Zachary Quinto

Sometimes being a total geek pays off.

In his new memoir, A View from the Bridge, Nicholas Meyer, the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, reveals that he cast Cheers actress Kirstie Alley in the film that kick-started her career as Romulan-Vulcan officer Lieutenant Saavik because she was obsessed with Spock. 

She was apparently so infatuated that she used to sleep with her Vulcan ears on.

That's what we call dedication. Who knew Kirstie Alley was so method?

The Japanese know how to do it!

They are ever so slightly out of their minds…but in a really good way.

At the Japanese premiere of Star Trek in Tokyo last night, a replica of the Starship Enterprise was landed on the red carpet.

Hot!

And basking in the Enterprise’s blue glow were producer Bryan Burk (the short rich guy on the end), director J.J. Abrams (our idol), and the hottest man candy this side of the Milky Way.

John Chu, Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Eric Bana and Karl Urban, all pressed up against each other in a smokeshow smorgasbord.

This kind of sounds like the stuff of urban legends, but we’re so hyped on Star Trek right now (we saw it again last night and it’s still AWESOME) that we’re ravenous for any on-set juice.

According to the New York Post, Zachary Quinto had such a hard time training his hands to make the Vulcan salute for the new Star Trek movie, director J.J. Abrams had to glue his fingers together.

Do you want to know what’s totally frickin’ awesome?

The new Star Trek movie is totally frickin’ awesome.

From the moment the film, the eleventh in the franchise’s history, begins, it is relentlessly, absurdly, unyieldingly awesome.

Walking in, our fandom skewed more toward J.J. Abrams and his Felicity-Lost legacy than the Trekkie world, but from the moment those familiar starships, at the film’s beginning the USS Kelvin, not the USS Enterprise, dip into sight, a sudden, unexpected glee rushed over us.

Last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Zachary Quinto, aka the new Spock in Star Trek (and he does an outstanding job), told Jimmy how great it was to experience different cultures through the filter of each countries’ journalists as he was internationally promoting the film.

“The French, all they want to talk about is the shots and cinema and J.J.

“In Germany they’re very austere and cerebral. Like, ‘What is the purpose of this?’ ‘Ummm, because it’s a spaceship.’

It is thanks to PR spin and a journalistic game of “Telephone” that Zachary Quinto landed the role of Spock in the new Star Trek movie.

When he’d just been cast on Heroes, he heard that J.J. Abrams was planning to boldly go…you know the rest. Quinto was giving an interview to his small local paper in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and he mentioned how much he’d like to be involved. Little did he know, one off-hand comment ballooned into a full-on campaign for the role.

How awesome is this picture?

Past and present Doctor Spock, Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, posed together at the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, an event William Shatner, aka: Captain James T. Kirk, hosted at the LA Equestrian Center on Saturday.

The new Star Trek film, starring Quinto, opens on May 8th and is already on track to break box office records.

That’s because J.J. Abrams, with the exception of Cloverfield, is a mofo-ing P-I-M-P whose brain is huge.

—Sasha Perl-Raver