Off to Disney: Non-Disney: Star Trek the Exhibition

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Non-Disney: Star Trek the Exhibition - L.A. (Part 1/2)

Since I first saw a commercial for it in early October, I have been wanting to head over to Hollywood to visit Star Trek the Exhibition. Due to the fact that we needed to save for our trip to WDW, we actually couldn't visit the exhibit. I actually had forgotten all about it until two days ago, and I was afraid that it probably already ended. To my relief, it's still there, and will continue to be until December.

a little background...
I HATED Star Trek when I was growing up. I felt that I needed to get that off my chest first and foremost. There was a kid at my Elementary School who would come to school with a communicator badge pinned to his shirt, and his parents even made him a toy phaser. He would constantly ramble on about the cast of Star Trek the Next Generation, and I thought it was all nonsense. If anything, it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.

I really didn't get it, as I was a fan of the action-filled Star Wars. Star Trek just seemed boring by comparison. Over the years however, I would catch an episode here and there. Sometimes I would fall asleep and only catch bits and pieces, and I rarely remember ever tuning in for an entire episode. I knew all of the characters names, somehow, and just slowly seemed to pick up what was going on. I think that the sheer volume of the Trek universe was something that I realized I would have to spend a LOT of time with in order to get into it. By this time, I was already knee-deep in Star Wars books, and couldn't backtrack.

It wasn't until 1996, when I went to the movie theater with my mom to watch Star Trek First Contact, that I would think Star Trek had anything 'cool' going for it. In fact, when the next film came out in 1998, we went back to the theater once again because I wanted to see that one. There were also a few instances when I would start to enjoy Star Trek. I watched an episode of Deep Space Nine titled "Who Mourns for Morn" and LOVED it. There were also a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager that I remember being glued to.

A few years ago, I decided to finally delve into Trek, beginning with The Next Generation. I had actually seen many episodes of the Original Series, but I was interested in the Borg, and the overall continuity. After a few episodes, I gave up. Ugh...the episodes were horrible. Last year, my girlfriend and I gave it another try, and started from scratch once again. After we made it past the first season, it was a breeze. The episodes got MUCH better, and we started to enjoy the characters. To my surprise, we would laugh and spend days of just watching episodes. The episodes were deep with philosophical, and sociological undertones, and there were even episodes reminiscent of The Twilight Zone.

We finished all 7 seasons - which is nearly 125 hours of Star Trek. We were also able to catch quite a few of the Original shows, and a few of the movies. Hanging in there, we are currently in season 4 of Deep Space Nine - which in all honesty is turning out to be the best series so far. Let's see if we can finish all of Voyager and Enterprise...

Now, for the Exhibition!

A booth set up to resemble Quark's bar from Deep Space Nine. There was even a dabo table, and a set of replicators.

At the bar were two interactive screens where you could answer Star Trek trivia questions, and would score you out of 10 random questions. Yeah...I'm a nerd (but my first attempt wasn't as good)

The exhibit has dozens of costumes and weapon models. Here, the Borg Queen:

and a Klingon display:

To the left, a green screen where you could get your photo taken, and it could be manipulated to appear as though you are being beamed off a transporter:

The main costume showroom:

James T. Kirk:

Zephran Cochran (played by James Cromwell in First Contact):

A few well placed monitors gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Star Trek episodes. In the background is the Robin Hood outfit Picard wears in an episode: