Explore Strange New Worlds

Brian of London here. You won’t even need a warp engine to get there in under 20 minutes from the Israeli desert resort of Eilat. That’s good news because my car only has impulse drives.

Fifteen years after “Trekkie” King Abdullah II briefly appeared in an episode of Star Trek, Jordan is planning to construct a $1.5-billion-dollar park themed on the cult American science fiction series.

The “Red Sea Astrarium” will be built in the country’s sole port ofAqaba, 350 kilometres (217 miles) south of Amman, spanning 184 acres (74.4 hectares), and will include a Star Trek-themed centre.

“Revolving around ancient history with Nabatean, Babylonian, British and Roman influences,” the park is scheduled for opening in 2014, according to Jordan’s Rubicon Group Holding (RGH), which announced the plan.

Bordering Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Aqaba is a popular tourist centre and close to the ancient rose-red Nabatean city of Petra and Wadi Rum in the desert.

RGH said in a statement the park would include “technologically advanced attractions, five-star accommodation, captivating theatrical productions,” and night-time spectacles.

It said RGH, CBS Consumer Products and Paramount Recreation will create the Star Trek centre, which “will deliver a variety of multi-sensory 23rd-century experiences, culminating with a state-of-the art space-flight adventure.”

According to RGH, the astrarium “will be the world’s only place where there is a Star Trek attraction,” after a similar facility in Las Vegas closed.

King Abdullah is an acknowledged fan of the Star Trek phenomenon.

In 1996, while he was still a prince, 34-year-old Abdullah made a non-speaking appearance in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Investigations.”

Wearing a black suit with green shoulder strap in episode 36, he is seen standing with USS Voyager operations officer Harry S. L. Kim, who tells the smiling prince: “See you later.”

It is unclear how the theme park project will be funded, but the King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) has been approached to help finance it.

“We have not made a decision. We are in the evaluation phase and the project is currently under review by the board,” KAFD Executive Director Tarik Awad told AFP.

The park will include four hotels, generate 500 jobs and “serve as a model for green energy,” RGH said.

“The project, a milestone in the development of tourism in Jordan, will provide a progressive and entertaining celebration of the region’s culture and heritage,” it added.

17 thoughts on “Explore Strange New Worlds”

  1. Revolving around ancient history with Nabatean, Babylonian, British and Roman influences,”

    pretty much accepting that the arab has little culture of his own

    fyi…voyager sucked

      1. Believe you are correct. And women could sue in court under their own names, as they could in Jewish courts but not in the local Roman ones. (See Yigal Yadin, Bar Kochba.)

  2. Tacky as it may seem (and it will probably be Guinness Book of World Record level tacky) at least they are trying to develop the area. We have Eilat where there isn't a single really decent hotel, no new hotel having been built in the last 10-20 years and virtually no attractions for families. Aqaba has several excellent hotels including a Kempinski and a Moevenpick. And it costs less to stay in a world class Kempinski than it does in any of the awful monstrosities on the promenade in Eilat.

      1. Not sure about a religious beach, but it seems likely.

        Locals go there because its all we have without having to go oversees. And for some absolutely inexplicable reason, kids tend to love it.

        Eilat is perfectly situated. Its a nice long, but manageable drive from the center of the country and you do feel like you're away on holidays. Its just done so crappy.

        1. I know Shas had got one put in, many years ago. It was reported by the late Sam Orbaum. (You know, the guy whose triplets were drafted?) But I had also heard it closed.

          I do hope to go tomorrow. I waited 35 years to go to back to the beach; this is a right we don't have in the U.S.

  3. Can't argue with much… there hasn't been much growth in Eilat for a while. There does need to be a bit of work done down there.

  4. If Iowa can have the fictional birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, then Jordan can have a Star Trek theme park. What's next–King Abdullah in Spock ears? It could happen.

  5. Quite fitting, actually. Roddenberry was virulently anti-Israel before it was fasionable, as Shatner wrote. The original Cardassians are cartoon-versions of Israelis, as the Frerengi were zero-dimentional versions of capitalists. (The TNG episode introducing Ferengi has to be one of the worst TV episodes of all time.)

    Many years ago I read the original treatment of DS9, posted on the old usenet. Not only was it transparently the Hollywood-left verison of our local conflict, but it verged into anti-semitism (poisoning wells – really!).

    Luckily the necessity of actually producing an entertaining show and general subversiveness ensured the DS9 in practice was quite a bit different. I was always torn between liking the show and knowing the origins.

    And I liked both "Enterprise" and its theme – so there!

    1. I always saw the Cardassians as being part Nazi-Germany, part Soviet Union and the Bajorans as being the Jewish Holocaust victims, specially after the Man in the Glass Booth episode . DS9 was made a few years after Roddenberry died and he would never have approved it for showing his 'perfect' future to have flaws.

      And being on Voyager doesn't impress me. That show was bad.

      1. I haven't been able to find the original treatment from USENET. I did see the original introducing the Cardassian / Bajoran thing on TNG (didn't see the others) and it seemed pretty obvious. As far as the Ferengi are concerned, it was stated explicitly that they are "Yankee Traders", then proceded to show people so dumb they couldn't bargain their way out of a paper bag. Undoubtedly one of the worst episodes of any tv show of any sort. Just an idiotic display of jingoistic leftism with no redeeming social value at all. DS9 has to change that, or it wouldn't have lasted three episodes.

        BTW, in one of the few DS9 episodes I saw, they gave the Federation Rules of Engagement. In the real world, a navy with that ROE would be destroyed within three weeks, tops.

        1. The Cardassian trial system, where the defendant is found guilty before the trial begins, is straight out of the Soviet Union. The death camps and forced labor sound quite a lot like Nazi atrocities.

          And then there's the DS9 episode that follows The Man in the Glass Booth very closely. That's a Holocaust reference, not a Palestinian reference.

          The Bajoran freedom fighters are what could be taken to be Palestinians, but they could also be the Jews who resisted like the Bielskis and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Zionist militias with their divisions, or even Nazi hunters.

          If you'd seen more of DS9, where most of it was, you'd think it was a Nazi/Jew reference.

          1. As I said, they changed it. I was referring to the origin. They also humanized the Ferengi ("foreigner", BTW) somewhat.

            Actually, there are normal legal systems where this is the case. Unlike the American system, the difficult part is the indictment. I recall many years ago the Left complaining that some US ally (El Salvador?) had "not even indicted" someone. The reason was, that an indictment there is close to a conviction.

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