Star Trek New Voyages Honored by TVGuide.com

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It's official. The fanfilm project, Star Trek New Voyages, has received a nomination for the TV Guide Online Video Award. The award category is "Best Sci-Fi Webisode" - the episode titled "World Enough and Time." Fan voting is now underway by clicking on "Sci-Fi Webisodes" from this webpage:

www.tvguide.com/special/onlinevideoawards/default.aspx

While you're there, be sure to enter the contest for an all-expenses-paid trip for two to the award ceremony. Star Trek New Voyages has three other competitors for the award. Each competitor has a demo video of their nominated episode. And when you watch the New Voyages demo, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Actress Grace Lee Whitney and actor George Takei, both former original-series regulars, star in the episode. If you have broadband internet and Flash installed on your system, you can see the entire episode by visiting this webpage:

stnv.dragonfly.com

In addition, "World Enough and Time" and all episodes previous to it are available for FREE downloading and/or streaming in multiple formats from this webpage:

stnv.net

Of course, if you're curious about the fanfilm project itself, the best place to find out about it is at its homepage:

StarTrekNewVoyages.com

The award ceremony is scheduled for December 1st at the world-famous Barker Hangar soundstage in Santa Monica, California. It will be a typical Hollywood-style gala affair complete with red carpets and celebrities, hosted by Carson Daly. And, a two-hour special program of the ceremony highlights will be aired nationally on MNT Network television stations December 5th at 8:00 PM (check local listings for time variances).

Those who know of the Star Trek New Voyages fanfilm project may think of this as an overnight success. Whether or not they win, the nomination and all honors that come with it are forever. But what the ordinary person might think of as an overnight success started many years ago in the 1960s.

It All Started Because of a Broken Promise

The NBC television network didn't really promise that the Star Trek original series would last beyond its three-year run. But, the promise was implied. Every show, without fail, began with a monologue where William Shatner (Captain Kirk) referred to the USS Enterprise's five-year mission. Insofar as ratings go, Star Trek was never considered a "hit" series. And finally, after three years of mediocre ratings, NBC decided to pull the plug. The dream was over and everybody went about their business doing other things.

But then, a funny thing happened. Diehard fans began a campaign of writing letters and making phone calls. They wanted Star Trek back. And this campaign spawned the first of several movies from Paramount Studios based on the original series, spinoff TV series based on different Star Trek themes and timelines, and movies based on the Next Generation spinoff series. Still, something was missing.

Enter James Cawley, a man who by profession is an Elvis Presley impersonator ... and who by avocation, was a man obsessed with the two years of Enterprise's five-year mission that were never delivered by NBC. Cawley was actually born in 1967 and was only 2 years old when the original series ended. But, Star Trek original series episodes have been in continual syndication since then. And, that's what he grew up watching and coming to love.

In 1997 when he was only 30 years old, Cawley began collecting props and costumes from the original series. As an intern with Next Generation, he then acquired the original blueprints for the original series Enterprise. Then, starting with $100,000 of his own money earned by impersonating Elvis, he began construction work on nearly flawless reproductions of original series sets in an abandoned used-car dealership in Port Henry, New York. And finally, with Jack Marshall and other talented production people at his side, Star Trek New Voyages was born ... releasing their pilot episode as a precursor to "season four" titled, "Come What May," in 2003.

What Comes Around Goes Around

CBS, Paramount Studios, and Viacom - current owners of the franchise - have given their blessings to Star Trek New Voyages - allowing them to, as Cawley puts it, "play in their sandbox." All Cawley and crew need to do is promise to not make any profit from their endeavors. And the high degree of talent and technical skill shown in that first episode caught the eyes and ears of professional actors and actresses, some of them alumni from the original series and/or spinoffs. Let me drop some names:

Walter Koenig, Grace Lee Whitney, George Takei, Denise Crosby, Majel Roddenberry, BarBara Luna, William Windom, Malachi Throne, Mary Linda Rapelye, Bill Blair, John Winston, Eddie Paskey, and Larry Nemecek.

All of them have either appeared (or will appear) in episodes subsequent to "Come What May." And all of them agreed to work for FREE, just for the chance of being part of the new adventure. Also working for free are directors such as Marc Zicree and David Gerrold ... as well as original series writers like D.C. Fontana.

And now, with the release of "World Enough and Time," many fans in-the-know are beginning to say that the student (Cawley) has become the master - that the fanfilm project has reached a point where it's no longer "as good as" the original series - it's "better than" the original series. And apparently, some people who are more knowledgible of the field, like TV Guide, agree.