering around in the Universe, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”.

After the original series ended, many other series were made and a few spin-offs too. I wasn’t a real fan myself, but the episodes that I watched were amazingly well made and you really felt like you were also in space with Captain Piccard and his crew in the “The Next Generation” series, which were aired in the 90s.

Now, in Second Life there is a Star Trek Museum in which you can all learn about the different species and also get to know more about the series and get background information as well. The Museum was created and developed by SL STARFLEET, which is the counterpart to the real life organization STARFLEET: The International Star Trek Fan Association, Inc. This unique organization has over 240 chapters worldwide, which links up to 4000 members around the world.

Within the Star Trek Museum you have different areas to vist, there are too many to list here. But there is a database on the official website of Star Trek : http://www.startrek.com/database_article_navigator. There you can find more information about the characters and the crew of Star Trek and much more.

The current curators of the Star Trek Museum in Second Life are  Sabri Piccard and Wabisabi Matahari.

There are many locations you can visit : Embassies, Visitor Center ( start location ), Science Museum, and much, much , much more. There is even a balloon tour available. There are too many places to list them all here. More information about all the locations can be found on this website : http://www.sabrizain.org/startrek/

On their Facebook page I found this quote regarding the places you can visit in the Star Trek Museum “SL's best collection of Everything Star Trek - Full size USS Enterprise, dine on gagh, fly in a shuttle, visit a Vulcan town, a Klingon home, Science Museum, swim with George and Gracie. Visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Eridani/133/80/36.

In my personal opinion the Star Trek Museum is the place for Trekkies or Trekkers to visit and enjoy their stay in the museum. It’s nice to actually wander around in the Star Trek history and get to know more about the series itself.

You can find the place in Second Life at this location :

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/New%20Eridani/133/77/36

Wesley Regenbogen

Starbase 11 - Classic Star Trek Sim

I recently heard about a Star Trek sim made in the style of the original series produced in the 1960’s. The announcement read, “... our friends from NERD CULTURE celebrate the opening of their dorktastically detailed realizations of the classic Star Trek's Starbase 11, the U.S.S. Enterprise, Deep Space K-7, Zefram Cochrane Homestead, and more!”

Beaming over, once out of the small welcome center, I was greeted by the sight of several unearthly buildings on the rocky surface of an alien world with a purplish sky. The only signs of native life were the odd plants that occasionally could be seen next to the sidewalk, which Trek fans might remember from an episode or two. And looking around, Trekkies would easily recognize the style of the desks and computers as that of the original series (TOS as it’s sometimes called). The area had a small shop named “Cyrano’s” after the con artist in the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode, and an art gallery at the top of one of the buildings.

Through the transporter (teleport) pads, one could go to other places. Deep Space K-7 was a space station of which one could look out the window and see ships drifting by. Then there was the USS Enterprise. Going down the halls of the ship, not all of the doors opened, but some did. There were individual living quarters, plus sickbay.

While at the sim, I ran into one of the people there, Alexander Chronowire. He explained that this “newest incarnation” was being finished after work over a few months, “although we've built other Trek sims over the past couple years, this is the culmination of all the ideas - not just a ship, but a starbase, space station, residential areas, and a second sim dropping any day for more stuff we've been building. ... It's been a lot of fun. All the other Trek sims are ‘ modern ‘ Trek. We're just all huge fans of the The Original Series style - that retro 60's look. (smile) ... The sim was built more as a work of art.”

Alexander mentioned some roleplayers were already making use of the sim, “it's not really set up as an roleplay sim, although people are already dropping by and taking over the Bridge for fun. ... There's a group that comes in during the morning a few days a week now. They run around the ship and do their thing - it's great. None of us who built this place are roleplayers, so it’s fun to watch people ‘play.’ “

Of the residential areas, “if you beam aboard the Enterprise, and head for a turbolift to Deck 6, there's about 18 cabins on the deck that are rentable. If demand dictates we'll add another residential deck. But for now, people are just learning about us and slowly moving in. (smile)”

Of the second sim due soon, “there will be another ship, styled in the Pike era of design, and we'll be moving K-7 over there as well. This will give us more room for rentals or other projects on this sim, which is a full, the 2nd is only a homestead.” I asked for more on the “Pike era,” which was the time of the pilot episode about fifteen years before the time of the classic series, “the first pilot of Star Trek had several design variations from the show we all know. So, we're building a ship we hear about and finally saw in the remastered version of The Original Series in Charlie X, the USS Antares - so we're using the visual look of Pike’s ship, the captain from the first pilot of Trek inside the Antares.”

Starbase 11 is owned by Jon Indianawood. Lora Chadbourne is the primary builder of the landscape. It is at the Cruzoria sim at (201, 190, 26)

Bixyl Shuftan