Tribble Lotto!

The long-awaited return of "Hey! Hey! It's Saturday!" (on a Wednesday), and its wacky "Chook Lotto" segment, had me scratching around today to see if I could find some photographic evidence of "Tribble Lotto", a live game show I hosted at a Sydney-based science fiction media convention called TimeWarped, way back in 1986.



While the costume parade (above left, me as an Aurelian) ran at the regular convention hotel at Hyde Park, everyone adjourned to the ballroom of the Koala Hotel on Oxford Street for a huge banquet and dinner/dance. The between-courses entertainment was... "Tribble Lotto", hosted by (above right) The Greatest Australian Hero.



The tribbles were all numbered and a lucky Klingon was selected to randomly choose them with a burrundi wand (actually a "bear-undi wand", because it had a little teddy bear tied to the end of it). She was assisted by my co-host, Athena, the Girl from the Green Dimension ("Lost in Space"). The audience ticked off numbers on their entry forms.

Watch out for the Supplementary Glommer (below)!

Convention guests, Walter Koenig (Chekov of "Star Trek")
and his wife, Judy Levitt, play along with the game.

The first contestant to fill their squares of tribbles has to do a "Chekov scream" to win.


Tribbles on the night came from the Lincoln Enterprises catalogue!


The game is over; back to the dance floor!

Chekov's TAS cameo?

"Beyond the Farthest Star", the first episode aired of Filmation's "Star Trek: The Animated Series" (TAS): Arex is navigator and Sulu is helmsman, with Kirk in the command chair. Uhura's chair is vacant.



Seconds later: suddenly, a redshirted Chekov(?) is navigator - and Uhura is back in her usual chair.

This brief sequence is perhaps a re-use of part of some TAS pilot/test bridge footage, maybe before they were certain the budget couldn't afford Walter Koenig's voice, and before Arex was conceived. Note that "Chekov" is even in red, a precursor to his proposed role in "Star Trek: Phase II", as security chief (a Chekov "Phase II" redshirt uniform was auctioned off diring the "It's a Wrap" eBay auctions of Paramount costumes and props) and, of course, came to fruition in ST:TMP.

Okay, so maybe they accidentally threw Scotty into the scene but...



Seconds later again: Arex is back, as the bridge shakes!

(It's fun to speculate. It's certainly not the only blooper in TAS.)

Living in a vacuum

Tonight I had the pleasure of meeting three new members of our monthly Star Trek Meetup group. One, a recent "migrant" from north Queensland is happily making new Star Trek acquaintances. The other two of them, a young couple, have lived in Sydney all their lives, have always been fans of various aspects of the Star Trek phenomenon, but somehow have managed to not have encountered organised Star Trek fandom before.

Furthermore, as big "Lost" fans, they didn't know that JJ Abrams was directing the next "Star Trek" movie, or that it was highlighting the characters from the original series (ie. TOS)! It made my night being able to fill them in with all the hot gossip on casting.

I found this great interview with Anton Yelchin (the new Chekov) on Youtube. Leonard Maltin, who is practically bubbling over with excitement for this new movie, conducted an exclusive chat for ReelzChannel.com :