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.
telelplay by Dennis Russell Bailey
story by Jimm & Josh Johnson and Dennis Russell Bailey and Maurice Molyneaux
directed by Scott CumminsCast: James Culhane (Captain Garrovick), Joshua Caleb (Lt. B’Fuselek), Michael Buford (Cutty), Holly Guess (Jo Harris), Patrick Scullin (D’Agosta), Elizabeth Wheat (Vandi Richards), Garry Peters (Kosnett)
Review: Hot damn. Now this is a Trek fan film. I’ll admit that I was originally skeptical of the first episode of Starship Exeter (see that review here), but as much as I admired their original intent to stick with lo-fi special effects, and as fun as that was to watch in places, here they managed to step up to the plate with some impressive CGI, and still didn’t betray the signature “look” of the original series. And this time they’ve got a story behind all this stuff which makes it even more impressive, and it’s directed well, and the acting has taken leaps and bounds. This is practically a real episode of Star Trek right here…but there’s just one problem. (more…)
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.