Star Trek: Of Gods And Men, Part 1
Stardate 6712.4: Captains Uhura, Chekov and Harriman convene for the dedication of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-M - a museum aboard a fully functional replica of the Constitution-class Enterprise - 12 years after the death of Captain Kirk aboard Harriman’s first command, the Enterprise-B. Echoing that tragic incident, a priority one distress call is received, and the Enterprise-M is the only ship capable of responding. As the museum’s Commander Kirk - the legendary captain’s nephew - remains aboard his ship, the three visiting captains beam down, discovering two reminders of the Enterprise’s past that they would rather have forgotten: the Guardian of Forever, and an adult Charlie Evans, who was left in the less-than-gentle care of the Thasians by Captain Kirk decades ago. Charlie sets out to change his own history, and starts by making sure that James T. Kirk will never be born.
Stardate not given: Captain John Harriman of the G.S.S. Conqueror captures two terrorists whose names are at the top of the Galactic Order’s most wanted list. With his mixed crew of humans, Klingons and Romulans, Harriman moves on to his next assignment: to deliver a message to the pacifistic secessionists of Vulcan. On Vulcan, Nyota Uhura feels an unusual twinge of worry about the planet’s secession from the Galactic Order, and after Vulcan’s orbital defenses are wiped out, it seems she has good reason to worry. The Conqueror is about to launch the devastating Omega Device to make an object lesson of the Vulcans: defy the Order at your own peril…
story by Sky Conway & Tim Russ and Jack Trevino & Ethan H. Calk
teleplay by Ethan H. Calk, Sky Conway & Jack Trevino
directed by Tim Russ
music by Justin R. DurbanCast: Walter Koenig (Capt. Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Capt. Nyota Uhura), Alan Ruck (Capt. John Harriman), Garrett Wang (Commander Garan), William Wellman Jr. (Charlie Evans), J.G. Hertzler (Koval), Gary Graham (Ragnar), Tim Russ (Tuvok), Chase Masterson (Xela), Crystal Allen (Conqueror Navigator Yara), Ethan Phillips (Data Clerk), Cirroc Lofton (Sevar), Lawrence Montaigne (Stonn), James Cawley (Commander Kirk), Jeff Quinn (Conqueror Helmsman), Seth Shostak (Enterprise Communications Officer), Shawn Shelton (voice of the Guardian of Forever), Crystal Conway (Grandchild), Madison Russ (Grandchild), Keith Batt (Navigator), Patrick Bell (Enterprise Helmsman), Giovanna Contini, David deFrane, Ronald Gates, Deborah Huth, Danielle Porter (Enterprise Bridge Crew), Sky Conway, Travis Sentell (Enterprise Security Officers), Jeanine Camargo, Heather C. Harris, Mindy Iden, Luke McRoberts, Moses Shepard (Vulcan Initiates), Elizabeth Cortez (T’Liel), Amy Ulen (Teacher), Rob Leslie, Joanna Mendoza, Linda Zaruches (Vulcan Citizens), Stewart Lucas, Scott Nakada (Conqueror Klingon Officers), Joel Bellucci, Tony Pavone (Conqueror Romulan Officers), Giovanna Contini (Conqueror Science Officer)
Review: Possibly the most eagerly anticipated Star Trek fan film project since New Voyages started welcoming top-line guests from the original series, Of Gods And Men is the brainchild of Tim “Tuvok” Russ, convention promoter/organizer Sky Conway, and two former DS9 scriptwriters, Ethan Calk and Jack Trevino. As with a great many Trek tributes centered around the Kirk era, Gods - or at least this first part of it - pivots on plot points introduced, but never resolved, by the original series. In this case, it’s the Guardian of Forever - which surely has to rank as the most imagination-stirring element to emerge from classic Trek, considering the number of books, fan films and other fiction that has revisited it - and Charlie X himself. (click here for the rest of the review…)
Stardate 4847.3: Farragut arrives in the Solon system, home to a society where scholarship and the study of history have attained a level of importance beyond anything in the Federation. The Solonai are now making diplomatic overtures toward the Federation, and Captain Carter and his crew have the honor of making first contact - despite Science Officer Tacket’s misgivings about unusual background radiation near the planet. When they go to beam down, though, Carter and his small landing party find themselves not on an alien world, but on Earth, specifically Pennsylvania, 1776, on the eve of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River. Their attempts to stay out of history’s way are thwarted when a member of the landing party is shot by a revolutionary’s musket; now, contrary to staying out of history’s way, Carter now has an audience with General Washington himself, and worries that anything he says could alter history. In orbit, Tacket and Chief Engineer Smithfield grow increasingly suspicious of the Solonai’s lack of concern about their missing landing party…and their lack of knowledge of how to get them back.
Stardate 5013.1: The Exeter is en route to check up on a Federation Starbase on Corinth IV that has fallen out of contact. When the ship arrives, the planet is in ruins - a once-vibrant ecosystem reduced to a volcanic, earthquake-ridden world - and the Starbase is gone. Another Constitution-class ship sent to investigate, the U.S.S. Kongo, is found crashed on the planet - or at least its saucer section is. Captain Garrovick orders a search for the rest of the Kongo, and it’s found adrift in space at the center of a series of gravitational disturbances. The crew, including Garrovick’s former captain, is found dead - and so is a boarding party of reptilian Tressaurians, a species with whom Garrovick has had a very dark history. An alien device is discovered below decks, the source of the disturbance, and when Tressaurian ships arrive to retrieve it, Garrovick has it beamed to the Exeter and detonates the Kongo’s engines by remote. Science Officer Jo Harris, however, doesn’t believe that the device is of Tressaurian origin - and when another attack wave of Tressaurian ships is destroyed by a group of Tholian ships, it seems likely that the device’s inventors have come to collect it.
Stardate 6283.4: A distress call takes the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone, where they see a helpless cargo ship destroyed by Romulan Birds of Prey using a new weapon not seen before by the Federation. After it destroys that ship, however, the weapon backfires, enveloping everything nearby in an energy field, including the Enterprise. Sulu and exo-tech expert Lt. Chandris take a shuttlecraft to the wreckage of the lead Romulan ship to learn more about the weapon, but waves of instability wreak havoc with the ship’s structure, tearing it apart and leaving only seconds before the warp core breaches. Sulu and Chandris run back to find their shuttle has been lost, and when Sulu calls the Enterprise for an emergency transport, he’s literally a different man when he returns: he has aged over 30 years, and Chandris doesn’t rematerialize at all. Sulu explains that a rift led them to safety on a habitable world in another dimension, and they spent that time settling down and starting a family. Sulu introduces his crewmates to his daughter, Alana, whose transporter pattern Scotty can barely lock onto. The only way to keep her molecules from scattering is to create a field that stabilizes her pattern. Every time Kirk orders the Enterprise to try to break away from the distortion generated by the Romulans’ weapon, Alana starts to fade out of existence. With mere hours before the distortion destabilizes the space within it enough to destroy the Enterprise, Sulu must try to recover his memory of how to navigate a ship through the distortion - with the full knowledge that escape may condemn his daughter to death.
The Enterprise, under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, is destroyed with all hands by a Doomsday Machine, which has somehow found its way into the past.
Stardate 4625.1: Captain John Carter assumes command of the Constitution Class starship U.S.S. Farragut after a tragic incident forces her previous captain into retirement. His hand-picked choices for his chief engineer and first officer are also aboard, though he’s a little bit put off by the by-the-books demeanor of the security chief he’s inherited. The Farragut is ordered to investigate the disappearance of another Federation vessel and a survey team headed by the headstrong Commodore Broughton - and what Captain Carter and his crew find waiting for them is a party of Klingons, led by Commander Kruge and guarding a secret weapon. Focusing the energy of an entire planet on its targets, the Klingons’ new weapon could threaten any world in the Federation on a planetary scale. With the Farragut searching for survivors from the destroyed ship elsewhere, it’s up to Carter and his crew to put the Klingons out of commission.
Stardate 4943.5: When the starship Lexington’s crew is infected with the Canopus Plague, Starfleet dispatches the U.S.S. Exeter, under the command of Captain John Quincy Garrovick, to join the Lexington in orbit of Andoria and find out why the Andorian government hasn’t allowed her crew to acquire the Andorian-formulated antidote. Garrovick, communications officer B’Fuselek (who is himself an Andorian), and several other crew members beam down, finding that control of the Andorian government has been seized by a renegade faction backed by the Klingons. With the Klingons jamming communications between the surface and the Federation ships, it’s up to Garrovick and his handful of crewmates to restore the rightful government of Andoria - or watch it split from the Federation completely.
Stardate not given: The Enterprise completes a routine layover in the spacedock at Earth, and also picks up new crewmembers, including the newly promoted Lt. Commander Hikaru Sulu, back from a course in command training at Starfleet Academy. Sulu takes over the big chair from the beleaguered Lt. DeSalle, but even just leaving spacedock, one mistake could make it the last time he sits there.
Stardate 6031.2: Bringing Ambassador Rayna Morgan to the Enterprise from Babel via shuttlepod, Chekov has to do some fancy flying to avoid a Klingon warship. The Enterprise arrives just in time, but Captain Kirk and Captain Kargh only exchange a volley of words in this battle. A later visit to engineering puts Chekov in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he receives what should be a nearly lethal dose of radiation, though Dr. McCoy is startled to see no ill effects - at least at first. A day later, Chekov has aged 25 years, and McCoy can find no way to stop his rapid aging. A ship which appears to be a Klingon battlecruiser attacks the Enterprise, doing serious damage, and Kirk finds himself on the brink of plunging the Federation into war - and his best weapons officer is marching inexorably toward death’s door.
