Though it doesn’t open to the public until July 9, I recently joined a group of journalists at a preview of Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience, a temporary addition to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum Complex in New York City.
The entrance to the new Starfleet Academy Experience.
The brand new exhibition was still very much a work in progress when I visited. Launched to coincide with Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, the Starfleet Academy Experience occupies a 12,000 square foot pavilion located next to the aircraft carrier Intrepid on Manhattan’s Pier 86. The goal is to give guests a taste of what it might be like to attend a Starfleet Academy career day, as well as a chance to ogle some original props and costumes from the various Star Trek TV series and films.
As you enter the installation you’re greeted with a white plastic wristband emblazoned with a Starfleet insignia. As you proceed through the show floor you can tap the watch-like device against any terminal sporting the same logo. The first such terminal asks you to enter your name and email address. This lets you track your progress through the exhibit’s various interactive stations and send yourself copies of your assessment reports and a keepsake digital photo. (Staff at the event assured me that you can still enjoy the full tour without giving up any personal info.)
A wristband lets you track your performance in a series of interactive activities.
It’s then on to the exhibit itself. Visitors pass through seven areas dedicated to the various Starfleet specialties: communications, medical, science, engineering, navigation, tactical and command. Each area is filled with memorabilia, infographics and re-creations of Starfleet tech. You also have the opportunity to complete a series of short touchscreen questionnaires, which when combined are supposed to reveal the specialty you’d be best suited for. This process is pretty entertaining even though the questions amount to little more than superficial, fairly transparent personality quizzes. My results told me I was destined for command, which was what I was aiming for. Though a staffer told me she was matched to navigation, I had a feeling a disproportionate number of attendees would, like me, succeed in steering their results toward the captain’s chair.
The show features a number of games and interactive pieces, though many of them won’t come online until it opens for real. I was able to try my hand at phaser training (which I was awesome at) and the Kobayashi Maru simulation (which I utterly sucked at). The Kobayashi Maru was the exhibit's grand finale, as it takes place inside a chopped down but nevertheless impressive replica of the Enterprise D bridge. The recorded actors that populate the viewscreen during the staged scenario were a little campy, but it was still a blast to sit at the helm of the Enterprise and try to beat the ultimate no-win scenario. I asked an Intrepid staff member if it was possible to cheat and win as one Academy cadet famously did, but he assured me there was no way to rig the game. Liz Kalodner, General Manager of CBS Consumer Products, added that, while the exhibit doesn't contain any hidden Easter eggs, a number of the more obscure props and references would only be recognized by truly hardcore fans.
An original series Klingon costume that also appeared in Deep Space Nine.
Among the coolest items on display were several show-worn costumes, highlighted by one of the original series' Klingon outfits, complete with a belt buckle made of bubble wrap and cardboard. As I learned from Martin Netter, one of the world’s biggest Star Trek collectors and a contributor to The Starfleet Academy Experience, the first Trek show was so low-budget they made do with whatever they could find. Interestingly, he told me, that particular costume sported Deep Space Nine tags sewn into the lining because it had been pulled out of storage and reused for the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”. I first came to Star Trek via The Next Generation so I also got a big kick out of seeing Captain Picard’s suede Robin Hood costume from the episode “Qpid”.
Unfortunately, because the exhibit wasn’t finished yet I wasn’t able to hone my Klingon pronunciations, play with the planet projection mapping system, see my hologram projected into a transporter tube, or find out what I might look like as a green Orion slave girl. I also wasn’t able to test out the elaborate tricorder-based medical station featuring a pair of (allegedly) sick Klingon mannequins because the RFID tag readers weren't working.
Sorry pseudo Worf, I don't think you're gonna make it.
Despite some technical glitches and its unfinished state, Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience promises to offer a fun, family-friendly taste of life in the 22nd through 24th centuries. And if you can’t make it to New York the exhibit will eventually go on tour throughout the U.S. and Canada, though no specific dates or cities have been named yet.
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