I’ve mentioned the Star Trek fan film projects here before, but there was a big development for fans of the genre earlier this year that I missed somehow. Walter Koenig, the actor who played the Russian ensign of the USS Enterprise known as Chekov, will join the amateur all-fan cast of New Voyages for their third ‘web-isode’, another full length television show produced in the style of the original 1960’s Star Trek series, downloadable over the internet. More info on the return of Chekov and the writer behind the story…
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Although to many of the ‘Trek faithful’ this story may seem like “old news”, I just found it, so its news to me. Apparently, James Doohan, the actor who portrayed ‘Scotty’ on the original Star Trek television series may have some of his ashes launched into space by the same firm that provided a similar posthumous lift to the remains of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the TV series that defined American popular Sci-Fi culture.I’ll admit it - I tune into startrek.com once in a while. If you’re a big fan of the shows, an occassional pilgrimage to the website is mandatory. The site has the latest news relating to all aspects of the franchise, offers a daily show clip and quote and the online database has details for every single episode for all the different shows.

The recent passing of James Doohan, 85, the Canadian-Irish actor who portrayed the Scottish engineer ‘Scotty’ on the original Star Trek series was the latest bummin’ event to fans of Star Trek which now with the cancellation of ‘Enterprise’, for the first time since the 80’s has *no* franchise related television show in production. For many, the original TV show was the only one worth watching. I personally don’t agree, but I always had a special place in my heart for the Scotty character.

From wikipedia:

“He suffered from Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and lung fibrosis in later life. In 2004, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. On July 20, 2005, at 5:30 in the morning, he died at his home in Redmond, Washington with his wife Wende and long-time friend (and agent) Steve Stevens at his side. His agent identified the cause as pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease. He was the second member of the original Star Trek cast to pass away, after DeForest Kelley, who died in 1999.”

According the StarTrek.com, some of Mr. Doohan’s remains will be launched into space sometime in September by Space Services, Inc., of Houston, Texas from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, on a Falcon 1 rocket.

‘Scotty’ won’t be the first person related to Star Trek to take the trip to the stars: already a producer who passed in 2002 and Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator who died in 1991 have had their remains scattered in space by the firm.

The BBC has the story as well.

Back in July I sent an email out to friends about 5 Year Mission dot com (recently renamed to “newvoyages.com”) about a Star Trek fan project: “Man, talk about fan involvement. There is a group of Star Trek fans who have created a tribute to the original series in a unique way: they wrote, acted, filmed and have distributed a NEW episode with the original characters (with new actors, obviously) and all the original sound effects and campy dialouge!” Their website is http://newvoyages.com/. I just found out about another fan project producing new episodes based on the original series which is just as good if not better. Read on for the link.

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Well here’s a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game I might actually consider playing: development is underway on Star Trek Universe. There’s a press release on the official startrek.com site and an article about it on BBC UK which has this to offer: “Characters will gain skills and rank by completing missions assigned by Starfleet command. They will get to explore the surface of planets, although it is not clear whether those beaming down first will suffer the same sticky end that was often the fate of crew members in the original series.”

I have always been a big Star Trek fan. Besides the obvious allure of fast ships, bare knuckles, lasers and Klingons, I think at the very root of what I dug about the show was Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic view of the future. A future where man has done away with hunger and war and racism and everybody spends their free time studying astrophysics. I thought I had seen every last Star Trek episode 100 times, but I recently rediscovered 22 episodes I bet you haven’t seen very often either.
I’m talking about the Animated Series (TAS in “Trekker” verbage) of course. The animated series, although done in pretty poor 1970s Saturday morning cartoonesque style, has most of the original cast doing the voice-overs, and remains true to the original spirit of the show (much more so than some more recent spinoffs of the the original series IMHO). I found that the series is currently only available on VHS at Amazon and I don’t know of any current plans to release them on DVD, but there is a fan web site, Star Trek: The Animated Series that even offers short (some are 5 to 6 minute long) realaudio and avi video clips from the shows. It even offers Realaudio audio from the entire show! I’ll probably be picking up some of these classics, and I’d like to plan a monthly Star Trek TAS beer and pretzel party if anybody local is interested.

Live long and Prosper!