Lots of news tidbits to catch up on, so let's get right to it...

Star Trek: Enterprise will premiere on the Sci-Fi Channel on Monday, January 8, as part of an overall package from CBS Paramount Television (related story). For those with digital cable or satellite, Enterprise is currently airing on HDNet at various times during the week.

Several cast members from Enterprise — Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, Linda Park, Anthony Montgomery and John Billingsley — are involved in their third annual holiday charity drive. As part of the fundraising effort, a raffle is being held for signed greeting cards from each actor (through November 27), and donations via PayPal are also being accepted. For more information, visit this Holiday Project forum page or e-mail the webmaster at any of those actors' official sites (specific addresses are listed within that forum). Funds raised will be divided among charities chosen by the five actors, such as UNICEF and the AIDS Service Center. Contributions can also be made directly to a charity in an actors' name — if you do so, please contact the specified webmaster so that a notice of your donation can be included in a holiday scrapbook being compiled for each actor. Other holiday greetings are also being accepted by fans through December 1 (Nov. 27 for Keating) and will be included in those scrapbooks. Plans for a gathering similar to last year (related story) are pending.

Lightspeed Fine Arts Inc. is also holding a holiday charity benefit with multiple celebrities, with an event planned for the weekend of December 2-3 in Orange County, Calif. Nicole deBoer, Denise Crosby, Garrett Wang, Trinneer and Keating are among the special guests at a "Celebrity Dinner" Saturday evening, and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons a slew of other celebrities will be signing and meeting the fans. The line-up currently includes Gates McFadden, Robert Beltran, Billingsley, Jennifer Lien, Ethan Phillips, Vaughn Armstrong, Richard Herd, visual effects artist Ronald B. Moore, and Orion Slave Girls Cyia Batten ("Navaar") and Crystal Allen ("D'Nesh") from "Bound." Proceeds will benefit the American Cancer Society. Attendance is limited to 250, so make reservations now at www.lightspeedfineart.com (scroll down to "Seventh Annual Lightspeed Celebrity Charity Benefit").

Last June, William Shatner was named as a Hall of Fame inductee by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (related story). A date for the induction ceremony has been announced: Thursday, December 14, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Shatner will be honored alongside newsman Tom Brokaw, comedy director James Burrows, producer Leonard Goldberg and talk show host Regis Philbin.

Speaking of Shatner, don't forget that his new game show, Show Me the Money, officially premieres tonight, Nov. 22, in its regular Wednesday one-hour timeslot at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. The show had a 90-minute preview last Tuesday.

Last Sunday night TVLand.com held a live video chat with George Takei, Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig, hosted by Michael and Denise Okuda. You can view that video at the TVLand.com Star Trek page. Disable any pop-up blocker in your browser, then click on "Pre-recorded Live Chat" and register or sign in to access the streaming video.

As previously mentioned (page 2), the official announcement of Takei's guest-starring role in NBC's Heroes has been made in TV Guide. Takei will appear in the season finale on Monday, January 29, as the father of time-traveling fanboy Hiro Nakamura, played by Masi Oka. "This is absolutely brilliant! I just hope I get to say, 'Dad! Sulu is my hero, not you!'" said Oka. The full story appears in the printed edition of next week's TV Guide, hitting newsstands now.

Takei recently talked to the L.A. Daily News about his episode of the Internet series "Star Trek: New Voyages" called "World Enough and Time," which is set to premiere in March. In the article Takei says, "There's this misconception that Star Trek fans are green-bodied creatures with antennae coming out of their heads. No! They are people like (Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist) Paul Allen and Sen. Patrick Leahy, whose passion is Star Trek and their dream is to be Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise." See the full article about the "webisode" phenomenon at this DailyNews.com link.

Ronald D. Moore — former writer/producer for TNG and DS9 and now executive producer of Battlestar Galactica — will write the screenplay for a remake of John Carpenter's sci-fi/horror classic "The Thing," according to Daily Variety. Producers at Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures said the new movie will actually be more "a companion piece" to the 1982 film than a note-for-note remake. No target release date was announced. Moore also recently scripted a sequel to "I, Robot" for 20th Century Fox.

Last month Moore was honored at the fifth annual Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles with the TV Writer of the Year Award. It was presented by science fiction great Harlan Ellison, who wrote "The City on the Edge of Forever." "This award is for an astonishing job of making one of the worst television series ever made into one of the best television series ever made," Ellison said as he made the presentation. Ellison then interviewed Moore about the show. A transcript of the event can be found at this ComingSoon.net page.

By the way, Galactica will be moving to Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT beginning January 21, according to Variety, when the Sci-Fi show returns from its holiday hiatus.

Manny Coto, who was showrunner of Enterprise in its fourth season, is involved in a new comedy series that is being considered the Fox News Channel's response to Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Coto is co-executive producer of a conservative-leaning satirical news show developed by his 24 comrade Joel Surnow, designed to "respond to the news of the day" and skewer "the sacred cows of the left." It was originally called "This Just In," but they will change the name because it's being used by an HBO-AOL production. Two half-hour pilots are being shot, and may air in late January on Saturday nights on Fox News. If successful, the show could join the network's regular schedule.

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