Earlier this week, I told you about the real reason Without A Trace was cancelled. Now, executive producer Shawn Ryan reveals the real reason The Unit was cancelled. "Listen, if the show had been owned by Paramount and Medium had been owned by 20th Century Fox, we'd be making the fifth season of The Unit now." You see, TV fans, it's comes down to money. CBS owns Paramount so it would earn more in the long run if The Unit made more episodes, went into syndication and reaped revenues for years to come. However, Fox owns The Unit. Get it?

To celebrate the release of the second season of the original Star Trek on Blu-ray, Paramount will be handing out free Tribbles at the San Diego Comic Con. Not only that, but they are asking people to upload digital photos of them and their Tribbles in unusual circumstances.

This might not be the best of ideas. All it takes is one wise-ass uploading a Tribble while in a compromising situation involving leather, chains and whipped cream to ruin it for everyone else.

Okay, I understand the mock phasers and the shirts and the action figures. But when someone releases a Star Trek casket and/or urn for when you die, I have to scratch my head a little.

Admittedly, I've heard of Star Trek weddings and even known people who have attended them. I guess since Star Trek fans are getting up there in age, caskets and urns are the next step. Hell, they probably still run Star Trek-themed weddings at Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas.

The truth is that most of the original cast is getting up there in age. I cannot help but wonder if someone is going to buy one of them a casket or urn from Eternal Image.

Besides all that, the real Star Trek fans would want a Klingon funeral. That's where they scream on top of the recently deceased body then let anybody else dispose of it however they wish.

Over at ComicMix, Alan Kistler has written annotations for the new Star Trek movie and how well it fits into the overall continuity of the show. It's a pretty impressive list and does prove that despite the blatant contradiction of the show's history as a result of time travel, they were actually pretty good with getting the details of the characters correct.

Spoilers follow this paragraph. You have been warned.

Admittedly, I haven't seen anything from Atom Films in a while, but someone brought my attention to this cute animation they did for a supposed "missing" Star Trek pilot from the 90's that deals with Kirk's years at Starfleet Academy. All the high school movie clichés are present and accounted for.

Actually, there's a lot of Trek stuff that's been brought to my attention floating around the Interwebs in anticipation of the Star Trek movie opening this coming Friday. There is this beauty of William Shatner serenading George Lucas. Or this lovely Christmas ornament. Or this great article about Shatner being the one, true Kirk.

I have my trepidations about recasting these television icons. In the new cast, as far as I know, neither of the actors who play Kirk or Spock are Jewish. Chris Pine isn't even Canadian, for Spock's sake.

Despite all this, I'm still seeing the movie opening weekend. In the meantime, Trek Yourself is after the jump.

In what may be the most frightening piece of nostalgia ever produced, someone has posted their video from Paramount's Star Trek Adventure online, which was at Universal Studios way back when. Judging by the ages of the original actors, it was probably produced sometime around Star Trek IV or Star Trek V (or possibly VI) and serves as a wonderful example of how quickly everybody involved with this American icon was willing to sell out.

Of course, Roddenberry himself was selling IDIC medallions by season three of the original series, so this blatant commercialism should come as no surprise. Does anybody out there actually have a video of themselves participating in this? If so, did you have to wait on line for it? If I did something like this ever, I would likely bury the videotape somewhere and hope it was never discovered again.

Someone's embarrassing video is after the jump.

Long before he was host of The Daily Show (well, about five or six years before), Jon Stewart hosted a late-night talk show, titled The Jon Stewart Show. It was a good show (first on MTV then syndicated), very casual and rock and roll and young, and probably should have lasted longer, though I guess he wouldn't have gone on to do The Daily Show.

After the jump is footage from the last episode, where David Letterman was the guest. Letterman doesn't do many talk shows, so Stewart probably immensely appreciated the fact that he'd take the time to do his last one (probably one of the reasons why Stewart looks up to Letterman to this day). Letterman talks about Paul Newman, why getting canceled doesn't mean you're a failure, and hosting the Oscars (which is funny, considering Stewart would do the same thing years later).

Arguably the twelfth movie in the franchise (or the second movie in the rebooted franchise), Paramount and J.J. Abrams are showing a lot of faith by already hiring the writers for the Star Trek "sequel". These scribes are frequent co-conspirators of Abrams: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof.

Orci and Kurtzman wrote the upcoming "first" movie (and are also responsible for the first Transformers movie, although the bulk of the blame for that should go to Michael Bay). Lindelof is a co-creator of Lost. Abrams is "staying within the family", as it were.

(And since the franchise is being rebooted from scratch and all the rules can now be broken, can we have Kirk fight the Borg? I've always wanted to see that.)

I know that advanced planning like this is normal in Hollywood, but In the event the movie bombs (not bloody likely, admittedly), they're going to have eggs on their collective faces for their presumptuousness.

Harlan Ellison is a great writer and also one guy you don't want to piss off.

He wrote the classic Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever" (often called by best episode of the original series by fans and non-fans alike), and now he's suing CBS-Paramount over what they have done with the story since he got paid for writing it in 1967. He got paid for the script and got residuals, but in the years after the episode aired the studio has not only published a sequel trilogy with Pocket Books based on the episode, they even had a "Guardian of Forever" talking Hallmark Christmas ornament that said Ellison's lines from his script, so he wants his money.

Star Trek will be in movie theaters on May 8, 2009, and with it the hopes and fears of Trekkers worldwide. I'm one of those longtime fans who is both excited and apprehensive about J.J. Abrams' take on Gene Roddenberry's vision of Wagon Train to the stars. Yes, that was once all it aspired to be. It was just going to be a TV show. Roddenberry optimistically referred to a five year mission in the intro hoping it might last that long.

Of course, that's a long, long time ago -- in a galaxy far, far away, if you mix sci-fi metaphors. Now, we're poised to see a new incarnation of Star Trek, and the new trailer is online. Take a look at it after the jump.

Two new posters have been released for J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie reboot. They are of Zoe Saldana as Lieutenant Uhura and Eric Bana as the evil Romulan Nero. Large versions of both posters can be seen here.

Zoe Saldana looks to me the spitting image of the young Nichelle Nichols. She does carry a different hairdo than Nichols (more ponytail than bouffant) in the classic Trek but even her hairstyle seems like one women would have worn during that era. It's retro without seeming dated. Of course, unlike the original series, based on the trailer, we know that this version of Uhura will be taking off her shirt at some point.

Eric Bana's character seems like some sort of biker or a cast member of The Road Warrior. What's with all the tattoos? My idea of the Romulans differ slightly than the director but after seeing the kick-ass trailer in the theaters, I have more faith in Mr. Abrams' vision.

"Deedee Chappel. Get ready to unzip your pants!" - Lowell

That's one of my favorite lines in TV history, and I'm happy to say it was uttered in a show I had the pleasure of being an extra in many years ago, NBC's Wings. A great friend of mine, Suzanne, worked on the show and, since I was going out to Los Angeles for a vacation, she got me on the set as an extra. The episode was titled "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother" and guest-starred Debbie Reynolds. It was filmed in October of 1994 and aired on November 22.

By now, TV fans are getting used to some of their favorite shows being edited when they are released on DVD. Sometimes this is because syndicated versions of the shows are used (why I have no idea) and sometimes it's because they couldn't get the rights to use certain music/songs on the DVD so they have to take them out and/or replace them with different music. It's this latter point that has fans of The Fugitive up in arms.

For the release of The Fugitive: Season Two, Volume One (oh, I hate these volume releases, but that's for another post), CBS Home Entertainment not only replaced music in certain scenes and certain episodes, they completely stripped all of the music (except the title theme) from certain episodes and did it over with soundalike versions. They also replaced the music that plays over the closing credits.

It's the end of an era today. One of the longest running syndicated talk shows is airing its last show. The Montel Williams Show wraps today after 17 years of discussion, controversy, interviews and inspiration. But just because the show is ending, that doesn't mean Montel is going away. At the final New York City taping in March, he explained to the adoring throng, "I'm not retiring. I am stopping The Montel Williams Show, but I am not, in any way, shape or form, stopping anything else that I'm doing."

Williams' show has actually been one of the more dignified syndicated daytime talk shows, a step above Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, but not quite The View or Ellen DeGeneres. His style could be compared to Phil Donahue, especially in his desire to be a change agent. He really cared about the people who appeared on his program; it wasn't about being a ring leader to a freak show, as Jerry is, or confronting people with DNA tests like Maury does. Montel was not into that stuff.
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Get your paper clips and elastic bands out because there is a MacGyver movie in the works! According to the Dark Horizons website, MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff announced over the weekend at Maker Faire 2008 that a big budget movie based on the series was in the planning stages.

Sadly, he revealed no specifics about the movie other than he got the movie rights a few years ago and has total control over the movie.