VULCAN, Alta. – A lone cowboy scans the pages of a newspaper left behind at the Burger King, while Lieut. Commander Jordie LaForge, chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise (of Next Generation stock), watches nearby.
Neither is caught in a time warp.
This is Vulcan, a prairie town of 1,500 people which has embraced the Star Trek culture.
The Star Trek theme has been a community project for more than 10 years.
As the fictional planetary home of the enigmatic Mr. Spock on the original television series of the same name, Vulcan became a household name. For local people , the matching name was an opportunity worth seizing.
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“This is right in their own back yard tourism,” said local businessman Pat Wisener.
“The things we were talking about are starting to come to fruition.”
New ideas are coming in every day and the community is starting to believe Vulcan could become the centre of the universe.
“Our community is starting to become a lot healthier. The whole area is starting to prosper,” Wisener said.
Five years ago the main street in downtown Vulcan was an open space with empty parking stalls facing the stores.
Thanks to the space theme, more people are stopping in town and filling those parking stalls, as well as the neighboring camp grounds.
The Star Trek theme got off to a shaky start with a few cardboard cartoons of the television series’ science fictional characters posted downtown.
Residents of the 85-year-old town were encouraged to wear pointed ears like Spock and set up Star Trek themes in their stores. Some bought into it and others did not.
“If they liked it, they talked about it. If they didn’t like it, they talked about it. It didn’t matter because they were talking about it,” said Wisener.
Now a scaled-down model of the starship Enterprise hovers against a backdrop of grain elevators. Visitors wheel into town for pictures beneath the saucer rather than pass by on Highway 23 on their way to Calgary or Lethbridge.
The most recent addition is a space station and information centre that opened last fall.
Tourism information is offered from a huge domed building that lights up at night like a flying saucer.
Inside, the station reveals a spacescape painted by two Calgary set designers. The stars and moons painted on the ceiling give visitors an out-of-this-world feeling. If they listen carefully they can hear the engines of a star ship.
Most of the Star Trek ideas are brought to life by the Vulcan Association of Science and Trek.
VAST and the economic development association share space at the station in one its three pods that includes a star ship bridge complete with a cardboard cutouts of the crew from the original Star Trek and the follow-up series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
To complete the scene the staff wear red and black uniforms similar to Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s crew, of the Next Generation.
There is no formal connection with the Gene Roddenberry estate or Paramount Studios, which owns Star Trek.
“We hope they eventually come to us,” said Michelle Becker, tourism co-ordinator.
These spaced-out ideas may be the salvation for other small farm communities and outlying areas where nobody stops.
There have been curious visitors from as far away as Beijing, China and a Star Trek convention is coming this fall. Past conventions have attracted as many as 300 people who break away from their every-day existence and become Klingons, Cardasians or crew members of the Enterprise.
Next on the drawing board is a $10 million plan for a science centre and museum.
