This summer, the Aviation museum was hosting the Starfleet Academy Experience in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Rakhi and her family, Christine, Trish and I all embarked on this wonderful trek into the academy.
Much like the Indiana Jones and Star Wars exhibits in the past few years, it consists of a hangar of movie/tv props, coupled with information about the tv show and interactive displays where you, the young (well, old?) Starfleet Academy cadet walk in and test your strengths in various arenas and at the end, they let you know what career would be best suited for you in Starfleet.
Borg costume
My favourite parts of these exhibits are the movie props as you can take a closer look at how costumes were built (and in some cases, how ridiculous they actually are!). They had some uniforms and Borg costumes and tricorders and various props on hand to peruse.
Trish doing her best Data impression. Pretty good!
At the end of the exhibit, they have a full replica of a Starship bridge which was awesome!
Look at all that makeup! I feel bad for Michael Dorn.
Beam me up Scotty!
I have to admit I’m quite fetching as an alien!
There were a bunch of areas where we had to test our worth in the academy:
Klingon 101: Where they taught you some Klingon phrases and you had to recite them back. Trish failed MISERABLY on this task.
Emergency Landing: You have a scenario where your ship is going to explode so you need to shuttle your crew to a planet which will allow you survive. You had to choose an M class planet (spoiler!)
Plot Your Course: This was an awesome scenario where you had your ship on the left hand side of a screen. You had to get it to the right hand side of the screen by plotting navigation points from one side to the other. But there are obstacles in the way (like Klingon cruisers, suns, etc.) so you had to make sure to avoid getting too close those things.
Phaser Shootout: A screen full of targets popping up had to be taken out with your trusty phaser. I would like to thank Duck Hunt for my score of 44 out of 50.
Kobayashi Maru: The greatest simulation of all time…the no-win scenario, the Kobayashi Maru! It was a cool computer game where you had to save members from the crippled starship the Kobayashi Maru before the Klingons took them out completely.
Here is the certificate showing that I had Command potential and a side interest in Science
Overall, I have to say that this, along with my purchase of the Next Generation on Blu-Ray, was the greatest way to experience 50 years of Trek!
