A Thousand Years in a Day

Story: Pilgrim of Eternity
Written By: Steve Frattarola & Jack Treviño
Series: Star Trek Continues
Year: 2013

I have never been one for fan films. Years ago I attempted to watch "Star Trek: New Voyages" because it had been nominated for a Hugo Award against some fantastic episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" and "Doctor Who."  It didn't go well. It just felt cheap, with bad acting and a story that felt like pure fan service. It lacked a deeper meaning other than "look how many obscure details and references to "Star Trek" we can make!" Then I saw a short film called "Prelude to Axanar" and it showed me that a fan film can, in fact, be fairly impressive.  So I gave this a shot...and it won me over by the end of the episode. And by the time I got a few episodes into "Star Trek Continues" it became essentially canon for me.  Who knew?
The show's premise is essentially that it is picking up right were the original Trek left off.  They even made a short vignette that recreated the final scene from Trek's last episode, and then ended it with a short scene continuing where that final moment of Trek left off. Their first full episode features the return of the one-off antagonist of Apollo, played by the same actor who portrayed him in "Who Mourns For Adonais?" and he has an aged appearance due to the lack of worship he and the other Gods now receive (the other Gods have all died off).  Now on the Enterprise, he must try to learn how to live without his powers or worship...but he struggles to not attempt to get worship or adulation from the crew of the ship, because his powers can be a danger to the Enterprise. 

I enjoyed the cast in this, almost everybody captures some element of their TOS counterpart. Mignogna captures Kirk perfectly, and somehow does it without just mimicking Shatner's swagger. He has his own swagger he brings to the part, but he just FEELS like Captain Kirk to me. Haberkorn as Spock isn't great, but it is decent, and better than many of the other fan Spocks I have seen attempted. The fact that James Doohan's own son is playing Scotty is a nice touch, and he captures his dad's spirit quite well. The rest of the supporting cast is decent, only Necemek is kind of weak link as Dr. McCoy, he is playing the grumpiness...but he lacks something. He is a longtime Trek fan, he is just no actor. Luckily, he is essentially only filling in on the first two episodes, as Chuck Huber played him in their early vignettes, and returned to the series in episode three.

Most importantly...it is a good story, which is what set this apart from other fan productions for me. Like other fan productions, it was a sequel to something we have seen before, it's basic premise was about something we'd already seen...but the story had a deeper meaning, it had layers. It felt very much like the kind of story you'd see on the original series...and it's production values perfectly capture the look and feel of that iconic show. 

NEXT TIME: The Orion Slave Girl

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