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Star Trek: The Original Series first aired in 1966, over fifty-eight years ago. The series starred William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barret-Roddenberry, James Doohan, and George Takei. Although the focus of the show was mainly on Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley, the other actors appeared in many of the series' seventy-nine episodes. And it's been a long while since we've seen all of them together on the original bridge of the Enterprise.

In Ticonderoga, NY, you can tour the set of the series which has been painstakingly recreated using blueprints and thousands of photographs. It was there that a picture was taken of the three surviving members of the cast—Shatner, Koenig, and Takei, and it was shared to Twitter/X by a Star Trek fan back in September of this year.

The last surviving members of the original “Star Trek!” pic.twitter.com/ZagKec1nlP...

At the beginning of Nicholas Meyer's "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," Captain Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) is in command of the USS Excelsior, a prototype spacecraft with a newfangled transwarp drive allowing it to travel faster than any ship yet built. The Excelsior was first glimpsed in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," and Sulu, still serving on board the USS Enterprise at the time, stared at new the ship in utter awe. He couldn't have guessed at that moment that he would one day be its captain. 

Sulu's captaincy gave the character a satisfying arc. When audiences first saw him in the original "Star Trek," he was a helmsman bearing the rank of lieutenant. In "Star Trek VI," made 25 years later, he was finally in command. If one accepts expanded universe lore culled from ancillary books and the like, Sulu would eventually become an Admiral and...

Director J.J. Abrams' philosophy toward making his 2009 reboot of "Star Trek" likely involved a lot of uses of the words "high octane" and "kicked into overdrive." The characters in Abrams' "Star Trek" resemble the ones we all remember from the 1966 TV series, but electrified for a modern, action-hungry audience. Kirk (Chris Pine) is not just a captain who rules by instinct and occasionally snogs alien women (as William Shatner did), but a rash, skirt-chasing, destructive young punk who gets into bar brawls. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is not merely a logical scientist who, under rare circumstances, lets his human emotions slip through his stony visage (as Leonard Nimoy was), but a perpetually annoyed pill who, more regularly, is given to flights of rage and/or romance.

In the case of Sulu (John Cho), he is not merely a capable pilot with unusual hobbies, a great sense of humor, and a...

On the morning of January 23, 2024, actor Gary Graham, star of the "Alien Nation" TV series, the cult classic "Robot Jox," and multiple-time "Star Trek" supporting player, passed away at the age of 74. Graham had a prolific acting career, appearing in single episodes of many of the hottest TV shows of his day, including "Starsky & Hutch," "The Incredible Hulk," Knots Landing," "CHiPs," "T.J. Hooker," "Hunter," "M.A.N.T.I.S.," "Diagnosis Murder," "Ally McBeal," "Jag," and "Nip/Tuck." He had an easy demeanor, allowing him to play comedic affable characters just as well as intense, serious ones.

Trekkies likely know Graham best for playing Soval on "Star Trek: Enterprise." Soval was the snippy Vulcan ambassador who oversaw Earth's very, very slow transition from post-war ruin to a thriving society ready for space exploration. In the timeline of "Star Trek," humanity discovers warp-speed flight while the world is recovering from nuclear devastation. On the very first Earth warp flight,...

William Shatner may be the iconic James T. Kirk, but he's one of five actors to have played the role in the Star Trek franchise. As the original screen Enterprise captain, Kirk casts a long shadow in the popular imagination when it comes to Star Trek. Not only that, but in the Star Trek canon, the adventures of Kirk and Spock in Star Trek: The Original Series continue to define those of future Starfleet crews. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine memorably revisited Kirk's Enterprise to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary in season 5, episode 6, "Trials and Tribble-ations" which saw the DS9 crew treat Kirk, Spock, and the crew with a great deal of reverence.

Most recently, an alternate universe version of Kirk recently featured in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 1 finale, "A Quality of Mercy" which will lead to Kirk's arrival in Strange New Worlds season 2. Kirk is one of...

He has gone where no fan has gone before.

James Cawley, a major Trekkie from Ticonderoga, N.Y., has spent the last 15 years producing and starring in amateur Star Trek "fan films," original stories based on a TV series or movie, inside an abandoned grocery store.

The sets of his fan films are located in a sound stage in Ticonderoga that is 13,000 square feet.

There are complete replicas of the original sets featured in Star Trek: The Original Series including the sick bay, the transporter room, the briefing rooms and the bridge, among others, according to The Wall Street Journal.

He has gone where no fan has gone before. James Cawley, a major Trekkie from Ticonderoga, N.Y., has spent the last 15 years producing and starring in amateur Star Trek "fan films," original stories based on a TV series or movie, inside an abandoned grocery store. The sets of his fan films are located in a sound stage in Ticonderoga that is 13,000 square feet. There are complete replicas of the original sets featured in Star Trek: The Original Series including the sick bay, the transporter room, the briefing rooms and the bridge, among others, according to The Wall Street Journal.

There's a good chance that no more new episodes of the fan-film "Star Trek: New Voyages" will be produced. But that doesn't mean the meticulously constructed re-creation of the original "Star Trek" sets will sit in the dark.James Cawley, the producer behind "New Voyages," is now opening those sets to the public in Ticonderoga, New York. The project, which has been licensed by CBS Consumer Products, will begin July 30 and include guided tours and photo opportunities."To me, there is no other franchise around that is more enjoyable and more socially relevant than Star Trek," Cawley said, in a release. "I'm very thankful for all the support I've received on this project, and can't wait to begin welcoming my fellow fans this summer.""New Voyages" was not the first Trek fan-film to be distributed ...

Fans of the Star Trek novels would certainly recognize the name Dave Galanter. Yet, the author considers himself more of an occasional novelist rather than a career one.His library includes a few books he co-wrote with Greg Brodeur, like the 1994 "Star Trek: The Next Generation" novel "Foreign Foes," and the 2001 two-parter "Dead Zone" and "Forever Dark" in the Maximum Warp series. He even penned a "Star Trek: New Voyages" episode, "Enemy: Starfleet," that was released in 2011. In fact, Galanter considers "New Voyages" co-creator James Cawley a friend.Despite spending his days in the world of technology outside of writing, Galanter loves Star Trek, and loves pitching in wherever someone asks. So when Cawley put Galanter and Alec Peters together soon after "Enemy: Starfleet" was produced, Galanter ...

The original Star Trek television show aired its last episode over 46 years ago on June 3, 1969. But thanks to a lifelong fan named James Cawley, the Trek nostalgia lives on in a fan-created and now fan-funded digital series called Star Trek: New Voyages, a long-term project which began back in April 2003.

Cawley, who serves as New Voyages executive producer, grew up watching Star Trek syndicated re-runs and told The New York Times he knew the original show lines “forward and backward.” Cawley started New Voyages (also known as Star Trek: Phase II) as a continuation of the original series. The web version centers around the crew of the starship Enterprise in the final year of its five-year assigned mission. Soon after Cawley launched his New Voyages project, Jack Marshall joined as a producer and suggested the show be made into a free-to-view web series, to avoid legal conflicts with Star Trek franchise owner CBS.

In the same summer that we got a new big-budget Star Trek feature film, it strikes me as ironic that the more enjoyable new story featuring Capt. Kirk and his Enterprise shipmates came from the internet. If you've found yourself agreeing with the criticism about Star Trek Into Darkness and its story faults, silly plot logistics and its nearly line-by-line remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, then let me direct your attention to a new Star Trek story that may satisfy your craving for good 23rd century adventure. It's called Star Trek Continues, and you can watch it right on YouTube.

Star Trek Continues is the latest fan-made effort to try and continue on the missions of Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise crew in the timeframe of the original TV series. There's been other fanshows, most notably James Cawley's Star Trek: Phase II,...

If you're a Star Trek fan, then chances are you've seen one of several excellent fan productions online: "Star Trek: Phase II." Originally founded as "Star Trek: New Voyages," executive producer and star James Cawley spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to continue the original "Star Trek," and has brought in some big names (including David Gerrold, Eugene W. Roddenberry and George Takei) along the way. The popularity of "Phase II" and other similar productions like "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier" has put CBS Television in a tough spot. These fans are actively using characters, story lines and other intellectual property they own to produce their own work, but asking them to shut down would be a total public relations nightmare. So instead, as long as fans like Cawley ...

For years, the cast and crew behind the high-production (at least from fan standards) "Star Trek: Phase II" released episodes of Jim Kirk and the USS Enterprise, all while CBS Television -- which owns the rights to Star Trek -- turned its head. But that ended late last month when "Phase II" executive producer and star James Cawley received a cease and desist letter from CBS Television, telling him they could not move forward with a "lost" script from writer Norman Spinrad. "We fully appreciate and respect the passion and creativity of the Star Trek fan and creative communities," CBS said in a statement, according to The New York Times. "This is simply a case of protecting our copyrighted material, and the situation has been amicably resolved." Cawley, who says he has worked hard ...

Now CBS, but once Paramount Pictures, have had little to say about the many internet fan series based on their property of Star Trek (Hidden Frontier, Intrepid, Farragut and New Voyages: Phase II to name just a few) over the years. They clearly saw a workable, symbiotic relationship with fan productions and the mainstream TV shows and movies. As long as the fans never changed the conical nature of the established main characters (be it Tos or its many spin-offs), they were given (a mostly) free rein to expand the Star Trek Universe. But recently, someone within CBS, or over at Paramount, have suddenly raised a red alert.

It all began back in October when a fan approached Norman Spinrad, who wrote the episode The Doomsday Machine, to autograph the script for another episode of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry commissioned him to write in 1967 called He Walked Among Us. The...

A new webisode series from the creator of Star Trek: New Voyages plans on injecting new life into a golden age outer space hero: Buck Rogers Begins.

Production has begun on a new live-action Buck Rogers series that will start off telling the origins of the character before his adventures in the post-apocalyptic world of the 25th century.  While the action will take place in the early portion of the 20th century, the show's producers are striving to keep their bar raised high, giving the show a "retro-modern" look and feel with high production values and effects, solid acting and a modern day, serious approach to its stories. "We've got our Buck and some other key characters and are in talks with actors who have serious science fiction credentials to join the show," said executive producer James Cawley, the man who created the hit web-based Star Trek: New Voyages series.

“Buck Rogers” is making a warming a spot for himself in new media with this upcoming webseries from Cawley Entertainment Company and Retro Film Studios. The webseries, entitled “Buck Rogers In The 25th Century”, launches from the “Generation One” Buck Rogers franchise.

Cawley Entertainment Company and Retro Film Studios have secured the rights with the Dille Family Trust for the project. The franchise owner, Flint Dille will be involved with the project in an Executive Producer capacity.

Here are excerpts from press releases describing the webseries below:

Buck Rogers has seen various incarnations of the character on television, movies, radio and in books. This will be the first live action series of Buck Rogers in nearly 30 years and the first web based series of the characters.

Executive Producer James Cawley will be bringing Buck back to his beginnings telling the story from the perspective of a 22 year old Buck Rogers...

Some of you really old folks like me might remember a science fiction series of the late 70's/early 80's called 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.' The stars were Gil Gerard as Buck and Erin Grey as Wilma Deering.

Well, they're back and this time they're Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. In a webisode series produced by James Cawley, who also did the 'Star Trek' Phase II web series. Bobby Rice stars as the young Buck. A scene for the series was released on YouTube and in it, Buck is arguing with his parents about participating in World War I.

Based on the clip, this series seems more of an homage to the previous versions of the character than the one Gil Gerard starred in. It certainly adds an interesting wrinkle by having someone from our past trapped in our future.

However the series is set, it...

Tender moments abound.

It’s been a long time since we talked about the fan-based project, Star Trek: Phase II. Last year around this time they released “Blood and Fire Part 1” with Captain James T. Kirk (James Cawley) still piloting the USS Enterprise, but now with his nephew, Ensign Peter Kirk (Bobby Rice) on board, and behaving just as recklessly as his famous uncle. He’s also having a rather torrid relationship with Lt. Alex Freeman (Evan Fowler).

If you need a refresher on the plot of Part 1, you can read it here. And you can watch and download both episodes here.

From this point on, we’re in *****spoiler***** territory.

In essence, we start with Peter Kirk and Alex on a ship, the USS Copernicus, infected with blood worms, the AIDS metaphor. These blood worms are so deadly, all known species in the galaxy flee any systems in which they exist.

Your first look at Bobby Rice in the new Buck Rogers webseries, coming in 2010!

A mysterious doorQ.com fan, one who divides his time between the 20th, 24th and 25th Centuries, shot me this exclusive image. Somehow he thought the readers of doorQ.com would appreciate the image on um.... "multiple levels." 

I have no idea what he was referring to....

Produced by James Cawley and the rest of the team behind Star Trek: Phase II, the first round of shooting on the series has already begun. No premiere date has been set yet, other than sometime in 2010. I think we'll be getting a few more previews before then, though.

For more information about the webseries, check out our earlier coverage below or the related articles, off site.

doorQ.com: Phase II's Bobby Rice is Cawley's Buck Rogers

TrekToday:  Cawley Snags Buck Rogers Web Series...

Occasionally in Scifi Love towers, I come across a shining beacon of creativity and coolness - such a beacon is The Mercury Men.

It is an upcoming sci-fi web series about aliens invading Earth with their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine. So far, so delightfully retro-kitschy - just check out that poster!

Given that the cost of making a series like this is coming down and the amount of techno support to amateur film-makers is on the up, hopefully we will see more of these as time goes on. (like the Star Trek films of James Cawley).

As they say themselves, this is the way films used to be made - simply, but with no little skill, bags of initiative and plenty of enthusiasm.

I am looking forward to black and white, Flash Gordon-inspired excitement from the Mercury Men and salute them for their efforts.

Top work chaps, and is...

James Cawley is boldly going where a few others have gone before. The producer of Star Trek: Phase II has teamed with screenwriter/novelist Flint Dille for a Buck Rogers web series and hopes to produce twenty 40-minute web episodes about the space adventurer. (Thanks to TrekMovie.com for the scoop.) Cawley Entertainment secured the rights to the classic character – created in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan – and will focus on how Rogers went from World War I to 25th century Earth using a “retro-contemporary” look and CGI. Dille and Cawley will serve as executive producers of the web series, with Dille also serving as a consultant; the property has been owned by the Dille Syndication Co. since John F. Dille purchased the character for the comic strip in 1929. Cawley has already cast his Buck Rogers and is going with an actor he’s familiar with: Bobby Rice, who played Peter Kirk in Phase II.

Warning: this article contains mild spoilers.

The most alien creature in the Star Trek universe? An openly gay person, none of whom have been seen in more than forty years of official Star Trek movies and TV spin-offs.

But the Uss Enterprise will be at least a little gayer this Saturday when Peter Kirk, the openly gay nephew of Captain James T. Kirk, and his boyfriend set foot on board the starship.

No, this isn’t a storyline in any upcoming series sanctioned by CBS, which currently own the rights to the Star Trek TV franchise, nor is it part of J.J. Abrams “reboot” of Paramount’s Star Trek movie franchise coming in May. As far as we know, all the “official” Star Trek projects on the horizon remain steadfastly gay-free.

This storyline is part of an independent online project called Star Trek: Phase II, which imagines a “fourth...