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gaykarstaagforever · 2 months ago

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Star Trek: New Voyages (previously Phase II) is now as much a nostalgic relic of the early 2000s as it ever was a nostalgic tribute to TOS. I've liked all of the ones I've seen, and I always respected the dedication these guys had to the "feel" of TOS, which they always nail, despite their obvious limitations. This project has always also benefited from being high-profile enough to attract actual Trek alums, and Hollywood industry talent that loved Trek enough to contribute.

I guess it's officially over now? Paramount turned a blind eye for years, but apparently put a stop to it around the time they decided to go all-in with New Trek. Yeah, because this noncanon largely-amateur web series was stealing viewers from Discovery.

...Though given how some old fans are, maybe it was?

Either way, they didn't bury the show. It's still all free on YouTube. There just aren't going to be any new ones. But they had from like 2004 to 2016 to produce these, and very much made good use of the time, ending up with ten episodes at a level of quality that was totally unmatched in a pre-YouTube, pre-monetization world, and is still remarkable for non-corporate fan content.

It's really hard to even review any of these, because what standard do you judge it by? Obviously it's inferior in production quality to the "real" shows, but it also puts something like the Channel Awesome movies to shame. Maybe it's like a more serious sibling to something like RLM's Space Cop? But New Voyages predates that by so much that the prosumer tech used to make it back then only makes it more impressive for that. Yet it also had scripts by DC Fontana and other professional TV writers, giving it a clear unfair advantage in that regard. It's really apples to oranges.

Suffice it to say, in 2025, New Voyages feels like a collection of really long cutscenes from a TOS FMV game made in the early 2000s, that couldn't get rights to license the actors' likenesses. Acting ability / impersonations of TOS actors range from good to good enough, sets are good but always feel as limited and confined as they were, CG is of its time and was made with a modern action-oriented sensibility, so this version of the TOS crew sure do get into a lot more dramatic and thrilling space battles than the crew did in the 60s. None of that is bad, and is in fact quite endearing, even if in a bit of an ironic way - like, TOS the real show is often pretty goofy and kinda stupid. These guys are recreating it with 2000s computers and a set they built in an abandoned Dollar store (literally). It's going to end up easy to poke fun at it, if you're so inclined, especially when TOS actors show up for cameos and you think, "Man. One of these things is not like the others. And that doesn't make the others look too good."

But again. How do you make something like this, on this budget, in this way, and not have it occasionally be overly earnest and saccharine and cringey? Most attempts at TOS fan projects like this are WAY worse about all that (there are many on YouTube; strap in). This is by far the best of them, showing a lot more restraint and attention to subtle detail than anyone could've asked for. And as for the production quality itself, I'd like to see you make an episode of Star Trek for the Internet through the 2010s that doesn't end up looking like you deinterlaced it from a Command and Conquer game.

All of which brings us to this specific New Voyages episode, "World Enough and Time".

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The big draw with this one is that it costars George Takei. And I mean "costars" - he's in the whole thing. Here he plays a version of Sulu that gets transported into a pocket of time where he lives 30 years in 30 seconds, and comes out of it a violent, broken man with an adult daughter, while the TOS crew he thought were dead have effectively paused in time. He doesn't know what to do with them, they don't know what to do with him, and on top of it all, the clock is, as usual, ticking down to the ship being torn apart by unstable gravity waves.

And Takei is down for it. He isn't doing a half-hearted performance for a fan film - he is 100% into this, as if it were a legit Trek movie. Comments on the video call this possibly his best performance as Sulu. I don't know if I'd go that far, because the Sulu here is basically a Mirror Universe version of that character (aside from the opening and ending scenes). But what he's doing is a very good performance of solid, complex material. He even has a knife-fighting scene. It is the most TOS-feeling part of this mostly TOS-feeling show.

The writing is very good, which makes sense, because it's by industry veterans who are, of course, TOS fans. This is the best kind of fan fiction, where all the characters act like you know they would, down to little relationships nuances. It's not parody, it's our blorbos living the lives we know they live. Even small moments with Chekov and Uhura are basically perfect, no notes.

The rest of the cast is...well, it's hard to quantify. These are young actors of varying degrees of skill, and some are going hard to mimic the TOS originals, while others seem to be happy merely standing in as vague approximations. Uneven, to say the least. But there wasn't professional casting or professional directing, here, so what do you want? They're not technically good, but they're not technically bad, they're just what they can be, as best they can. There's really no clearer way to put it. But what they DO all manage to do is get the "vibe" of these characters right. Building on top of the good script, everyone gets the beats right, even if they're out-of-tune, to mix metaphors. Even McCoy and Scotty - the two weakest performances here, sorry guys - are still THEM. And even these two actors manage to capture the ineffable essence of these characters, even if their accents are meh and their energy is a little flat. You can still squint and see the orignal TOS actors bleeding through them. That's a frankly INSANE thing to pull off, I don't know how they managed it, and it's what makes New Voyages as good as it is. These are college kids doing impersonations of 1960s TV actors for an Internet show in 2007, and even if they're never great at it, they're still good at it.

Including the guy playing Kirk, who is Shatnering it up a bit too much. There are still many moments when he goddamn feels like Jim Goddamn Kirk - probably because Shatner himself Shatnered it up a bit too much.

My complaints about this episode, and there are several, are, again, in context of what this is and how it was made. I don't intend to go hard on people who really went above and beyond to copy a TV show - with no expertise and no money - and still kinda pulled it off? So keep that in mind, as you read this and if you watch it. They fuck up a little, but only a little.

Production-wise, I don't know what the hell the score is up to. Oh man. It never backs off for a moment. Just spreading it on as thick as possible, every moment of the show. It's a good score, but is about 10 lbs of score jammed into a 5 lbs music...bag. Whatever. You get the point. They should have toned it down and let some of these moments stand on their own. That's what the original show did, even in the Swingin' Sixties. That was still way more subtle than this.

Things in general here are a bit too gung-ho. The sound effects are mixed too loud and they probably use them too much. They're accurate, but reach a point where the entire ship is constantly buzzing and humming and clicking all the time. It's distracting. As are all the loving shots of people pressing buttons and turning dials on the (very good) sets. Yeah, you want to show it off. I get it. But again, a little of this goes a long way. We don't need to watch every member of the cast push that intercom button at some point. We get it. It looks good. Relax.

The script is also, good as it is, very much a filmed spec script. If you don't know, the first draft of a script someone writes for a show is usually written like a novella, prioritizing the story beats and character interactions, and less interested in run-time or pacing or the practicality of actually filming it. The screenplay version comes next, where the first version is shoehorned into all those shapes, while hopefully retaining most of the good, quieter stuff. This episode isn't worried about only being 45 minutes long, or how it's going to show people walking on an exploded spacehip in 1967. So everything is packed into this. Which is good, but also means it feels too long and too wordy and too reliant on crazy special effects sequences to be a "real" TOS episode. ...Which it isn't. And that's okay. But I still felt it, and you will too, and it's disorienting. Especially by the end where we've had about 4 too many melodramatic emotional scenes, and it starts bordering on parody. Spock is way too verbose and emotionally honest, here, and for no good reason. This is a Sulu story. Keep the focus on him and his daughter.

Ah, yes. Sulu's daughter. She's...a lot. Like the score. On all the time. Never, ever stops. She's joyful and gracious and happy and gleeful and curious and shines like the rays of the Sun, and not only because she's trapped in a sparkly Science Field the whole episode. She's unbearable, frankly. I get that she's the apple of Sulu's eye, and the story wants us to really feel awful when he's put in a position where he may have to sacrifice his angel to save the Enterprise. But she's not a person in this story, she's just a sentient anime puppy-kitten hybrid who literally dances in the corridor like no one is watching (except Kirk, because of course he is, and yes, he's a total dog about it). She supposedly grew up completely isolated with Sulu on the weird time planet, and he must have been the best father ever, because while he is traumatized and a little deranged, she never stops smiling until right at the end. When she's on fire. And I was very much done with her obnoxious, sickeningly-sweet ass well before that point.

It's partly the performance, but I'm sure she was written this way, so what could anyone do? As Homer Simpson found out, you can't make Poochie work, no matter how hard you try. And any time this lady isn't on screen, the other characters are asking, "Where's Alana?"

It ruined the emotional payoff for me. Even while her tearful scenes with Sulu were well-acted, I didn't care. Because this wasn't a "real" person having feelings, it was a hack trope demanding I react appropriately. Just too much. If it had all been dialed back from 11 to like 7, as it would have been in in an actual episode, it would have been really good. But here we are.

Your milage may vary. People really seem to have connected with this, and it was nominated for a Hugo or something for this. I understand why. But I was laughing at a point where I should have been crying, and that's not good.

Also the final resolution of all this, as Sulu is captain of the Excelsior in his Maroon Monster years later, is also very lame. As soon as I knew what they were planning, I told them not to do it, but as I was watching the finished episode when this happened, it happened anyway. Come on, guys. Once again, too much.

Just like the references to Shakespeare's The Tempest they almost desperately force into this. They REALLY want you to appreciate them doing that, pausing to explain it and quote lines from it and then explain it again. I got it. You're very smart. Now shut up.

Also don't do Tempest references in your scifi anymore. You're not allowed. The 60s did that because it was a new cool idea back then, but one that wasn't terribly brilliant EVEN then. Pretend you read another play. I'll still pretend that makes you look smart. We'll work it out.

Oh, and here is a pedantic technical complaint I am me so I have to point out. While the original Enterprise was voiced by Majel Barrett, as was the later Enterprise-D (and most other Starfleet ships up til recently), the Enterprise computer did not sound like the later ones. It was a 60s version of an advanced computer, so she did a corny loud robot voice and prefaced every request by saying "WORKING!", and then there were Space spinning tape deck noises. And also, it really didn't talk to the crew too much outside of people doing research at terminals, where they asked it specific questions and it would answer, like being at the terminal was what was making that work. In this episode, they actually got Majel Barrett to record new lines for it. Great. But she's doing Enterprise-D-era ship voice. And it's just randomly over a ship-wide PA. That's not right.

Yeah. I know. Into the locker. My glasses!

But hey. Besides all this, still, very good episode of a very good show. New Voyages is ALMOST good enough to be put into rotation with official Trek. Almost. If you squint. And I certainly like it more than a few actual series this franchise has shown up with at my door, sopping wet, at 3 am on a Sunday.

And that's exactly why Paramount told them to stop this now okay guys, and pays them to rent their stunning Enterprise bridge set for fan experiences. And there's world enough for that, and time.

...Did I do that right? With The Tempest? Is that how you do that? Do I look smart?

Oh! And I forgot to mention, Grace Lee Whitney has a brief cameo in this as Second Officer of the Excelsior. It's always good to see Rand as a fleet officer and not fetching gropey men coffee.

...Even if they did her dirty with this hair and make-up. Yikes.

But if the green screen is gonna look like this, we accept certain small limitations from the fan show from 2007.

#Youtube #star trek #star trek new voyages #star trek phase ii #sulu #george takei #early 2000s

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