On its many voyages through space, the starship Enterprise has endured bridge-shaking blasts from enemy ships and infiltration by scheming aliens. Now it is being invaded by tourists.
Sets mimicking those of the 1960s TV series Star Trek — including Captain Kirk’s bridge, sick bay and engine room — were built by fans for an Internet film series produced in this Adirondacks mountain town and are now open to paying customers who just cannot get enough of the 50-year-old franchise.
“The entire set ... how close it is to the actual TV show, you feel like you’re really there,” said 16-year-old Tiffany Schubert of Peru, New York. “It makes you just want to be in the show and have the same experience — being attacked by aliens, as bad as that is.”
Photo: AP
Schubert wore a red Starfleet shirt during a guided tour on a recent Star Trek convention weekend with her father, who came dressed as Spock. They heard a red alert, stood on transporter pads (dad gave a live long and prosper hand sign) and poked around the bridge. The sets are doppelgangers of the originals down to each blinking light and 3D chess piece.
James Cawley, a 50-year-old Elvis impersonator, began the years-long process of building the sets in 1997 after inheriting a copy of the original Enterprise blueprints from a costume designer on the original show.
Cawley and fellow fans released their first Star Trek: New Voyages Web film in 2004, with Cawley portraying Kirk. Cast members call what they do “playing Star Trek,” but the production values became quite high, with some episodes involving up to 200 people and attracting original Star Trek actors George Takei and Walter Koenig (reprising their roles of Sulu and Chekov, respectively.)
“It was a fun little lark, and it just exploded,” said Cawley, who produced 11 full-length episodes, which have so far garnered more than 1 million views.
They were pioneers in the flourishing culture of Star Trek fan films. However, the atmosphere in their little universe chilled in December last year after Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the makers in California of a planned fan film that raised more than US$1 million on crowdsourcing Web sites.
Six months later, the companies — calling themselves “big believers in reasonable fan fiction” — released guidelines on how fan filmmakers can avoid objections, such as not raising more than US$50,000 and keeping individual episodes to under 15 minutes.
Although he was never sued, Cawley felt it was a good time to move on.
“I just thought at that point: ‘Why have I been making these films?’” he said. “Basically, I’d been making these films because I enjoy the people that come from all over the world that love the same thing that I do.”
Opening the sets to visitors became a way to keep the fans coming. He obtained a license from CBS Consumer Products and opened the doors of a former dollar store this month. Adult admission is US$24.30.
Ticonderoga, near the Vermont border, is far from a big city, but Cawley hopes to benefit from seasonal tourism in the Adirondacks, historic Fort Ticonderoga and nearby Lake George.
Marybeth Ritkouski, a fan-film veteran working as a tour guide, said visitors have had emotional reactions after they walk through the sliding doors and onto the set. One man actually wept. She thinks people still connect so deeply with the show dating to 1966 because it was so hopeful.
“The appeal of Star Trek always was that it imagined a far, far better future than maybe what we’re actually building for ourselves,” she said “And I think it’s something people want to believe in and want to see come true.”
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS