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Star Trek-oration: Give your home the Enterprise makeover

Leave the 21st century behind, shipmates, and warp your life into the crisp, clean 23rd century, where everyone wears brightly coloured Lycra and all the doors go whoosh. We make it so

Mark Harris Special to CNET News
4 min read

JJ Abrams' time-travelling 'reboot' of the Star Trek universe doesn't mean you have to erase your memories of doomed red shirts, grumpy doctors, boozy engineers and tea-sipping Shakespearean captains. In fact, it's never been easier to leave the complicated 21st century behind and reboot your own life into the crisp, clean 23rd century, where everyone wears brightly coloured Lycra and all the doors go whoosh. Make it so!

Voxtec Phraselator P2, £1,500

Voxtec Phraselator P2

Ever wondered why aliens, no matter how exotic, speak, like, Californian English, dude? That'll be Starfleet's Universal Translators, built into the insignia communicators. This rugged handheld unit -- favoured by the US Army -- is the closest thing yet. The $2,500 Phraselator can turn over 100,000 spoken phrases into any one of 40 languages. One thing it can't explain, though: why bald aliens are always baddies...

Tricorder 2.1 app for Android, £free

Tricorder for Android

From the way Geordi and Data hack around the Enterprise's OS, it surely must be open-source. This freeware for Android phones gives you a taste of a real Tricorder, with a Trek-themed display of gravitational anomalies, local magnetic fields, light levels, geographical information and acceleration, culled from your phone's actual on-board sensors.

Zarafina Tea Maker Suite, £60

Zarafina

"Computer: Earl Grey. Hot." This next-generation tea-maker won't respond to voice commands just yet, but the Zarafina will brew up a tasty pot of char from loose leaves or teabags. It has a choice of strength settings and adjustable water temperature, depending on whether you're sipping Picard's favourite aromatic black tea or a delicate green infusion.

Star Trek cologne, £24.95

Star Trek cologne

Captain -- sensors are detecting volatile hydrocarbons with citrus top notes over musk and sandalwood base aromas! It appears Earth males are applying alcohol-based compounds to their epidermal skin layers in the hope of increasing their sexual attractiveness and masking natural bodily odours. Such fluids are given names suggesting a connection with famous individuals ('Tiberius'), exotic rituals ('Pon Farr') and doomed youth ('Red Shirt'). Fascinating primitive behaviour.

Voice-activated computers, Dell Adamo, from £1,000

Dell Adamo

Windows 7 is the most attentive operating system yet, with a revamped voice-recognition service that works seamlessly with Microsoft Office software -- and even plays surprisingly well with third-party applications. If you're going to order any computer to warp speed, it should really be something suitably over-designed and space-aged, such as Dell's stylish Adamo laptop, complete with 128GB SSD.

Deep space sensors, £free

Hubble

Hook up your PC to a hi-def display and you can be viewing wall spanning, multi-megapixel scans of our solar system and beyond quicker than you can say, "On screen". Hunt through NASA's library of Hubble Telescope images for M-class planets or focus in on a ripple in the space-time continuum to spot those incoming black holes/Borg collectives/Klingon battle fleets.


PHaSR weapon, £not for sale

PHaSR

Trekkies get everywhere. There's a scientist somewhere in the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate giggling over his Klingon directory at the thought of this Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHaSR) rifle. Our 21st-century version only comes with the stun setting though, thanks to a dual-wavelength laser emitter that dazzles enemy soldiers without killing (or even blinding) them.

Complete Star Trek interiors, up to £125,000

Star Trek interiors

Tony Alleyne's flat is the ultimate homage to Star Trek -- a reproduction of the Voyager interior that's so faithful you can slide the Transporter fader, watch the lights change, hear the original sound effect, and be thoroughly disappointed when Captain Janeway doesn't sparkle into view. Alleyne now designs custom sci-fi installs for other fans homesick for the future.

StarCave holodeck, £650,000

StarCave

This totally immersive 3D virtual-reality room at the University of San Diego was designed for scientists to visualise environments from skyscraper struts to microscopic proteins -- but it also makes a jaw-dropping holodeck. The room operates at a combined resolution of over 68 million pixels, distributed over 15 rear-projected walls and two floor screens, complete with 15 channels of surround-sound audio diffusion.

Star Trek urns, from £425

Urn

All good franchises must come to an end, and what more fitting way for serious fans to express their love of Trek than to meet their maker in an official Starfleet urn or a classy full-size casket, modelled after the Photon Torpedo design seen in Wrath of Khan? Alternatively, you could follow James Doohan and Majel and Gene Rodenberry, by shooting your ashes on a trip to outer space, courtesy of Celestis, from $695.

Tricorder PMP 09 media player, £175

Yes, it bleeps. Yes, it flashes. Yes, it warbles. But this Tricorder is also a fully-featured media player, with a 71mm (2.8-inch) TFT screen, 2GB of memory and 12 different downloadable interfaces, handmade from a gutted 1993 Playmates Tricorder toy. It's yours for $283, including shipping to the UK. Sadly, no, it won't diagnose Romulan Marsh Flu.