Heroes may boast the most Star Trek connections at a given time, but over the course of an entire series it would be hard pressed to beat 24. John Billingsley is the latest Trek star to join the cast of the Fox action thriller co-executive produced by Manny Coto.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Billingsley will play a recurring character named "Latham," but otherwise details of his part are being kept under wraps. He will be part of the storyline for "Day 7," which will take place in Washington D.C. rather than Los Angeles.

In the same announcement, Jeffrey Nordling — who played the Bajoran freedom figher "Tahna Los" in DS9's "Past Prologue" — was named as another addition to the 24 cast, in the role of an FBI agent named "Larry."

Last year the Emmy Award-winning show featured Alexander Siddig and James Cromwell as high-profile guest stars, along with a return appearance by Emmy-nominated Gregory Itzin ("Hain," etc.). In previous seasons the show has featured numerous past and future Trek stars including Penny Johnson ("Kasidy Yates"), Michelle Forbes ("Ro"), Peter Weller ("Paxton"), Kara Zediker ("T'Pau"), Steven Culp ("Major Hayes"), Mark Sheppard ("Leucon"), Glenn Morshower ("MacReady," etc.), Ray Wise ("Arturis," "Liko"), Harris Yulin ("Marritza"), Daniel Dae Kim ("Gotana-Retz", etc.) and even Zachary Quinto (the new "Spock"), who was "Adam Kaufman" in Season 3.

24 has delayed production of the new season several weeks because the original storyline, which would have taken place largely in Africa, was scrapped by the network, and the producers have had to scramble to retool their concept. Currently cameras are scheduled to roll next Monday. The target premiere date of Season 7 is January 2008.

Coto told fans at Comic-Con in July — after acknowledging that Season 6 was a critical bomb — that "we're going places where the show hasn't gone before" (related story, pg. 2). Besides the new setting, according to various reports, the show will feature a female president, to be played by Cherry Jones.

Billingsley's last regular TV gig was The Nine, which had a rocky run on ABC this past season. Initially cancelled last fall after seven episodes, the remaining six were promised to fans during the summer, but only two of them aired in August. If you're curious what went down during that bank robbery, the final four unaired episodes can be viewed at ABC.com through September 24, or can be downloaded from iTunes.

Nichelle Converses with Whoopi

Wednesday morning Nichelle Nichols called up Whoopi Goldberg during her radio show Wake Up with Whoopi and conversed for about five minutes about Star Trek and each other's current endeavors. They reiterated the story about why Goldberg insisted to Gene Roddenberry that she be on The Next Generation — because she was inspired as a child by Nichols on the original Star Trek, representing that "there were possibly some black people in the future!"

Nichols congratulated Goldberg on her new stint as co-host of ABC's The View, which started Tuesday. "It's a new articulate voice from a new perspective, and I love it," Nichols said on the New York-based syndicated radio talk show.

Goldberg, in turn, congratulated Nichols for her new role on Heroes (related story). Nichols revealed that she has shot two episodes of the popular NBC drama, and will start a third one on Friday (today). She commented on the reaction she got when she announced this news at two recent conventions, Creation in Las Vegas and Dragon*Con in Atlanta: "You would have thought an atom bomb fell and blew — I mean, the response was so incredible."

Goldberg then asked Nichols about "Lady Magdalene's," the independent film she starred in and helped produce, which held its world premiere last weekend at Dragon*Con. The film does not have a release date yet, Nichols said, but writer/director/producer J. Neil Schulman is currently negotiating with distributors.

Nichols also mentioned three other films she's shot, "The Torturer," "Tru Loved," and "This Bitter Earth," a musical with Billy Dee Williams. "I've been working my fanny off ... It's been a really wonderfully busy year for me," Nichols said. "You have no fanny left!" remarked Goldberg's co-host.

You can hear the five-minute audio clip at this link. (By the way, we will have a full report from Dragon*Con in a few days.)

As mentioned above, this week Goldberg took over co-hosting duties for the daytime talker The View, replacing the controversial Rosie O'Donnell. Already Goldberg has stirred up controversy herself, having made remarks about Michael Vick which she feels were misinterpreted by the press (visit Whoopi.com for her clarification, more audio from her radio show).

As introduction to her new View audience, Goldberg prepared a video which ran on Tuesday's show to provide an entertaining briefing on her background. About 2:50 into the video, the audience applauded and cheered vigorously when she mentioned Guinan. "I love my Star Trek character," Goldberg said, "because I think I'm the last character that Gene Roddenberry ever created." She then referred to Lt. Uhura and talked about how important she was to the perception of black people. "I want to be that person for the next generation."

You can see the video by visiting this ABC.com link. Under "More Video," scroll to the right until you see "The View: Whoopi Video," with a thumbnail showing Goldberg against a pure white background.

Yelchin Film Opens in Limited Release

If you're in New York this weekend, you can see how "Pavel Chekov" looked when he was barely 15 years old. A film shot three years ago starring Anton Yelchin — who has reportedly been cast as the Russian Starfleet cadet in the new J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" movie — is finally making its way into theaters.

"Fierce People," also starring Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland, is a dark, offbeat coming-of-age movie about a drug-addicted working-class mother (Lane) and her teenage son (Yelchin) who move in with a billionaire (Sutherland) and learn the perils of privilege and social climbing.

The film has been making the rounds in the festival circuit for the last two years, picking up mixed to strong reviews. Finally, Lionsgate — under a new label called Autonomous Films — is giving the R-rated movie a limited release. It had its premiere in Los Angeles last weekend, and right now it's showing in two theaters in New York. It should gain more venues in coming weeks, particularly in bigger cities, so keep an eye out for it in your local movie listings.

You can learn more about "Fierce People" at this Lionsgate.com page, and this New York Times article describes why the film has had a difficult road to theatrical release.

Celebrity Golf Tournament Postponed to May

Earlier we reported that John Billingsley, Dominic Keating, Connor Trinneer and Garrett Wang would participate in a charity golf tournament taking place in Glendale, Calif., originally scheduled for October 6. That event has been postponed until May 3, 2008.

All the same guests are still shown as confirmed on the event website, www.fans-for-life.org, including Spencer Garrett, who played "Simon Tarses" in "The Drumhead" and "Weiss" in "Flesh and Blood." Other golfer guests include sci-fi stars Claudia Christian, Rachel Grant and Garett Maggart.

The "Area 18 Golf Tournament" will benefit the AIDS Service Center of Pasadena and other selected charities. Foursomes consisting of one celebrity and three fans will play 18 holes in a scramble format. Tournament packages range from $83 to $342. For more information or to sign up, visit the Fans for Life link above.

Picard for President! Political Blog Cites Leadership Qualities

Regardless of your political leanings, you may get a kick out of a blog posted this week on The Huffington Post which yearns for the kind of leadership offered by Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The blogger, Marty Beckerman, wrote the essay in part to mark the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"In addition to vastly improved special effects, TNG surpassed the original series' hokey '60s politics ... with a nuanced political worldview that often explored the tactical necessity of choosing the lesser of two evils, the proper time for diplomacy to devolve into warfare, and other unpleasant shades of gray," Beckerman writes.

"At the moral center of these realist quandaries was Captain Jean-Luc Picard, whom Patrick Stewart played with Shakespearean gravitas," he continues. "The French-born, tea-drinking Picard, who popularized the catch phrase 'make it so,' was far more of a refined interstellar emissary than a testosterone-oozing brawler — the Tony Blair to George W. Bush's Kirk ... but was hardly a pacifist in an emergency. Indeed, Picard was a literate, contemplative and judicious leader, the exact opposite of what America has had so far in the Twenty-First Century."

Beckerman then goes on to cite specific examples of the difference in leadership style between Picard and Bush, invoking such episodes as "Symbiosis," "Unification" and especially "The Drumhead" among others. "It's a sad statement that a fictional space-faring atheistic Frenchman in the Twenty-Fourth Century defends the Bill of Rights more vigorously than the man who has sworn upon the Bible to do so," he writes.

Read the full blog at this HuffingtonPost.com link.