Federation Science … Trek beams down to the Science Museum

Captain's log - stardate late October. It sure gets boring in London during the drizzling Winter, so what better way for the Crowsnest crew to while away a chilly, wet Sunday than walking about the new Federation Science exhibition at the National Science Museum in the UK?

What did we think of this palace of Trekish learning? Well, for our full mission report, commander … read on, McDuff.

You might think that science and Star Trek are poor cousins at best.

After all, almost every episode of Voyager at the moment seems to drag out some pseudo-science McGuffin to rescue the crew from their latest dire straits. Trapped by the Borg tractor beam? Then remodulate your shield harmonics. Strange alien species with deadly force field technology. Why, just send out a phased tachyon pulse … that'll do the trick.

Yet, somehow, the blue blood aristocrats in control of the Science Museum have seen their way to devote a corner of their Kensington-based marble palace of 'real science' to 'Federation Science' … even going so far as to hire an army of fannish guides who get to wear full Starfleet uniforms (mostly Next Generation clobber, if you are interested in the fine detail).

After shelling out our £6.50 each (about $10 US) tickets for entry, we stumbled across the first of the themed areas …

The Bridge

This isn't the full set of the Enterprise, but you do get a view-screen (large Plasma screen playing space scenes from the TV series) and four fairly authentic LCARS interface interactive computer stations.

Here, you have to solve problems relating to orbits, velocity, navigation and remote sensing. These are basically science-educational games themed with voice-overs from the STNG crew and complementary video briefings.

You'll be happy to know that while we were able to successfully use the sensor station to locate an Earth-class star and beam down the crew (the Enterprise was out of oxygen at the time), our miserable attempts to dock with an orbital StarBase proved beyond even the vast intelligence and verve of the Crowsnest team. Ho hum. So on to …

Engineering

Propulsion, gravity, magnetism and radiation are the issues raised in this area of the exhibition, supposedly from the engineering section of the Enterprise. Here we were meant to discover the mysteries behind antimatter, warp drives, cosmic rays, rockets and gyroscopes. Not sure if we achieved all this, but we brave 'Nesters did manage to whisk up some anti-matter by colliding various sorts of sub-atomic particles together. Fewww. So on to ..

Science

The Science Station area of Federation Science explores long-term life support systems. Here, the exhibit tries to get across the message of the behind the scenes complexity of life aboard the Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant etc. This area basically looks at living in space, including recycling, eating and bathing.

The best bit of this section was where you step in front of an IR camera and watch the heat zones in your body light up the monitors (we had great pleasure in rubbing ourselves to see our clothes go boiling red with the friction).

Why was this beast here? Well, supposedly, this is one of the ways that Geordi La Forge views the world through his cybernetic eyepiece. We were reminded more of the stealth hunter's IR helmet views from the movie Predator, but hey ho. Next stop …

Sick Bay

'Intruder Alert' was a kind of board game played against the computer on a Starfleet medical table which looked at the human immune system and the way your own antibodies react to fight off 'invaders'.

It wasn't working so well itself when we visited, but the gallant Crowsnest away team did see how fit and healthy we weren't by measuring our pulse rates, heartbeats and blood oxygen levels using some cutting edge medical tech from our own time.

There was also a fine display of hologram Trek equipment, including a cobra-head phaser, PADD and medical tricorder (you could reach into the hologram booths to try to grab the gear, which proved diverting to many simple souls among our editorial ranks). Last stop …

Away Team Mission

What could be more appropriate for the Crowsnest away team than to visit the Transporter Room? This exhibit allows fans to indulge in a beam-out fantasy as well as learning about virtual reality.

Basically, you step onto the transport pad and look at a big screen in front of you, that shows you getting beamed out of the transporter room and onto a series of virtual worlds, where you can play various games against the computer. Nothing too fancy, but there's falling seed pods you have to knock out of the way to plant alien flowers and that sort of thing.

Clever stuff, nevertheless.

In addition to all these main exhibits, there's plenty of real props and costumes scattered around the show, as well as a Trek-filled gift shop at the entrance.

We spent about two hours at the Federation Science show, having arrived at 11.00'ish. By the time we left it was really getting busy, and the queues to have ago on the LCARs stations was becoming monster - so we'd definitely recommend going early to get full enjoyment of the facilities.

The exhibition is advertised as being open daily from 10am to 4pm and will run from the 15th September 2000 to the 22nd April 2001 (but closed for Xmas over 24th - 26th December).

You can pay the £6.50 to visit just the Federation Science area, but £12.00 gets you access to the whole Science Museum which is cavernous and would take you a full day - at least - to see properly.

If you're from out of town and need a map of where the Science Museum is … then try here

If we had one suggestion on how to improve the exhibition, it would have been to have turned one of the many cafés in the museum into a Trek-themed bar where we could have rounded off our visit with a few rounds of Romulan ale.

Oh well, pass me that tribble soup, would you?

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Ant. 01/11/2000
I went to this show the other week, it was okay, but not brilliant. The museum did some kind of Trek exhibit before which was really rank, at least Federation Science is better than that was ! I understand there's some kind of permanent Trek show at Vegas in a hotel .. has anyone been there to know if it's any good? PS - London fans should also visit Pages Wine Bar ... it's a StarFleet themed bar and is great.

WorldMaker. 01/11/2000
I went to the Vegas "Star Trek: The Experience", which wasn't bad... The upper floor has a "museum" which is full of neat-o props from the shows and an heavily illustrated abridged version of the Star Trek Timeline (which is a 50+ page book you can find in your local bookstore (but was hardly illustrated)). The best part of the whole thing is the simulator which was meant to give you the feel of walking through the enterprise and flying a shuttle. It was pretty cool, but the best part was the teleporter... Paramount built a huge hydraulic system to move people (50MPH or so) down a track quick enough to give the feeling of a transport... The lower floor was modeled after the DS9 promenade and is basically one big (expensive) gift shop. The also have a themed restaurant (called "Quark's Bar", go figure) with good (though expensive) food. Also, they had lots of easily purchasable (if you were over the drinking age, as they are alcholic) Romulan (and various others) Ale.