Slashdot Mirror
Fan-Made Star Trek Episode Available for Download
Minnesota trekker writes "Two Minnesota fans of the original "Star Trek" series spent seven years, off and on, creating an all-new episode in the 1960s style using their own actors, sets and props. Behold, the U.S.S. Exeter (www.starshipexeter.com). The episode's look and feel is amazingly authentic. The story is inventive and the acting surprisingly good. The damn thing, dubbed "The Savage Empire," is actually watchable. The site gives lots of details on how the episode was created, and even more background is available on the Pioneer Press site."
To the William Shatner school of overacting?
Cannot...seem...to...communicate...with...the aliens...must get...somekindof...resolution before Enterprise...is...destroyed!
This is pretty cool. I remember a similar community effort being discussed several years ago to bring the Timothy Zahn Star Wars sequels to the screen (or to tape, whatever). Never got off the ground, AFAIK.
I am a little worried as to how this will be treated by Paramount. They are notoriously evil when it comes to "protecting" their copyrights, especially when it comes to Trek.
Also, why the Exeter? Is there any reason given as to why the Federation would name a ship after an East Coast prep school with a history of buggery?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
The episode's look and feel is amazingly authentic. The story is inventive and the acting surprisingly good.
Wait a sec. No way it can be authentic to the original and be well acted.
Much of the charm... of the original... Star Trek was... the wooden acting... not to mention the... inexplicable pauses... in William Shatner's... delivery.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
is 49 human years.
Trolling is a art,
They used their own actors, and it took them seven years? Can you see the people age visibly from one scene to the next? That can't be good for continuity. Suddenly the lead actor has gray hair and put on 20 pounds...
Of course, that kind of thing still wouldn't drop it below the quality of most new shows that issue forth from the bowels of the major networks.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
"Captain, I am detecting incoming connection from the Slashdot Quadrant. They have taken all available frequencies! Aarrgghh!!"
(The console blows up)
"Red alert, shields up!"
This looks like a plot by Apple who wants to show off their OS X server (it's mac.com..)
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
... that these fellas get laid ALL the time. seriously. chicks dig that shit.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Am I the only one who thought of a scene where the captain opens a hatch to the food reserves, and thousands of video cards drop down on him?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
when does the black guy in the red shirt get killed by aliens?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
My apologies if this does it in, but here are some direct links to the portions of the movies (i.e., not framed in HTML pages)
Teaser
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
Tag/End Credits
I think the episode would be better if the dialouge and video sound quality was as bad as the shots and sound effects of the original, but man - this is impressive ambition to say the least.
Schnapple
What I immediately thought was: cool, people can make fairly decent TV programmes on a tiny budget using the latest digital technologies. It's great seeing people who don't have the backing of the media mega-industry creating their own works. This is just one shred of evidence to add to the list to show that the Internet and open technology is about so much more than centralised shopping and news.
:-)
Then I noticed how long it took them to do it
Agreed.
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. mo v
The url's for the mov files are:
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/teaser.m
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/actone.m
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/acttwo.m
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/actthree
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/tag.mov
And btw mplayer can play these if you have compiled it right and have the proper codecs. Which also means that you can reencode them to something else.
Here are links to directly download the vids, in case anyone hates using a stupid browser plugin:
o v
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/teaser.mov
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/actone.mov
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/acttwo.mov
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/actthree.m
http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/tag.mov
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I predict that the Paramount Legal Away Team will soon be setting phasers on "heavy bitchslap"...
Long time Trek fans will recall that the Exeter was one of the original 12 Constitution-class starships. Others included Constitution (obviously), Enterprise (duh!), York, Potempkin, Hood... that's all I recall off-hand.
The old AMC U.S.S. Enterprise I built with my Dad when I was a bout 8 or so had decals for all twelve ships with appropriate call numbers (NCC-1700, etc).
I'm sure the classic, original Technical Reference Guide, with its silly "20th century equivalent" electronic components probably has a listing, but mine's in a box somehwhere.
p.s. I live in a subdivision called "Exeter".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Is it just me, or the old fashioned klingons were far better vilains that the new ones? I mean, old klingons were cynical, smart, dissimulated, and very dangerous.
But NG's (or motion-picture) style klingons are irracional, fanatic, even dumb, and it's by no way credible that this kind of civilization would ever manage to build any kind of science or engineering.
Note that both know how to be brutal, but the first ones used brutality as a tool for their objectives, and, for the new ones, it's an almost biological characteristic.
I remember that I've read, in a magazine, that the klingons of the 60's represented the enemies of the U.S. in that time (China, USSR), and, the klingons from 80 to date, represented the new ones (fanatics). It may be, but, as vilains, the previous generation of Klingons were way more fun.
When you say to your friends, "You know what would have been cool? If they had gone to a planet where...", and they agree, that's normal fan behavior.
When you actually write up the idea you were thinking of in a 200 word concept and share it with your friends, who all like it, that's committed fan behavior.
When you flesh out the concept to a 10 page script treatment, that's borderline wierd fan behavior. If your friends offer revisions to correct continuity errors, that's definitely wierd fan behavior.
When you write out an entire script in three acts and actually perform it with your friends, that's borderline obsessive fan behavior. Defintiely obsessive if you film the process.
When you perform it with homemade costumes, props, etc., and have special effects and a musical score to go with the footage, and then reformat the film as downloadable Quicktime videos for all the world to see, you are ready for film school.
Either that, or the plastic pointy ears you wear to bed every night are cutting off the flow of blood to the brain.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
I can almost guarantee that this production, however amateur, is infinitely superior to any recent Paramount effort for one simple reason:
The people who made it are passionate about the subject matter.
The best years of Star Trek were when people with a love for the material were in charge of the shows/movies. I'll let the Slashdot crowd argue about when those were, but I think the current failure of Star Trek isn't one of story or budget or marketing: it is one of passion.
Commercial Star Trek is a cheap hustle, fleecing idealistic and naive fans. It's always been that to some extent, but there was once some feeling behind it. Too bad Star Trek fans are now just a demographic to be exploited.
I'm sure many of the comments here will amount to "these guys have too much time on their hands" or "haw-haw, these guys can't get laid," but I say good for them. Criticizing and tearing something down by making snarky comments on the Internet is the easiest and least impressive thing in the world.
Actually doing something is hard. Especially something as eccentric as this. These guys had the passion and the perseverance to make something -- to start a project many people would consider too expensive and time-consuming to bother with, and they saw it through to completion. I have to respect that.
More than once I've heard people say something like "wouldn't it be cool to build some cheap sets and make our own episode of (Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, My Mother the Car)", but these guys actually went ahead and did it. Which, despite whatever shortcomings the film project might have, is a hell of a lot more impressive than sitting around talking smack about it.
I watched this a few days ago, actually, and it was fun to watch. The people who made it have a lot of love for their subject matter, and put a lot of work into the little details, which I appreciate. And that big pink dinosaur is a riot -- and as special effects go, still beats the heck out of that "lava monster" Spock mind-melded with in that classic Trek episode.
So I say good for them, and I hope it doesn't take another seven years for the sequel.
Paramount is touchy about this stuff. I don't see any evidence the producers got permission -- in fact they claim copyright on the credits page. Permission is easier to get before than after. There are some trademark issues here, too, I think.
One hopes of course that Paramount has a sense of humor and goes along. Technically all that fanfic stuff violates copyright and trademark, too. Paramount should formally give permission to prove it is policing its stuff. Maybe Exeter did get permission and hid it somewhere....
It does look like they did a nice job (which is exactly what possibly gets them in trouble) but what bothers me is the sort of stranglehold on scifi creativity Star Treak has had by virtue of its success. Everyobody seemed to have transporters, "energy weapons", and annoying characters with apostrophes in their names (like ah'Choo or Phtt'tt). It took real creativity to break out of this mold, as in shows like Babylon 5 and Farscape, not that these are perfect (Trek sure wasn't).
Maybe these folks should have gone where no nerd had gone before?
I'm now sharing all 5 files on the Gnutella and WinMX networks. In a minute I'll have them on Kazaa too. They're named starshipexeter_actone.mov, starshipexeter_acttwo.mov, etc. I'll leave them up until sometime tomorrow.
And once you've downloaded them, make sure you share them too (if your DL and shared directories aren't the same)!
. . . but they cut me out, in an effort to be as authentic as possible.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Hi /. crowd,
;-)
I mirrored the movies so everybody can have a look. The mirror is at a site with a 1 Gigabit Uplink and powerfull ZEUS web servers, almost unsinkable
Click here to download the stuff.
Have fun!
fastlink