Starship Exeter - The Tressaurian Intersection
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. (click here for the rest of the review…)
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.
Story: In 1987, he won the coveted part of the Doctor, or as he’s been known to call it, the best role on British television. But in 1990, just after the broadcast of his third season of time travels, Sylvester McCoy found himself out of work when the BBC quietly declined to renew Doctor Who. Six years later, he was reprising the role in a big-budget, British-American coproduction launching a new actor in the part, and now McCoy - who had been “the last Doctor” for the better part of a decade - was due to hand off the keys to the TARDIS on a filming location in Vancouver. In this video journal, shot and narrated largely by McCoy himself, the actor explores Vancouver, pays a visit to former Doctor Who regular Anneke Wills, ruminates on the official closure of his era as the Doctor, hangs around the set, and even has an informal chat with Paul McGann himself.
Stardate 59422.9: Assigned to a routine colony patrol in the Charybdis Sector, the U.S.S. Intrepid’s chain of command is disrupted when Captain Talath, making a shuttle supply run to carry power equipment to the surface of Chiron IV, encounters inexplicable interference on her final approach. Faced with a choice between killing his own captain when transporters and tractor beams can’t lock onto the shuttle, or letting it crash near a Federation colony and cause widespread destruction, Intrepid’s first officer, Commander Hunter, orders the destruction of the shuttle - and his captain. Though Starfleet praises him for quick and selfless action, Hunter is riddled by guilt and reluctant to accept a promotion to captain of the Intrepid. An unknown enemy strikes, leaving several ships near the colony without power - and without power for life support, over a thousand aboard those ships will die. Hunter gambles that since Chiron IV is the site of these disruptions, the source must be on its surface, and takes several of his senior officers on an away mission to find the cause before time runs out. But once he beams down, Hunter finds that the colonists are so terrified by the attacks that they’re ready to lash out against anyone they don’t know - including an unfamiliar Starfleet crew.
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.
Assigned to safely transport a radioactive cargo, UNIT’s Sergeant Benton is plagued by nightmarish memories when he passes a rural site he remembers all too well - his younger brother Chris died there while the two were playing as children. Increasingly bothered by the memory, Benton finds himself literally working through the ghosts of his past, but is unaware when the other UNIT soldier is knocked out. By the time Benton recovers from his trip down memory lane, he’s alone against terrorist agents who are trying to steal the radioactive material for their own sinister ends.
