Star Trek in the News - August 10, 2010

Wallace Shawn, who played the Grand Nagus, Zek, on Deep Space Nine, just joined the cast of the soon-to-roll horror film Vamps, which will also star Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver. Shawn is on board as Dr. Van Helsing. The actor can also be heard reprising his role as the beloved Rex in Toy Story 3 and has completed another film, The Speed of Thought.

Joan Collins, who forever endeared herself to Star Trek fans with her performance as Edith Keeler in the TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” will return to the screen with Fetish, a film short she herself has described as The Twilight Zone meets Sunset Boulevard meets David Letterman. Collins is also set to get back on stage, as she’ll star as the Queen Rat in the English pantomime show Dick Whittington: The Pantomime Adventure. The show will run from Dec. 18, 2010 to Jan. 30, 2011, at the Hippodrome in Birmingham, England.

Ben Cross, who co-starred in the recent Star Trek reboot feature as Sarek, had completed work on Ice, an upcoming futuristic action-thriller. He shares the screen with Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor, Sam Neill and Stephen Moyer.

Phyllis Corcoran-Woods, a key costumer on Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, is back in action with the upcoming romantic comedy Love and Other Drugs. The film, due out in November, stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Judy Greer.

Colm Meaney, who played Miles O’Brien on both The Next Generation and DS9, has completed production on Alleged, a romantic drama set in and around the events of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925. Meaney plays H.L. Mencken.

Nichelle Nichols, the grand dame of TOS, participated in an August 3 event held by PBS to celebrate the upcoming season of it program Pioneers of Television. Nichols joined a group that included Linda Evans, Mike Connors, Robert Conrad and Martin Landau (who once very nearly played Spock on TOS). Talking to the media, Nichols recounted the seminal moment that Martin Luther King urged her to stay with Star Trek, which she’d been planning to leave following the first season. By the way, the host of Pioneers of Television will be Kelsey Grammer, who made a cameo appearance as Captain Bateson in “Cause and Effect,” a fifth-season TNG episode.

Anthony Montgomery, who played Travis Mayweather on Enterprise, has wrapped production on Single Ladies, a VH1 made-for-television movie and backdoor pilot. Produced by Queen Latifah, it also stars Stacey Dash, LisaRaye McCoy, Charity Shea and Lauren London.

Maryann Brandon, who co-edited J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, has been back in the cutting room for Gulliver’s Travels, an upcoming family adventure-comedy starring Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segal and Amanda Peet. Meanwhile, Brandon’s co-editor on Star Trek, Mary Jo Markey, recently edited the film Killers and also just cut the pilot episode of the J.J. Abrams-produced series Undercovers.

Anson Williams, who directed two DS9 episodes and four hours of Voyager, continues to make his mark in the director’s chair. These days he’s frequently behind the camera bringing to life episodes of the hit television series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. And, yes, Anson Williams is that Anson Williams, the one who played Potsie on the iconic 1970’s series Happy Days.

Jane Wiedlin is best known for her long association with the pop-rock band The Go-Go’s, but she’s done quite a bit of acting over the course of her career, too, including a quickie cameo as “Alien Communications Officer Trillya” in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. A recent injury put a temporary hold on a planned Go-Go’s farewell tour, but Wieldlin is busy with a comic book series, Lady Robotika, which she co-created with Simpson illustrator Bill Morrison. Out now, its title character is a superheroine/rocker who bears an uncanny resemblance to Wiedlin.

Kris Krosskove, longtime Star Trek camera operator and cinematographer for TNG and DS9, has been busy lately working on several recent and upcoming films, among them Date Night, Iron Man 2, Piranha 3D, You Again, Secretariat and Born to Be a Star.