Star Trek Online junior officers, do you feel under-appreciated? Taken for granted? Well chin up, because Cryptic Studios wants to make it up to you with the upcoming Junior Officer Appreciation Weekend. The event will run from 1:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, December 15th until 1:00 p.m. EST Monday, December 19th.

All players have to do is speak to their duty officer in their respective academies, and they'll receive "up to a 50% bonus to all duty officer assignment Commendation Experience Points for the weekend." They will also receive a free "special purple quality duty officer with a unique active roster power." For details on the entire event schedule, head on over to the STO official site, linked below.

There is much buzz in the MMOG universe this morning about the upcoming title Star Trek Online. Being absolute fanboys and fangirls of Star Trek ourselves (much like our friends at STO Zone who had the same idea) we wanted to show you a couple of nuggets of interesting art that we've extracted. These two images were taken from the backgrounds of the Cryptic Star Trek Online site that was unveiled last night.

The top image shows an Andorian female in the foreground of what appears to be an away team. Some of the staff think that may be either a Bolian, Benzite or an Orion male to her left, but it's very hard to make out. (Not that many people remember the Orion males anyway.) Below that is a Klingon at the helm of what appears to be a Bird of Prey with a Human, Ferengi, Cardassian and Vulcan manning the controls, dressed in Federation uniform, or wearing Federation insignia. Speculation from some blog sites suggest that Cryptic is likely looking at a period of time post-DS9, tied to the Officer Exchange Program that started in the episode "A Matter of Honor" during the TNG series. It seems like an excellent spot in the continuity to place an MMO, we think.