Riverside Museum To Open ‘Star Trek: The Exhibition’

The Riverside Metropolitan Museum is boldly going where no one in Southern California has gone before. It’s hosting the first, and so far, only Star Trek exhibit in the Southland. It travels all over the country.

Now it’s here.

“The exhibit has a website and there’s a little place that says click if you like this to come to your city so I clicked, saying I would love for it to come to our city, spoke to the representatives and it has not been in Inland Southern California,” said Ennette Morton, Riverside Metropolitan Museum art director.

In the exhibit, there are hundreds of props from each version in the Star Trek series. Phasers, tricorders, Klingon weapons, and of course, tribbles. There’s also re-creations of the Starship Enterprise’s engine room and sick bay. It’s enough to make any Trekkie drool.

But the city hopes more casual fans will also visit the exhibit at warp speed, by showing off the science behind the show.

“They’ll be able to see something that looks like the precursor to what could be the iPad in some of the Star Trek shows. And, of course, our cell phones were communicators that they used in the early series, so they’ll be a lot of information on the science behind the science fiction,” said Morton.

The exhibit also has a gift shop and allows visitors to take the captain’s seat for photos. Mayor Ron Loveridge hopes the exhibit will help downtown Riverside live long and prosper.

More than 40,000 people from Riverside, the Coachella Valley and all over Southern California are expected to visit the museum.

And those people are likely to visit other businesses in the city.

“One of the unfortunate things now is we don’t drive down Main Street anymore, we drive on freeways. I think the exhibit will get people off the freeways, see Main Street which is right here, and experience the city,” said Loveridge.

The exhibit runs until February 2011.

So, you have time to catch it before it beams off to another city.