Found out about this today on the Adrenaline Vault forums that I frequent and wanted to share it here with you all, in case it hasn't already been put on NC. If it has then we'll just delete this thread. Anyway, it's a new nonprofit website that produces new episodes and includes new actors playing Kirk, Spock, etc, and even some that longtime TOS fans will recognize, including John "Mr. Kyle" Winston as Captain Matt Jefferies, and Eddie "Mr. Leslie" Paskey, playing his original character's own father, Admiral Leslie. It picks up right after the end of Season 3, going into Season 4 and possibly even 5 if they get enough donations for it. The episodes will be downloadable for free and any donations for it are to be made out to The Space Shuttle Children's Trust Fund, with gifts for varying amounts that one donates.

New Voyages is scheduled to, ahem, launch this month.

It's funny that I found this now, because I stumbled into it from elsewhere this morning, and I may be writing an episode. I'll keep you all posted on how that goes.

What I like is the link for I do not agree on their homepage.

Wow, cool Steve Brice! How'd you finagle that? Think you could put in a good word for the rest of us?!

Just d/led and watched the entire pilot episode (thank the Maker for DSL) and found it a bit of a fun experience.

"Come What May" Observations:

Notable quote: "We're going to need a ship's counselor around here before long." --McCoy.

Being the pilot episode, and a low-budget show besides, this really should get off lightly, but I did notice a few things lacking. The acting, for one, which shouldn't surprise. The plot was quite odd and dialogue awkward at times. I really couldn't stand the actors playing McCoy and Uhura, they don't get the character at all. This is Kirk (James Cawley) as well to a certain extent. And what's with Cawley's hair?

The actors playing Scotty and Chekov don't exactly get the accents right, but they try. I think I liked Spock (Jeff Quinn) best out of all the cast, but I do have a preference for Spock.

Good points: Excellent special effects (CGI outstrips the original show's FX any day), great sound design, good set design and music (nearly all taken directly from the original series.)

Two beautiful touches at the very beginning and very end of the show. The original 60's "NBC presents in living color" peacock bumper before the episode start, and the original Balok-puppet still frame at the very end of the credits. Bravo.

Nits on first viewing: After Onabi is stunned by Chekov and carted away, Kirk, Spock and McCoy discuss something or other. At the very end of the scene, the boom mike is very visible in the upper-left corner.

Inside the Razzenfrazzen Anomaly, where they are hiding from the Bor-- excuse me, Mot-Naph, Kirk orders power diverted to the transporter in order to return Onabi and her companion back to their ship. The only problem is the Anomaly is supposed to disrupt shields and sensors, wouldn't it preclude the transporter from working as well? (It must rely on sensors)

Admiral Leslie is a grouchy old guy, isn't he? And Larry Nemecek obviously is no actor. Even though, it's great to see Eddie Paskey and John Winston again.

In the "flash-forwards" where Kirk and Spock experience clips from the movies--, sorry, visions from their future, Mark Lenard's face appears behind Spock at one point. Did he get credit? And it was a bit fun to see pieces from the movies recreated, but they were fairly butchered by the new actors, especially Cawley. And why did the glowing thing think Kirk and Spock needed to see their indecision to make a choice about dinner with Gillian Taylor? Humorous scene, yes, but not recreated very well by Cawley and Quinn.

One last note: During the CGI repair scenes near the end, we see Kirk and Spock in pressure suits, standing on the hull of one of the warp nacelles. It's William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy's likeness, not James Cawley's and Jeff Quinn's.

You have the bridge, Mr. Rand.

Corney.... Cheesy... Badly Acted.... It was like watching an episode of the Original Series again

Before Spock, McCoy and the rest enter Kirk's office during the Orion slave girl scene, the pink Feinberg lighting is far to the right of the door. When they enter, it has moved onto the door. Incidently, the inclusion of that lighting goes a long way towards recapturing the look of TOS.

During the conversation about mind-melding with Ohn, Rand's insignia is bent.

Personally, I always figured that if they ever wanted to do a series set in the TOS era with Kirk & co., it should be another animated series with Shanter and crew doing the voices, or at least, imitators. I can accept the idea of actors replacing them, but what is with that ridiculous bouffant hairdo and cowlick they have for Kirk? I don’t recall Shatner ever having such a silly ‘do. James Cawley and John Kelley’s acting is just AWFUL. And Bones’ southern accent is sorely missed. The poor quality of the acting becomes particularly pronounced when Cawley and Jeff Quinn try to reproduce scenes between Shatner and Nimoy from the movies. The lack of age makeup for these scenes was also unwelcome. I thought Scotty and Chekov’s accents, on the other hand, were adequate for a fan-created series.

I certainly am not impressed with the blatant ripoff of Q Who(TNG), wherein Onabi tells Kirk that they have no idea what’s out there, like the Breen and the Cardassians, and pitting them against the Monap, which sheared off all the life on one of the continents of the planet in the beginning of the episode. Even the Monap ship looked Borg, except that it was a pyramid, and used Borg sound effects. What the series lacked in acting, I might’ve hoped it made up for in an original take on a story or villain. My mistake. If there was supposed to be some significance to the story’s use of the hymn Amazing Grace or some musing on the use of “different methods” (whatever that means, since the episode barely touched upon this idea), I didn’t see it, and it doesn’t get off the hook merely because Spock speculated that this was a “vision” of a future foe.

The sets look faithful, and the CGI effects look really nice. That space station and other two ships seen near it in the beginning of the episode? Nice! That sophisticated docking port that launches the Enterprise was REALLY nicely designed (most other people might’ve been content designing a simple door, but these guys went to the trouble of having actual catwalks swivel down in front of the ship), the exterior EV suit shots at the end of the episode were a nice surprise, seeing an actual working CGI shot of what looked like Starbase 11 from Court Martial(TOS) was a real hoot, and the one nice, original addition to the standard scene formula was the use of that downshot of the turbolift traveling through the turbolift tubes as a transitional shot.

Nice progression of Sulu, Chekov and Rand’s stories, but I do miss Sulu.

The music was a BIT too overbearing. I was surprised though, that they actually use the music from the end of The Best of Both Worlds partI(tNG).

Why doesn’t Kirk call security when Onabi shows up in his office? Why is he just sitting there when Spock comes in? And how can Spock just waltz in with a bunch of people without permission from Kirk?

After Chekov stuns Onabi in Kirk’s quarters, there is a shot of her unconscious on the floor, slightly writhing. She is only shot from the shoulders up to indicate that is nude again, but you can see that she is wearing a red or brown shoulderless dress or tube top, because you see the very top it, just barely coming into the screen.

I'm guessing Kirk, like his predecessor Pike, had been a victim of a typical human male's first reaction to an Orion slave girl: instant brain-fry.

Wow, cool Steve! How'd you finagle that?

The F.A.Q. page says that they'll consider any story, provided that you either sign a waiver or have it registered with the WGA or something like that. I simply e-mailed the publicity guy and asked for some info.

Think you could put in a good word for the rest of us?!

I don't know about that -- giving reference for people whose fiction writing I've never seen, and people who I've never met or even talked to outside of this site -- might not be too useful. However, you can check out the site and see what to do for yourself.

What does Paramount have to say about that site?

"You're fired!" (I hope)

Good question; my understanding of copyright law is that since it's not for profit of any kind, it's more or less okay. It's kind of like an elaborate kind of fan fiction, though -- for the most part this is fair use.

Your understanding is wrong. It doesn't matter if it is for profit or not.

Fan fiction is not Fair Use. Too much fan fiction can result in Copyright protection being lost and the original material going into the Public Domain.

If this project doesn't have Paramount's blessing the Paramounties will shut it down. (Legally they may have no choice.)

I used to have some web addresses for Copyright FAQs. If I can find them I'll post them.
Also a week or two ago I came across a group for fans of some author (the name esapes me & I can't remember the search words that brought up the site) and he specifically addressed the legal problems of fanfic which some other authors had experienced.

My mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.

You're welcome. Copyright is an interesting, if occasionally baffling, area.

John A. Lang - "You're fired!" (I hope)
I assume that comment is directed at Berman & Braga?

Oh please, please...

KAM--correct.

Bad news--

Well, I think it is, anyway. From scanning the "New Voyages", message board, which the makers post on quite frequently, something has come to light.

Onabi is Q.

That is all.

I haven't gotten to that part of the episode yet, but the MO sure sounds similar.

One thing I found odd, though: IIRC, Kirk mentions in his official log that he had "the dubious honor" of meeting the new admiral; wouldn't it be a better idea to use that phrasing in a personal log?

Having just seen Acts 2 & 3, I agree with more of your criticisms. The lighting and camera handling in some of these scenes is awful (the worst case probably being the "headlight" effect that a camera-based light makes in the first scene outside The Brig), and as if some of the acting wasn't already bad, they just BUTCHER the scenes lifted from the movies (and I'm not talking about the lines of dialogue stolen out of STII and III, either ).

Why do I feel like I'm going to regret trying to join this motley crew...?

Apparently, the makers of New Voyages have the approval of Paramount...or at least an assurance that they won't be sued for massive copyright infringement.

I guess I spoke too soon about that episode working out... New Voyages isn't accepting scripts anymore, and I haven't heard anything about my treatment (which I sent at least three months ago).

Belated update on Kirk's hair situation: James Cawley is an Elvis impersonator in his day job. Makes sense, I guess....

Anyway, in Episode 2, we'll see standard Kirk hair.

Thank the Prophets.

Anyone seen episode II of this new series. I though it played out pretty well, it was a time traval episode and does a kind of Peter David style thing of incorporating Captian Pike, doomsday machine, the guardian of forever, Matt Decker and a special surprise from the future. As I said I thought it was a fun ep but I'd really like it if the next ep could play out without such gimics (just like in the first where they used someone who may be Q and the borg) and just do a straightforward story in Kirk's own time about the people who live in that time.

SPOILER STUFF


Well, first my criticisms: With 'Doomsday Machine' being my favorite original episode, and quite possibly my favorite Trek of all time, I didn't like the doomsday Machine re-design. It looks like it got left in the trash compactor, and lost about half it's height.
Also, the story was sometimes confusing, especially with re-used and quick-cut footage. Understandable, however, given all the work they've done already.
Thirdly, several elements, such as the Slingshot effect, and the Pike/Baffle Plate incident, seem to be rushed, and could use a bit more setup. (Spock behavior during the latter scene seems kinda messed up... but perhaps he doesn't act like he remembers the exact same thing happening with McCoy because it didn't happen in his timeline... but I digress.)

That said... WOW! WHOA! THUNK! (The latter sound being my jaw hitting the floor.)

I liked the first episode, at least in it's CGI, it's future scenes, and the subplot/humor with the admiral. But the story itself I didn't care for too much.
This one, however... YIKES! So many concepts in so short a time... very well done, in my opinion.
Where do I start? The look and feel of the old Enterprise? The numerous past references? The incredible opening sequence with the gateway planet? The inclusion of minor details like the little helm console viewer that Phil so often commented on the speed of, or Spock's 'altered persona' in the past? The Post-ending credits 'Bilbo Baggins' reference? (These guys are obviously Trekkies in a way that surpasses Hard-core.)
Despite a few minor flaws, I'd say 'Long Live the New Voyages!' Welcome, please stay a while, and see what you can do about replacing the creators of 'Enterprise.' Well done indeed.
As for a few nits: How did the Enterprise survive when she intercepted that beam for the Faragut, and how did she slip behind the planet in time to lay the trap? What am I missing?

Wouldn't the burried ultra-gate have been detectable on sensors in the initial City on the Edge of Forever incident? Nonetheless, the flying down/awakening the Gateway was an incredible scene.

In her initial appearence, Number One seemed a little too emotional.

Isn't it overly convenient that the Klingon commander was the father of the science officer? (What a concept, though... a Klingon science officer!)

One of my favorite moments was the appearence of the future Enterprise and Admiral Kirk. But how could he be from the future if Kirk and the Faragut are about to be destroyed? The temporal logic seems a little off here, even for the rather unusual Star Trek style of
Temporal mechanics.

As mentioned earlier, why is Spock so passive when confronting Pike, especially turning and walking away? If he wanted to prevent Pike's injury at all costs, why not neck pinch him?

When I saw "Come What May" earlier in 2004 I was only partially impressed. I felt it was an admirable fan effort for a worthy cause, but the idea of continuing the Original Series characters with new actors left me a little cold. Not that I don't think other actors COULD play the Classic cast parts, I just didn't want the legacy ruined by ameteurish performances. Starship Exeter, the other web-based Classic Series production, took a much better take on Trek, by creating original characters set on a 23rd Century era ship. That way, flaws in the performance didn't reflect on characters that have been beloved for forty years. And yes, both New Voyages and Exeter do have flaws. But, both productions have something missing from the newer professional series, namely love for the subject matter. After viewing both Exeter and New Voyages first episodes, I felt thrilled about Star Trek the way I did when I watched the Original Series as a kid. No episode of Enterprise has thrilled me in that way until their improved fourth season. However, with New Voyages second episode the old Star Trek feeling was recaptured 100 fold! Although the alternate timeline idea has been overdone, and there were quite a few plotlines intermingling (Guardian, Decker, Pike, Doomsday Machine) overall it was well thought out and executed. The details were just right, just the way the fans would write a story that paid attention to Trek lore. I even liked the Klingon science officer Kargh, a tip of the hat to the Andorian science officer Thelin, Spock's temporal replacement in the Animated Series. The idea of Project:Gateway also comes from the Animated Series, where researchers were featured as traveling to study the Guardian. Alan Dean Foster's novelization expands on the idea further, explaining the extent of the Federation's efforts to establish a research facility on the Guardian's world. The cameos by former Trek actors were both surprising and welcome. Eddie Paskey and John Winston in "Come What May" as Admiral Leslie and Captain Matt Jeffries(!), who is no doubt a descendant of Trip Tucker's former CO Captain Jeffries, whom he worked with on the Warp 2 Project (Enterprise, "First Flight") and William Windom, Barbara Luna, and Malachi Throne in "In Harm's Way". Windom was given a nice opportunity to revisit Decker and Throne not only got to add a Klingon to his list of Trek performances, but dubbed in a line for Commodore Mendez too! And then, there is the added bonus of visiting with Captain Pike and his crew in their prime. Now a few nits: While I can accept the concept of other actors playing the roles, there should be more effort to make the new actor resemble the original as close as possible. For instance, the actor playing Pike could have had black hair. The actress portraying Janice Rand could have had her trademark blonde hairdo. John Kelley could try to inject a little Southern accent into McCoy's speech. And a makeup nit, Jeffrey Quinn could have his ears glued back in the manner Fred Phillips did Leonard Nimoy before applying the pointed ears. This helps prevent the dreaded "pixie effect" where the ears stick out from the sides of the head, a very un-Vulcan look indeed. "In Harm's Way" boasts numerous improvements over its predecessor. Charles Root was a great Scotty, no offense to Jack Marshall, but again, matching a new actor stepping into the part of a well-known character is crucial to believing that these ARE the continuing voyages. Nice touch of showing Scotty's movie era mustache too. James Cawley adds Kirk-like mannerisms to his performance without aping Shatner. Keeping his "Kirk-isms" subtle helps his performance, otherwise it would seem like an SNL sketch.
So, in conclusion. Will I be signing on to New Voyages for the rest of its mission? Yes, I believe I will. If the quality continues to improve, it could be as good as anything Paramount has made, certainly better than Enterprise. They have already made significant improvements in just two episodes. They show a respect for Trek history and detail that is necessary for a project like this to be a sucess. I wish them well, and look forward to downloading the two next episodes in 2006.

**Regards from Captain Dunsel **

Eddie "Mr. Leslie" Paskey, playing his original character's own father, Admiral Leslie.

No doubt some wacky comedy hijinks could be had when the Admiral calls the Enterprise to check on his son just at the moment that that engineering console explodes in Leslie's face *again*...or when the Admiral comes aboard for an inspection and Kirk has to keep him from meeting all the Leslie clones that lurk on the lower decks.

I just this weekend saw "In Harm's Way" for the first time. One nit: the episode shows how Captain Pike gets his severe injuries from the baffle plate explosion. The problem is this: in the episode, this is shown happening while the Enterprise is locked in combat with the doomsday machine. However, according to the original "Menagerie" Pike's injuries occurred not on his own ship, but while he was on an "inspection tour of a cadet vessel".

Yes, that's where Pike was- once the Enterprise jumped forwards in time to chase the machine, they encounter Pike on a training cruise with a group of cadets aboard the USS Horizon-ish vessel. It is there to which movie-era spock beams to try and stop Pike from getting into the accident.

Fanboy drool moment of the decade: The next episode will feature Walter Koenig in the role of Chekov, and answer the question's of his post-Generations whereabouts!

COULD... THAT... BE... ANY... COOLER!?!?!

Yes. If it was an actual canon production. :-)

I really, really enjoyed both episodes, despite their faults. It's really the ultimate fanboy Trek production, and about 20 later than I wanted but I give the guys an 'A' for everything, despite the details listed by other nitpickers. Gorgeous CGI stuff! I can't get enough of it.
My thoughts;
That Borg pyramid fly-by, taking hits and not slowing down; the Enterprise swivelling to fire weapons, the shadow of the pyramid passing over the Enterprise-- I just ate it up! Fantastic!
Chekov's hair comes to mind (besides Kirk's GIANT BLACK hair). Geez, was this trying out for a part in a Ramones movie? Give that man a haircut! His hair was worse than Walter Koenig's original wig!
I appreciated the Orion slave girl dance, but the actress was moving too fast, as if she was trying to incorate 20 moves in 30 seconds. Do it s-l-o-w-l-y and THEN it'll be sexy.
Could have found a prettier actress to play Rand. Actually, just a *pretty* actress, period. Sorry, but that young lady isn't photogenic at all! A blonde basket-weave wig MIGHT have helped.
Luigi was wondering about the inclusion of the Amazing Grace plaque. My guess is that the producers decided to find an explanation for the song, Amazing Grace, to be played in Star Trek II, which garnered laughs in the audience when I saw it in theaters 20 years ago, and a 'What the--?' reaction in myself. I guess Spock was so impressed by it he left instructions for it to be played at his funeral.
Kinggidzillak said, '...just at the moment that that engineering console explodes in Leslie's face *again*...' I have no recollection of any original episode that had the console blowing up in Leslie's face, let alone Scotty's. Console explosions happened ALL the time in Voyager, but not TOS.

"Yes. If it was an actual canon production. :-)"-Snick

Oh come on... if it was a cannon production, B&B would just mess it up.

Laying all that aside, it's WALTER KOENIG!!!

(One final comment about the cannon issue: I would gladly trade "In Harm's Way" for the first 2 seasons of Enterprise, along with the last third of season 3 except for the final episode, which was just 'chase the weapon' filler to ake the story arc last all season. In fact, I might just trade the New Voyages episodes for everything except "Through The Mirror Darkly" and the new shots of the Enterprise-D in "These are the Voyages...")

>Oh come on... if it was a cannon production, B&B would just >mess it up.

Well, if it was a cannon production, it would have had William Conrad in it.

I'm sorry... I don tget the reference...?

Search IMDB for William Conrad.

Good one, Todd.

Did that, actually. Guess I'm just too obtuse to get the joke. :-)

William Conrad played Cannon on the TV show of the same name.

Ooohhhhhh. Well, as expected, I now feel stupid. :-)

Hey, not everyone grew up in the '70s!

Sorry, I didn't mean to make anyone feel dense. That was admittedly somewhat obscure. I was poking genteel fun at the mis-spelling.

If it makes you feel better Todd, I got it.

Now things are getting interesting. The last 2 episodes have featured actual TOS cast members.

"TO SERVE ALL MY DAYS" had Walter Koenig appearing as a Chekov who gets infected by the virus from "The Deadly Years" which causes him to age rapidly.

"THE WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME" features George Takei both in a flash forward to the future when he is Captian of The Excelsior and as a future version of Sulu because of a time anomaly of the week.

Both were co-written by actual writers who worked on the real authorized Trek.

The next episode will be an adaptation of David Gerrold's "BLOOD & FIRE," the controversial unproduced TNG script that was inspired by the AIDS epidemic and would feature an openly gay crew member. Gerrold is also listed as the director of this episode as well. Looks quite interesting, also nice to get away from time travel and other gags that were used in the other episodes to show ships of different eras and older actors actually reprising their roles.

I found World Enough And Time to be utterly fantastic- a bit of a tear-jerker, too- and a truly amazing contributon to Star Trek lore.

To Serve All My Days had some great moments, but I still don't understand how the ending of that episode is supposed to fit in... it was very confusing to me.

Blood & Fire looks fairly lackluster to me... but it could just be a poor trailer... after all, The New Voyages has seldom been a letdown!

Star Trek - Phase II, which is what I think New Voyages is now called, will shoot a script that Norman Spinrad wrote for TOS that was almost filmed, but ultimately rejected, titled "He Walked Among Us." More information, and a link to an e-book download, can be found here. (I can't believe that Milton Berle was going to be the guest star. Berle was then under a 30-year contract with NBC, that ran from 1951-81. Maybe NBC was trying to get something back on the money they were paying him, IIRC some $100,000 annually.)

Blood and Fire Part II:
Episode 5.
A very good conclusion to Blood and Fire and for this episode it guest starred TNG alum Denise Crosby.
In TNG, Denise Crosby played Tasha Yar. Here she plays her grandmother Dr Jenna Yar and this episode does not fail in making reference to the different generations of Yars.
There was some tragedies along the way but it sure provides a service in bringing about a very good conclusion to this story.

Any other Trekkers here familiar with the fan series Star Trek Continues? I was familiar with the fan series "Star Trek: The New Voyages", but was unimpressed with the writing or acting of those stories (even if the effects were pretty good.) But I just discovered Continues today, and have just watched "Pilgrim of Eternity", the first (and to date the only) episode, which is a sequel to the original series episode Who Mourns for Adonais? I must say I'm impressed. The casting is pretty good (even if the performances of Vic Mignogna and Larry Nemecek will invite comparisons to our ideas of how Kirk and Bones should act like), the photography is pretty good, even superior in some instances, to TOS (also due to Mignogna, who also wrote and directed), the effects are mostly top-notch, especially for a fan series (except for one shot of a guy in a spacesuit hurling through space), and most surprisingly, the writing is pretty good! The episode features the return of an actor reprising one of the roles from the original TOS episode, and there's even a twist that I wasn't expecting at the end. I also appreciated other bits, like the fact that Scotty is played by Chris Doohan, the son of James Doohan, who originated the role, the Bible quote, which added a bit of literacy to the story. And that closing shot? A nicely done moment, both in terms of story and special effects. I recommend it.

I had a look at it. It has good original series vibes, the chosen actors are for the most part quite good in their roles, especially Kirk and Scott, but McCoy just didn't do it for me, he somehow looked too cheery. And Checkov didn't have a lot to do in that one, he wasn't even the one who got zapped by that energy discharge on the bridge.

One thing I didn't like was the storyline. In and of itself, it is quite good, but it revisits a story from the original series that didn't need to be. Apollo's sory was complete, nothing more needed being said about it and it should have been left that way.

Ah yes, the other fan made web series. Although I preferred Star Trek Continues, this one wasn't bad.