Star Trek: New Voyages

August 28th, 2007

I’ve checked out all the episodes of Star Trek: New Voyages over the past year or so, which isn’t too hard to do since the self-financed fan-film production doesn’t move very quickly. Essentially, the series centers around the idea of following a later year of the multi year mission of the starship Enterprise. All the production is done by fans with no profit motive, at surely great personal expense and time commitment, but thanks to the modern production available via computers and digital cameras, the end result has the potential to create a better product than a major television studio back in 1967. I say potential because while the technical aspects and over all effort of Star Trek: New Voyages is impressive, it’s frankly impossible to reach the high bar set by the original Star Trek.

The retro look of the new episodes is excellent, featuring exact recreations of the sixties starship Enterprise sets. Exterior effects of space happenings have been updated using CGI which in light of the recent effects upgrading of orignal Trek actually comes across rather well.

What’s not as good is that the original trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are played by different, amateur actors. Even experienced actors would be hard-pressed to recreate the camraderie of Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley, and fan-actors have little prayer. It’s also more than a little odd to see other actors play the roles so synonymous with the originals.

The second complaint is the mediocre writing, with some truly ludicrous events stemming from fan fantasies such as: “What if the original Enterprise flew through a massive Guardian Of Forever?” or “What if three starships from different time continuums faced off against a Doomsday machine?” rather than dramatic sense. Fan exuberance is great, but can leave the less passionate fan behind. In the absence of solid writers or actors, fan films tend to rely on special effects and action sequences, which are easier to excel at.

However, as Star Trek: New Voyages has gained in notoriety (a Wired article certainly helped) a surprising number original Star Trek participants have come forward to volunteer their time. The second episode, To Serve All My Days features Walter Koenig, reprising his role as Pavel Chekov, and a script written by D.C. Fontana, who wrote several original series episodes. The third episode will feature George Takei as Sulu, and the fourth, Denise Crosby who was on The Next Generation. So with some more than competent actors and decent writing, New Voyages may address some of its previous problems.

It was a pleasant surprise to watch To Serve All My Days and find it mesmerizing. Chekov begins to prematurely age due to an engineering accident, and Walter Koening takes over as an elderly Chekov. At this point, the original Star Trek feeling comes forward. The pace is appropriately careful, the script has a good balance of drama with current events (the falling value of credits and the desire to wage war to prop up a collapsing economy), and pulls off a tricky writing challenge — how to incorporate a much older Walter Koenig into the plot and give his character enough meat to work with without feeling gratuitous.

When Chekov fires a couple of well-aimed phaser blasts at a Klingon ship, I actually forgot this was a fan film. I felt I’d seen a small part of an un-aired original episode. And that’s probably the highest compliment possible for a fan film — that I forgot about the seams and rough spots and was caught up by the story that recreated the original template.

Also worthy of mention is Mary Linda Rapelye as an ambassador. She provides another anchor for the episode to pivot on (true Trek-o-philes: Rapelye played Irina Galliulin in the original series episode “The Way To Eden” and was romantically involved with Chekov until she became a space hippie).

I also must concede that the amateur actors are improving — the alternate casting didn’t bother me as much as before. But this may be because the lines delivered are coming straight from an original Trek writer.

After the pleasant surprise, I’m really looking forward to the next episode, World And Enough Time with George Takei, back as Sulu. It’s supposed to be available right now, but the demand took down the New Voyages servers. Just seeing Sulu playing a crazed lunatic barbarian will be well worth the free download.

In the meantime you can download the first three episodes at the Star Trek: New Voyages website.