Of Gods and Men
While at I-Con this past weekend, I heard Tim Russ (you’ll remember him as Tuvok, the vulcan on Voyager) talking up a fan film project he’s been involved in recently called Star Trek of Gods and Men. An aside: I’ve posted about Star Trek fan films before here, here, and here. I was already familiar with New Voyages (now renamed Phase II after the abortive Trek series that never happened in 1978) and while I always thought they were doing great stuff, at times there were just too many amateurs on screen at one time. A seasoned actor or two can make a scene believable even if there are a few goose eggs being laid. Their third episode, World Enough and Time with George Takei absolutely *rocks*. If you haven’t watched it and you like Star Trek, you have definitely missed a killer episode. The Phase II folks are really starting to grow on me too.
What Tim Russ has done is to gather a bunch of his Trek buddies to work with the New Voyages (Phase II) folks in their upstate (Port Henry) New York homemade studios, including Ethan Phillips and Garret Wang (Neelix and Harry Kim of Voyager), Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and Grace Lee Whitney (Uhura, Chekov, Janice Rand of TOS) to name just a few. The first two “acts” have been released on the internet free of charge while the crew tries to work out a deal to sell the show on DVD or download with CBS. Read more about it on Wikipedia or on the official website: http://www.startrekofgodsandmen.net.
Comment posted on 4-15-2008
Jenny and I watched it a couple of days ago and it was fun. It still smacked of a fan production in spots, but it as fun to see some of the old players in the mix. Its the best one yet, that is for sure. I thought that the animation was a bit less than could be expected from the amateur these days, but the rest was pretty impressive. I like the story, even though they drew off of 80% of the source material in the first 2 parts.