SLEEK, GEEK, CHIC
‘Star Trek’ fans go where few have gone before with new movie
by Mark Volpe
Once there was an Elvis impersonator who wanted to be a part of the original “Star Trek” universe. Seriously. You can’t make this up.
Using the original series blueprints (acquired via his role as a costumer on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), James “Kirk” Cawley and his friends rented a studio flat to construct their scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701’s bridge and began shooting a fourth season of the original “Star Trek” as if the show had never been cancelled in 1969. Under the title “Star Trek: New Voyages,” their pointillist, pointed-eared attention to detail caused a Trekkie sensation. Cawley’s gamble that the original series characters could be personified by fresh faces paid off, producing the finest “Star Trek” fan films (fan-produced tributes) to date. The four films to date are greatly ambitious in their production design and perfect in their homage to the original, so professional and well-produced, in fact, that many original cast members of “Star Trek” rekindled their old stereotyping roles to beam aboard.
Tonight, Cawley gets to play Kirk opposite original series stars George Takei (”Captain Hikaru Sulu”), Grace Lee Whitney (”Commander Janice Rand”) and Majel Barrett Roddenberry (”Computer Voice”). Rod Roddenberry (son of Gene) is onboard as Consulting Producer, and veteran television writer Marc Scott Zicree directed and wrote “World Enough And Time.” Walter Koenig (”Chekov”) is also here to lend his support to the “New Voyages,” having appeared as Ensign Chekov in the previous episode feature-length episode, “To Serve All My Days.” And all this because a group of fans’ will to hit the sky trail again was so strong? Strange new worlds, indeed.
