Post by glutamodo on Nov 23, 2015 15:43:57 GMT
Hi all.
Apart my "signature line", I don't normally talk a whole lot about Star Trek: Excelsior very much here. It's a FREE-download sci-fi audio drama, set in the Star Trek "prime" universe, set a few years after the Next Generation movies and is set on a starship that is of the same class as the Enterprise-E. Our episodes run from 45 minutes to sometimes two hours long.
I started out as a fan and came to the attention of the staff there by my posts on their own Forums, where I made an off-hand remark that I had done some audio editing in the past. They needed help and recruited me. That was like 5 years ago, and since then I've been a part of 9 episodes of the show.
The production schedule has really slowed down the last year or two though. But we have a brand new episode out right now! Twice now we've held a contest for fans to submit scripts - using our characters and ship for the story but "standalone" outside of our story arcs. (Big Finish hasn't done that much in recent years) This is one of those stories.
www.starshipexcelsior.com/episodes/
( Actually, our current "season" is designed to be more of standalone stories only lightly touching on the overall story arc. )
Now, I wasn't involved in the sound editing on this one, as our chief editor decided to do this one all by himself this time, so it was kind of cool to hear an Excelsior story that I knew nothing about ahead of time.
If any of you are 1990s-era (and heck, even 60s era) Star Trek fans, I'd recommend you check out Star Trek: Excelsior. (I assume you're already a fan of Audio Drama if you're reading this!) Right now, our founder and showrunner recommends you begin with current season - Series 4. Our first season (before I was involved) started out pretty rough in the sound design department, and maybe a bit clunky in the storytelling (we used our narrator maybe a little bit too much at times) but I liked it. I was a fan and listener of these before I started listening to Big Finish, actually. In fact, I may never have started listening to Big Finish had it not been for Excelsior (and the Hitchhiker's Guide radio plays) FYI - Our "New Listener" recommendations are here: www.starshipexcelsior.com/about/newListenNote.php
Now, for the Exciting News!
I'll post the note our Producer, James, sent out in an email to our fan mailing list:
Star Trek will celebrate it's 50th anniversary next year, and we are making a special 50th Anniversary Excelsior episode to celebrate. This morning, after several months of work, we officially received confirmation that Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols will star in this special episode -- in what may be their final performance together as Pavel Chekov and Nyota Uhura. We have a terrific script, which puts the two of them in the center of a last-ditch effort to save the galaxy... past, present, and future!
This is, obviously, ludicrously exciting for all of us, and, as Star Trek fans, I'm sure it's pretty exciting for you, too.
However, to make this happen, we have been forced to turn, for the first time ever, to our fans for support. We have launched a Kickstarter, which you can check out here. As you can see, our goals are modest and carefully accounted for, and, in exchange for your donation supporting this very special episode, you can get some pretty cool rewards.
So... that's where it stops being "free" - we're trying to raise money to produce this special episode. I've already donated a couple of hundred of hours of computer time in the sound editing I've done for the show, and intend to donate monetarily as well here. Up to now, the show's production goes like this - after the script is ready, it's sent out to the actors (who live all over the place), who record their lines themselves, (which can lead to a nightmare in matching up sound quality sometimes), each line is read usually at least 3 times with different inflection to give the sound editors options when assembling the scenes. It's not done live and we've never used a studio. But for this, we'll have to, and I think that's a big part of why the Kickstarter is needed.
Excelsior is a non-profit, fan production, CBS/Paramount only allows fan productions if they are totally free and non-profit, so the only way can raise funds for such things is through donations, and this is the only time we've ever done or asked for anything like this.
So if you're interested, give the show a try, and if you like it, consider our Kickstarter.
Thanks for your time!
Andy Thompson
