PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

My favorite moment of from this past Thursday’s look into the Star Trek Tour took place in a large room with railings encircling a saucer shaped object in the middle of the room. Our guides had to ask more than once for the TV cameras to please turn off their lights so the preview we were about to witness could be appreciated in its full glory. William Shatner, the reason we were all there, finally took it upon himself to coax a reluctant press corp off the main floor and behind the safety rails onto the platform.

“Come on up here,” Shatner said to a cameraman lugging a bulky piece of equipment on his shoulder. “I really think you’re going to enjoy this.”

In the darkness, multi-paneled screens descended from the ceiling while the top half of the saucer lifted into the air pulling with it a small scale replica of the Starship Enterprise, wobbling drunkenly on the end of the three visible black strings from which it was attached.

An actor portraying the ship’s pilot appeared on one screen and he began a quick back-and-forth with his boss, who appeared on a screen directly above his. It was something about a space attack from an enemy ship. Coulda been Klingons, but I can’t be sure; I was distracted by the guy in the corner of the room swinging his arms around, pointing and waving directions to workers who, as far as I could tell, were in charge of the swaying Starship Enterprise and the little puff of smoke that would blast periodically from the far bottom side of the saucer.

Then the whole room started to tremble as if a big rig had just rumbled on by. The actor on the screen quickly corrected me, though, informing us that we were taking on heavy damage from the space attack. And then the floor dropped out from under us. Or, it was supposed to feel like that, but what it really felt like was that some really big guy had jumped on it. I looked over at Shatner and he looked at the cameraman next to him and raised his eyebrows in a “Isn’t this something?!” kinda way.

Somehow, we won the big space battle and the on-screen actors spoke with relief. The screens retracted back into the ceiling and the nervous Enterprise model went back to sleep in its saucer-like thing on the floor.

All cameras were turned back on and pointed at William Shatner, beaming like Ed Wood Jr. after a screening of the film he would be remembered for, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

Shatner thrust out his arm with his index finger extended in the direction of the nearest exit.

“Onward!” he shouted.

Tags: Long Beach, Queen Mary, Star Trek, william shatner