You have to admire the tenacity of writer Harlan Ellison. He filed a lawsuit against CBS Paramount accusing the company of not paying him for all the ancillary income the company earned from the episode of Star Trek he wrote in 1967, "City on the Edge of Forever." Yesterday, Ellison announced on his web site that he had settled with CBS Paramount and he was very, very pleased. He didn't reveal how much money he made, but he probably did quite well.

After all, CBS Paramount has done very, very well with that original Star Trek episode. It's regarded as -- and is -- the all-time best show in the entire original ST canon. Ironically, Ellison never liked what Roddenberry and company had done with his script.

The merchandise opportunities for classic shows like Star Trek has been outlandish, to say the very least.

You can show your financial love for Star Trek by buying Star Trek toys, Star Trek apparel, Star Trek cell phones, Star Trek Pez dispensers, Star Trek burial coffins, Star Trek living room furniture
and even Star Trek erotic theme art. Don't click that last link if you're at work, school or don't really want to know what James Doohan would look like spread eagle on a Tribble skin rug.

Now the folks at Genki Wear, a geek themed jewelry manufacturer, have helped the Enterprise explore a strange new world of merchandising and seek out new lifeline accounts and financial liquidations with a line of Star Trek-inspired cologne and perfumes.

There are a lot of really horrible things that have put America on the map: Jerry Springer, our ability to infuse anything edible with cheese, the fact that we're probably working on infusing something inedible with cheese.

Guns, however, shouldn't be one of them. The Second Amendment stands as one of many great testaments to the idea of freedom that our forefathers envisioned for their people. They felt a government should trust their people with great responsibility if they truly believed in the concept of freedom and democracy.

Sure, if they came to the present and saw that we primarily use that responsibility for hunting moose from helicopters and negotiating with the Domino's guy they might take it right back, but the idea is what's important.

So to celebrate one of America's latest of many birthday to come because fireworks are technically illegal in my neck of the woods, here are your TV's seven greatest guns.

With J.J. Abrams' Star Trek topping the box office charts, fans can now shape their Trekker energies into fresh, free cartoons with new characters added to the GoAnimate.com line-up.

The do-it-yourself cartoon site wrapped a licensing agreement with Paramount and CBS early in 2009, allowing fans to use stylized versions of classic Trek characters, sets and props in original short animations. Setting up an account is free - unless you count the time you're going to burn making your cartoon.

In addition to Kirk, Spock and other familar faces, the site just upped the supporting player factor with usable avatars of the Gorn, alien female Mara, Klingons and Nurse Chapel.

I'm not the kind of person who normally resorts to pumping something full of hype, but if you are reading this and haven't seen the new big-screen adaptation of Star Trek, you need to be tied to something heavy so that "certain" people can know your whereabouts at all times.

J.J. Abrams' new vision of TV's original Star Trek has everything you expect from a summer movie flick that costs $150 million to make and $8.25 a ticket: laughs, big explosions, smokin' hot alien babes who spend the majority of their screen time in skimpy underwear.

You cannot call yourself a true Trekkie without owning one of the following: an unopened Barbie Star Trek doll, a commemorative Shatner vs. Takei "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots" play set and a willingness to take the life of a combative Star Wars nerd in the show's defense.

Now you can add a fourth requirement to that list: a replica of the Captain's chair.

Trekkies across the country are building replicas of the Captain's chair that Kirk's alien babe loving butt sat in oh so many years ago. And they aren't hiding them in their parents' basements or backyard sheds from the prying, judgmental eyes of others. They are coming out of the closet and into their living rooms with them in a proud, defiant stance of their love.

In what may be the biggest foray of an entertainer into politics since Governor Schwarzenegger and President Reagan, William Shatner is eyeing the office of Canada's Prime Minister. The odds are that this idea he put forth in a letter will never gestate into truth, but wouldn't it be cool if it did? Canada would be led by Captain Kirk. Talk about major bragging rights. I know I'd be jealous.

I love that he declined the role of Governor General in Canada because he feels he'd be a better Prime Minister. It's typical Shatner to only want the top spot. That's what made him such an iconic starship captain.

Seriously, it's not a bad idea. Boston Legal is done. Chris Pine is taking over the role that made him famous. Priceline.com can only film so many commercials. The man has a lot of spare time on his hands. I say go for it.

Having grown up in a Star Trek household from way back, I'm fairly familiar with a lot of the catch phrases from the original series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. Here are six that still make their way into conversation around here:

1. "Beam me up, Scotty." Gracing bumper stickers and coffee mugs everywhere, and often followed by "There's no intelligent life down here," this is likely the most recognizable phrase from the series. Here's the thing, though. According to Wikipedia, the exact phrase was never actually spoken in any Star Trek television episode or film. Capt. Kirk comes closest to saying the phrase in the episode, "The Gamesters of Triskelion" ("Scotty, beam us up"); in the animated episodes "The Lorelei Signal" and "The Infinite Vulcan" ("Beam us up, Scotty"); in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ("Scotty, beam me up"); and in Star Trek Generations ("Beam them out of there, Scotty.")

Don't you just love the web? News traveling so fast, ideas extrapolated and speculated upon based on the simplest of facts. That said, here's a sweet little tidbit that I found amusing. Tom Cruise was spotted on the Los Angeles set of the new Star Trek feature film. He reportedly was visiting writer/director JJ Abrams. The two men, you'll recall, collaborated on Mission Impossible 3.

This exclusive, courtesy of JFXOnline, revealed that Tom stuck around the set for a couple of hours. Prior to this sighting, there had also been talk last fall that Abrams had wanted to enlist the superstar to make a brief cameo appearance in the revamped Star Trek opus, telling the story of how creator Gene Roddenberry's original characters came to be. How Captain Kirk made it out of the Star Fleet Academy (in The Wrath of Khan he said he cheated on his Kobyashi Maru simulation test), as well as the first time Kirk met the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.

Recently, TV Squad reported that NBC has added all kinds of classic TV shows to their online outlets. Now comes the announcement that CBS is also bringing a variety of well-loved TV dramas to the web. CBS Interactive is raiding the CBS Library, which is "one of the largest television programming libraries in the entertainment business," to present TV series online across the CBS Audience Network.

Like the NBC fodder, the CBS offering is gangbusters: full-length episodes of classic Star Trek, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place. CBS plans to add more programs and clips in the coming months, including sports and other kinds of entertainment.

(S04E11) "Denny Crane. Denny Crane. Denny Crane. Denny Crane." - Taken from the legal briefs of Denny Crane

Is it 1989 or was that Bess Armstrong I saw in the opening scene? All jokes aside, William Shatner, once again, makes me jealous of his life by squeezing the butt that I have longed for ever since I saw The Four Seasons. I was very excited when Denny insisted on trying the case by himself. I have long wondered if he still has what it takes to keep his perfect record and this is where my question gets answered.

So is it yet another Star Trek alumnus coming on-screen, or a reunion of former Murphy Brown costars Candace Bergen and her on-screen amore Scott Bakula, as TV Guide says. Looks like it's both, as Bakula has signed on to join Bergen and William Shatner for an upcoming episode of Boston Legal. In it he will play one of Shirley Schmidt's (Bergen) exes who runs into her at a bar. No word on if his will be a multi-episode arc or a one-time appearance.

Bakula has shown himself to have a bit of comedic chops recently on The New Adventures of Old Christine, and with BL being a dramedy, he might do very well there. Either way, it is good to see Bakula back on the small screen. Quantum Leap remains one of my all-time favorite shows and I'm still mad they haven't found a way to bring it back (despite periodic rumors that they may), while Knight Rider gets a revival. It'd be great if they can get Bakula's character and Denny Crane (Shatner) together in a scene and have them salute one another or slip some other Trek teaser for the audience in the know.

There has been much chatter about ABC's somewhat unconventional scheduling of Lost this season. In an effort to avoid a repeat filled schedule, they have split the season into two parts, handing off the time slot to Day Break for three months in the middle. While they will tell you it was because of outcry from the fans, the cynic in me thinks that the fact that Lost doesn't repeat well had something to do with it.

Either way, it's not working. Rather, it's really not working. Day Break premiered with a somewhat disappointing 11 million viewers, despite having the Dancing with the Stars finale drop 27 million sets of eyeballs on their doorstep. But 11 million sounds just grand compared to this week. With the dancing shoes stowed away for the foreseeable future, Captain Kirk's Show Me The Money is delivering just under 8 million viewers as the lead in. And Wednesday, Day Break only managed to hang on to 5.12 million of them. 5 million? The worst repeat of Lost would never approach 5 million viewers.

Laura Goodwin (for some reason referred to as a man in this digg) has created an exhaustive web shrine to female characters from the original Star Trek -- complete with photos and descriptions of each. Her point (not that she needs to have one) is to show that Trek women were more than just "babes" for Kirk to tussle with. Janice Rand is described as "a real trooper."

Characters are divided into categories like "Starfleet Heroines," "Villains and Femme Fatales," and my favorite "They Were Not Women," -- a necessary category for the inclusion androids, shape changers, phantasms, etc. A handy guide to bookmark in case you happen to forget what say, Yeoman Mears from "The Galileo Seven", or Yeoman Smith (pictured), and need to access that information right away. I love it.

Fun Q and A with Captain Kirk himself over at Wired magazine. It's mostly about his new video game Legacy, where he plays Captain Kirk for the first time in ten years. Among the tidbits you'll discover from the interview:

• He still has no idea how to use a computer.
• He doesn't care who plays Kirk in the new movie, as long as they're thin and rich.
• There's no way he's going to do any appearance as Kirk on those fan-made web Trek episodes.

[via Pop Candy]