I watch a lot of Star Trek. There’s really just something comforting about the show to me, and I don’t mind watching the same episodes over and over. I’m usually doing something else while it’s on, like surfing the web or reading, but there are always little things about the show that I want to look up. Maybe I’ll recognize an actor and want to know what other characters they have played on the show (most guests have had several appearances), or maybe I just want to look up some earlier episode the show references. Of course I could always run over to StarTrek.com for the official word, but I’ve found that MemoryAlpha provides a much nicer way to find those Trek answers. A wiki is the perfect way for big groups of disparate contributors to create reference documentation, and MemoryAlpha provides a wonderful reference for all things Trek.

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.

One of the coolest home theater setups I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t be able to rationalize spending the money it would take to reproduce a working replica of the Enterprise D in my own home, but I’m glad somebody could! Check it out here.

Trektoday is reporting that George Takei will reprise his role (via the fan-film New Voyages) in an episode to be written by David Gerrold (the author of the classic Tribbles). I discussed the return of another Star Trek (The Original Series) cast member, Chekov,
in an earlier story. Sulu was always one of my favorite characters on the show. I remember wishing that Sulu would be given his own Star Trek show after he appeared as a captain in one of the Star Trek movies. “Shields!” I’m looking forward to seeing him in New Voyages, even if it is kinda campy.

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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