Inside 'Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience'
I’m not smart enough to reprogram the Kobayashi Maru test so I can beat it, but then that was never the point (unless you’re James T. Kirk). Instead, like nearly a dozen other activities in the new Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience opening on July 9 at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum in Manhattan, it's designed to assess what kind of Starfleet member I might be.
The museum opened up the interactive exhibit, which is designed to celebrate the iconic, nearly 50-year-old Star Trek franchise, to the press a week early, allowing us to experience the interactive installations, see the original costumes, and ogle the show and movie props (or as they were called by Experience guides, “artifacts”).
The Starfleet Academy Experience conceit is that Star Trek – all 50 years of it – is real and you are attending career day at the Academy, which in Star Trek lore is located in San Francisco. In real life, the experience is housed in a giant tent adjacent to the Intrepid, which is permanently docked in the Hudson River on Manhattan’s West Side.
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The quizzes, games and interactive experiences are mostly designed to sort you into one of seven potential Starfleet disciplines, including Medical, Language, Communications, Engineering, Science, Navigation, and Command.
Bathed in blue light, the mostly white interior winds you through nine stations -- though there is no particular order and you can backtrack at any time. The exhibit keeps track of you via an RFID bracelet emblazoned with the Starfleet logo. Before undertaking any tasks, like the Kobayashi Maru test, you have to wave your wristband over a reader. How you perform in each task will determine which Starship department the system recommends you enroll.
When I saw the Starfleet Academy Experience on Thursday, it was only 85-to-90 percent done. A number of cool activations, like a giant globe with potential crash landing planets projected on it and another table-top map projection for a navigation challenge, were not ready. The one I missed the most, though, was the transporter. They’d built the transporter set, but the technology to literally project your image inside the transporter so it looked like you were beaming in had yet to be installed.
A bold experience
Even so, many parts of my experience were incredibly satisfying, especially for a die-hard Trek fan.
First of all, there’s the stunning, 25-foot-long replica of the original series Starship Enterprise (see above). I could have spent an hour staring at that beauty.
Over in the medical bay, I found a pair of Klingon mannequins and two working tricorders. In the task, I had to wave the tricorder over a Klingon to identify a handful of symptoms, which appeared on the screen near the dummy’s head. I then had to use them to select the right diagnosis from a multiple choice on the tricorder screen. (I chose correctly.)
Another highlight was the phaser target practice, which used a phaser from the 2009 Star Trek movie reboot and a large screen to let you shoot targets using three different techniques -- all while avoiding phasering the wrong targets. I scored a 44, which my tour guide told me beat both the museum director and some reporter from The New York Times.
The Starfleet Academy Experience will also employ some cutting-edge technology like holographic projections, voice recognition (learn to speak like a Klingon from a Klingon) and the Leap Motion gesture-based interface control. The latter, which was the only one of the three working in time for our walk-through, works with a 360-degree holographic projection pyramid. In the pyramid, you can see up to six iconic Starfleet vessels, including the original Enterprise and Voyager’s Intrepid-class cruiser. Each one is rendered in 3D and you use hand gestures over the Leap Motion embedded in the console to turn the ships around and to swipe from one vessel to the next.
The walls of the experience are also covered with tons of details about the Star Trek Universe, most of it treating the roughly 100 years of Trek history as fact.
You can, of course, skip all the interactions and even the reading and just stare at the artifacts. Experience producers EMS Entertainment and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum (with the approval of Star Trek franchise owner CBS Consumer Products) have pulled together an impressive array of costumes and props. Highlights include a pair of tribbles, William Shatner’s Admiral uniform from 1979’s Star Trek: The Movie and a Robin Hood costume worn by Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The highlight of the faux academy, though, may be the bridge. It’s a fairly impressive recreation of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Enterprise NC-1701D bridge and it’s also where I failed the Kobayashi Maru test, which involved managing an attack from a trio of Klingon ships while trying to rescue hundreds from a medical vessel.
The bridge actually features eight consoles where experience goers can take the same test. There is, though, no screen obscuring the captain’s chair. It’s considered a prime location for photos.
Even though I wasn’t able to try out all the Starfleet Academy experiences, I did wave my wristband over the final kiosk to get my evaluation. I rated extremely high for Medical duties, but also showed an interest in Command. Sounds like I should be a chief surgeon.
Once you hand back in your wristband, the experience spills you out into, naturally, a Star Trek merchandise store. You will be tempted.
The Starfleet Academy Experience officially opens on Saturday, July 9 (it closes October 31). Training to become a member of Starfleet doesn’t come cheap. Ticket prices range from 25 Federation Credits (or $25) for adults to 18 Federation Credits ($18) for children. Hopefully that doesn’t set your phasers to stunned.
Bonus: A chat with George Takei
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Topics Star Trek
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
