Stardate not given: After fending off yet another Archein ambush, Ro and the Odyssey crew are surprised to hear a Starfleet distress signal of a kind that hasn’t been used in nearly a century. They track the signal to a planet surrounded by gravitational disturbances and small singularities – a breeding ground for black holes – and find a crippled ship in orbit. Ro, T’Lorra and Stadi discover that the ship is occupied only by a middle-aged married couple, whose male half is reluctant to leave before completing his research. His wife, however, is far more eager to leave and stuns him, bringing the research along when they abandon ship. The Odyssey shuttle used to dock with that ship, however, is damaged when the dying ship explodes. Stadi sends a distress signal to the Odyssey and then brings the shuttle in for a hard landing. The truth emerges about the couple that Ro and his crewmates have rescued: they are neither humans nor Archein, but Kelvans, endangered inhabitants of the Andromeda Galaxy who last visited Earth’s galaxy in the days of Captain Kirk. The Kelvans – of whom there are more on the planet – are also secretly using an Omega power source to protect themselves from the Archein, and Ro quickly realizes that this same powerful energy source could also send Odyssey home…but at what cost?

story by Rob Caves and Eric Weaver
teleplay by Eric Weaver
directed by David O’Neill
music by Bodo Hartwig

Cast: Brandon McConnell (Lt. Commander Ro Nevin), Michelle Laurent (Subcommander T’Lorra), Matthew Montgomery (Dr. Owen Vaughan), Julia Morizawa (Lt. Maya Stadi), Tim Foutch (Ensign John Gillen), Melodee M. Spevack (Dr. Achiys), Hal Alpert (Dr. Panos), Sharon Savene (Seram), Adam Browne (Caecus), John Whiting (General Morrigu), Jennifer Cole (Grand Majan), Beau Williams (Lt. Dagad), Ryan Keating (Lokell), Jacob Reitz (Melantko), Sam Basca (Lt. Alex Wozniak), Heather Ashleigh (Ensign Kristen Laws), Wayne Wilkening (Estime)

Review: Okay, I think I’ve said before that I haven’t gone back and caught up on Hidden Frontier, the Star Trek fan series that spawned the current spinoffs, Odyssey and Helena Chronicles. Perhaps I really need to go back and catch up on Hidden Frontier…because I was completely lost here. (more…)

Stardate 61251.3: Faced with a critical shortage of antimatter to power the ship, Lt. Commander Ro orders the Odyssey to double back to a planet that has an apparently unmanned outpost with stores of antimatter there for the taking. But when Ro leads an away team – including the feuding Lt. Stadi and Subcommander T’Lorra – to the planet, the first casualty happens all too quickly and no antimatter is obtained. By the time Ro and his team are beamed back to the Odyssey, the Archein are in orbit. The Starfleet ship escapes the trap, but is still short on supplies. Ro begins to come up with a daring new plan to resupply the ship, but before he can commit to it, he must deal with the fact that no two members of his crew seem to be able to agree on how best to execute his plan.

written by Beo Fraser
directed by Beo Fraser
music by Daniel Chan

Cast: Brandon McConnell (Lt. Commander Ro Nevin), Michelle Laurent (Subcommander T’Lorra), Matthew Montgomery (Dr. Owen Vaughan), Julia Morizawa (Lt. Maya Stadi), Tim Foutch (Ensign John Gillen), Sharon Savene (Seram Archein), John Whiting (General Morrigu), Adam Browne (Caecus), David O’Neill (Vito), Jacob Hibbits (Jenaan), Sam Basca (Lt. Alex Wozniak), Ben Euphrat (Lt. J.G. Teles Shanaar), Ross King (Medical Nurse)

Notes: Ensign Gillin reveals that he hails from Thunder Bay, Ontario. T’Lorra apparently has Tal Shiar ties, and Dr. Vaughan once served on Starbase 395, where he got to know other Romulan officers. The Archein auto-defense satellites were first encountered by the crews of the Excalibur and the Intrepid in the crossover fan film Orphans Of War.

Review: In this second installment of Odyssey, Brandon McConnell takes over the role of Ro Nevin from the departing Bobby Rice, who had made the role his own on the fan series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier. I can’t tell if it’s the performance or the script, but the “new” Ro comes across as almost noncommittal as his crew bickers all around him. The story is standard “new captain has to visibly take charge” fare, but the problem is: McConnell as Ro never does take charge. In one early scene he asks, “Do I need to be here for this?” as two of his senior officers argue. Intentionally or not, that line points up pefectly the episode’s buggest structural weakness. (more…)

Stardate 61125.8: A massive Archein assault force creates a wormhole from their staging ground in the Andromeda Galaxy to Romulan space. The Romulans are beaten back and their worlds are earmarked for Archein colonization. Now on friendly terms with the Klingons and Federation following the Tholian War, the Romulans turn to their allies for assistance, and Starfleet launches its unmanned Iliad probe through the wormhole into Archein space, discovering a weakness in the enemy’s enormous wormhole-generating gateway. Fitted with a new version of the experimental slipstream drive, the Odyssey and an allied Klingon ship are sent to destroy the gateway and return home. Lt. Commander Ro Nevin is assigned to the Odyssey, while his spouse, Lt. Commander Corey Aster, oversees the slipstream drive on the Klingons’ ship. But their battle plan doesn’t survive contact with the enemy, and Odyssey’s captain and XO are killed during the attack. As the Klingons race back to Federation space using the Archein wormhole, Ro assumes command of Odyssey and uses the volatile slipstream drive core to destroy the gateway. Out of touch with the Federation and Starfleet, out of spare parts, and almost out of places to hide, Odyssey is left under the command of one of its junior officers – and a formidable enemy who will stop at nothing to take revenge.

story by Rob Caves
teleplay by Rob Caves
directed by J.T. Tepnapa
music by Dex Craig

Cast: Bobby Rice (Lt. Commander Ro Nevin), Michelle Laurent (Subcommander T’Lorra), Matthew Montgomery (Dr. Owen Vaughan), Julia Morizawa (Lt. Maya Stadi), Tim Foutch (Ensign John Gillen), J.T. Tepnapa (Lt. Commander Corey Aster), Sharon Savene (Seram Archein), John Whiting (General Morrigu), David W. Dial (Admiral Ian Knapp), Joni Bovill (Proconsul Yeshva), Karl Puder (General Korg), Sterling Greene (Captain T’Lek), Jennifer Cole (Grand Majan Archein), Adam Browne (Caecus), Jacob Hibbits (Jenaan), Hugh Gehrke (Centurion), Jacob Reitz (Klingon Tactical), David O’Neill (Vito), Mark Ashton Lund (Commander Conner), Andrew Foster (Chief Hars Bixx), Sam Basca (Lt. Alex Wozniak), Joanne Busch (Commander Robin Lefler)

Notes: Odyssey is a spinoff from the long-running post-Voyager fan series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier; the characters of Ro Nevin and Corey Aster are carryovers from that series. The character of Maya Stadi is intended to be a cousin of the deceased Lt. Stadi who ferried Tom Paris to Voyager in the pilot epiosde of Star Trek: Voyager.

Review: I’ll admit that I have seen only clips of the fan series Hidden Frontier, Odyssey’s progenitor, and barely have a working knowledge of its plotline, so there are a few things here which seem to be references to Hidden Frontier plot points that baffled me a bit. With this being the launch of a new series, albeit a Hidden Frontier spinoff, I wanted to stumble into the fray with no preconceived notions. Odyssey is a mightily impressive series from a standpoint of production values – almost all of the signature Trek alien makeups are outstanding (especially the Bolian, who looked so authentic that I’d swear Michael Westmore himself made the actor up), the costumes are more than credible, and the exterior space CGI scenes are up there with almost anything that Paramount itself put on the screen under the Star Trek banner. The actors are ready for prime time, and they have some sparkling dialogue to work with. (more…)