All the Fan in the World

I try very hard not to let my inner geek speak here on the blog... because... well... you wouldn't appreciate it... and he rarely showers.

But in this one thing I must speak.

Here's the story;

About 10 years ago in Somewhere-New-York, a fellow named James Cawley decided he was going to do something no Fan has Done Before... he built the Enterprise...

Not a model, the actual bridge set... accurately... from the blueprints.

And he built a few other sets as well...

Then he decided to do something interesting with his set; he made a fan film... Set in the "4th year" of Kirks' original 5 year mission (So, in the Old Series Era, those beautiful 60's era sets and uniforms...).

"Come What May" was their first endeavor... it was amazing... because of that set... but the story was not so hot, and the acting was really scary... it really needed help...

But there was potential.

I found the site by accident while looking up ways to film a movie cheaply... and I watched Come What May and cringed... but I could see what they were doing.

Then they released their "Pilot"; "In Harm's Way", and they jumped... They had suddenly gotten better... not good, yet, they still had some kinks to work out. The most interesting thing is that they had managed to get a few people from the Original Star Trek to join in and reprise old roles...

Then they made a Coup... they got Dorthy Fontana (An original Star Trek writer) to pen a script and managed to get Walter Keonig (Chekov) to reprise his role...

The Episode "To Serve All My Days" was really nicely done. They brought in a fellow to play the "Young Chekov" who didn't just do the accent, but actually seemed to be a younger version of Keonig... It was touching, and amazing for a fan film... But the directing made it fall below par for real Television.

Yesterday they released their 4th episode; "World Enough and Time". This one features George Takei reprising his role as Sulu... Written by Marc Zicree & Michael Reaves (Writers from the Old Series and Deep Space 9), and directed by Marc Zicree, this episode moved into Television quality. It's not the best episode of TV you'll ever see (Ev... I know how harsh you are about these things), but it is an episode of Television. It feels like a TV episode, it has the pacing of a real TV episode. And the story is beautiful. The script was one of the ones lost when Paramount decided to not do Star Trek Phase II in the 70's and instead went to Star Trek, the Motion Picture.

The actors are still those guys from New York, and only one of them is professional (Cawley is an Elvis Impersonator), so the acting can be rough at times, but they are truly stepping up to the plate on this one... and amazingly (I know I couldn't do this), going toe to toe with George Takei and managing to pull it off!

If you are interested in seeing it, you can find all the episodes here:

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com

If you are Ev, you'll really need to take into account these guys were novices... (I love you, EV! Honest!).

They are trying to stream the episodes, and that's having a major impact on the Internet... so they are trying to find different ways to get the episodes to us. It may take a while to get World Enough and Time (I waited 24 hours for my copy), but it is worth it. If nothing else to see what a few geeks can manage to pull off...

If you have never seen their work before, I recommend watching "To Serve all My Days" first, then watch "World Enough and Time". It'll also delay you a little because you can download TSAMD, but you have to stream WEAT...

I... I'll be over here with my stupid Spock ears if you need me...

---Live Long and... well, you know the rest...