I was talking to my friend the other day. He told me his brother-in-law has a third cousin that knows a cleaning lady that is pen-pals with the caterer for the "Battlestar Galactica" set. Apparently, executive producer and showrunner Ronald D. Moore has quit the show after NBC Universal decided it was time to revamp the show by bringing in original series creator Glen Larson and resurrecting Lorne Greene from the dead.

Sound outlandish? I sure as hell hope so. But believe it or not, if this commentary were taken out of context, or I actually posted that on Airlock Alpha or some other site that normally would hold actual news, it would be picked up around the Internet as wildfire and treated as if it were the truth. How do I know that? Just look at the current "Star Trek XI" reports that have circulated on the Web this past week.

The CanMag Web site had this amazing story that the script submitted by Emmy Award-winning scribe Erik Jendresen had been scrapped in favor of a new film that will take place in Star Trek's Mirror Universe and include the likes of William Shatner's James T. Kirk from the original "Star Trek" series, Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and the real kicker -- Scott Bakula's Jonathan Archer from the recently canceled "Star Trek: Enterprise," the first Trek series to be prematurely canceled since the original series 40 years ago because of its lack of viewership.

Where did CanMag get such an amazing scoop? Did they do an interview with Rick Berman? Did they get a scoop from Bryan Singer, who wants to direct the next film? Did Gene Roddenberry's ghost visit them in a dream? Nope. They got it from some schmuck who said he was a stuntman on a movie somewhere that also had Linda Park -- who played Hoshi Sato in "Enterprise" -- in its cast. Apparently, Paramount -- who has been operating pretty much in the dark about anything Star Trek during the Viacom split -- feels confident in talking to an actress from a failed show that had about as many lines as Anthony Montgomery. Oh, for those of you who don't remember an Anthony Montgomery on "Enterprise," he was the guy who navigated the ship and averaged about six words per episode.

The fact that it made it to ANY respectable Web site is bad enough. But that it made it around to OTHER respectable Web sites just makes me put my head in my hands.

One of the things I never wanted Airlock Alpha to be was a clearinghouse of rumors where we printed everything whether it was corroborated or not. I wanted to make sure that the rumors we printed here were as accurate and as true as possible outside of official word from studio execs and the like, and work hard to do that. AICN is a little different when it comes to that. If someone reports it, and it sounds like people might get up in arms about it, they'll report it, whether it's true or not. AICN got their hands on the CanMag report, and suddenly it hit the Web's "mainstream." That meant where most sites like Airlock Alpha, TrekWeb, SciFi Wire could've ignored the report from a smaller site, we suddenly had to give it space on our sites, because a highly-traveled site like AICN added credence to it, and now it was being discussed everywhere.

It's great that AICN gets the traffic, and apparently there is a market out there for people who will take a scoop -- ANY scoop -- and run with it, no matter how off the wall it is. But that ends up hurting everyone else, and allows garbage like this "Star Trek XI" rumor to get out there. And it's just utter bullshit, because it will take months -- if not a year -- to pound this very bad rumor into the nothingness that it is.

Let's take a look at this so-called deal to bring in three captains from other shows and put them together. First of all, William Shatner is great in "Boston Legal" and his Emmys are well-deserved. But Shatner's days of playing the Capt. James T. Kirk that we know and love are far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far behind him. My apologies to the folks at Bring Back Kirk, but the guy is busy doing other things that will hopefully diversify the legacy he's leaving behind.

Patrick Stewart could easily continue to play Jean-Luc Picard, but even if the movie just featured these two captains ... isn't this old news? I mean, we already had Stewart and Shatner meeting up ... 11 years ago. Would it really have the same level of excitement (which was a bit limited, even back in 1994) now that it did then? Hardly.

And Scott Bakula? I'm sorry, but you've got to be kidding me. Paramount couldn't wait to distance itself as much as possible from the series that ended up being a huge black eye on the studio, and on UPN (and for it to be considered the black sheep of UPN takes a lot of work considering). I bet if I were to walk out on the streets of my city and ask people to name the captains of Enterprise, a lot of them could name Kirk, Picard, and hell, maybe even Janeway. But I bet good money that less than 1 percent would name Archer, or even "Enterprise" itself.

Now don't get me wrong, I was one of the few fans of the show, even though it wasn't my favorite among Trek. I think it really did hold its own, especially the fourth season. But it was too little too late. But that's another story (and you can give Rick Berman the finger on your own time).

When you do motion pictures, you want to appeal to a mass audience, even if you already have a core audience. A core audience will get you through the door, but as a moviemaker, you won't see success unless you get a mass audience. So, take a look at "Serenity." It was a great movie that Joss Whedon wrote and directed, and I can't wait to own it on DVD. I enjoyed it several times, and thought it was great. It's problem? It wasn't a movie for the mass audiences. Whedon spent so much time pleasing his core audience -- which as a member of that fanbase, I would never complain about -- and ignored the mass audience. That's why "Serenity" came and went with a whisper.

You're going to have the same thing, if not worse, if you pursue a mirror universe movie. Sure, the mainstream knows that if you put a goatee on someone, they suddenly become some sort of "evil twin," thanks to homages from shows like "South Park" ... but how much will the general public know about the Mirror Universe altogether? How about squat.

And while Mirror Universe episodes can be fun, do you REALLY want a whole movie that is technically not even Star Trek canon? If you're a fan of bringing back Kirk, would you really be satisfied with just the Mirror Kirk?

Would you like to know where this rumor came from? It comes from the same place as all bad rumors come from. Someone, bored out of their mind seeking to put some kind of signature out there in fandom, takes bits and pieces of things that might be true or are true, and then mixes them with his or her own imagination, and regurgitates it as if it's something real. There really was a Mirror Universe idea out there involving Shatner. Some reports had the idea as being the original "In the Mirror, Darkly" episode of "Enterprise" that would've revealed that FutureGuy (who was never revealed, and no one noticed) to be the Mirror Kirk. The Bring Back Kirk people themselves put together a trailer a year or so ago that featured all the Star Trek captains working together, including Kirk. It didn't involve the Mirror Universe, but they were able to bring everyone together somehow. Patrick Stewart hinted that he wouldn't mind returning to fill Picard's boots again if the story was right and the right people were involved. And there are some yucks out there who feel that "Enterprise" deserves a movie.

But it isn't going to happen. The rumor has no truth in it. I am actually miffed that I had to call up a source of mine to debunk something that was so obviously not true that it isn't even funny. But that's what happens when idiots out there go around and make this stuff up ... legitimate sites, legitimate news people, and the like then have to spend time reporting it, and then debunking it. I know how sites like TrekWeb, SciFi Wire, TrekToday, Dark Horizons feel when AICN prints this garbage, because Airlock Alpha has to go through the same thing. We have to dig around to disprove it, even though the lunacy of the information itself should be enough to show there's no sense of truth in it at all.

But in the end, I guess I'll still watch "Battlestar Galactica." I'm sure Lorne Greene doesn't look as good as he did 28 years ago, and I'll miss Ronald D. Moore on the set. But how could my source on that story be wrong?

Michael Hinman is the founder and news coordinator of Airlock Alpha. He writes out of Tampa, Fla., and can be reached at michael@airlockalpha.com.