Title: Star Trek New Voyages: World Enough and Time
Genre: Fan Film, Internet Video
Episode: Star Trek: New Voyages, World Enough and Time
Website: Star Trek: New Voyages
Director: Mark Scott Zicree
Cast; George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, Majel Barret Rodenberry, James Cawley, Jeffry Quinn, Andy Bray, Christina Moses, Lia Johnson
Plot Synopsis: In a transporter accident, Sulu spends 30 years on a planet and has a daughter. Now he is found but saving the ship may mean losing his daughter.
Rating: 5 out of 5 
Review:
Ok, lets start of with an admission, I am a huge Trek fan and have been for 30 years. That said, I am also very protective of the franchise and very critical of how it has been managed over the last 10 years, so I hope I can be somewhat objective in my feelings for World enough and time. I say this because this review will sound like the ravings of a rabid fan boy, but in reality it is the joy of a long starving man searching for table scraps, and finding a 7 course gourmet meal instead. World enough and time is THAT good!
The labor of love that is Star Trek: New Voyages has long been appreciated by fans as what it was, an armature production with some great redeeming qualities. In many cases the acting, particularly that of James Cawley as James T Kirk, has been awkward or even cringe inducing. The production values have been spotty, but with moments of brilliance. The direction and writing as well as the delivery of the online downloads have been rife with problems. Still, what did you expect from a group of fans making a production out of the sheer love of the source material.
The previous episode, To Serve all my Days, was perhaps one of the best fan films ever made. As good as it was, even excellent effects and a good performance by original series actor Walter Koenig could not bring it out of the realm of a ‘fan film’.
With World enough and time everything changes. From the first moment of the episode as you follow a shuttle as it flies by a beautifully rendered USS Excelsior, you feel like you are watching an actual episode of the show, or even one of the films. The Excelsior bridge scenes with Takei and Lee Whitney could have been lifted straight out of ST :VI.
Back with the original Enterprise we have an action packed, space battle that ( while perhaps a bit too quick for my taste ) comes very close to any of the battle sequences on Voyager or DS9 that so enthralled me in years past. After a bit of very Trek like techno babble puts the Enterprise in danger once more, and brings Sulu back from another multidimensional temporal anomaly, we are given the joy of meeting Christina Moses, a fantastic young actress who plays Sulu’s daughter Alana. Moses is simply a treat to watch and manages to exude both childlike wonder and playful seductiveness with equal ease.
George Takei as the aged Mr. Sulu is very good with only a few moments of rust showing during a mind meld scene with Jeffrey Quinn’s Mr. Spock. The rest of the cast, including the much maligned James Cawley, show that they have grown well into the characters and put in fine performances. Cawley in particular shows marked improvement as he finally stops doing a William Shatner imitation and takes ownership of his version of James T Kirk.
The ending of the episode has been called sappy by some, but I will admit to a little ocular moisture, something I have not experienced in ANY Star Trek since Spock’s death in ST:II The Wrath of Khan. As it stands this is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, and stands deservingly among my favorite ST:TOS, ST:DS9, ST:TNG, Voyager and Enterprise episode. If I had to rate it, it would be in the top 10 overall. I was really that moved by it.
If you are a fan of Trek, you should love this. If you are a fan of Sci Fi at all, you should find a lot to like here. I only hope JJ Abrams has watched this, because this is what ST:XI should aspire to. A wonderful continuation of the Legacy of the Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.
Filed under: Fan Film Reviews, Star Trek, Video Reviews | Tagged: Christina Moses, enterprise, Fan Film Reviews, George Takei, Star Trek, Star Trek New Voyages, Video Reviews
I’m a sci-fi./trek fan as well and I love fan films! I really want to make one some day. thanks for posting that! I love your site too, i’m adding it to my blogroll. Come check mine out sometime. http://www.blogforheroes.com
I loved this episode of STNV and especially enjoyed Christina Moses’ performance.
I remember watching a fan film a while ago… might have been this series (in fact I think it was), and I found it really god-awfully painful to view…
This particular clip you’ve posed has piqued my interest a bit, though.
Have they [the actors] become much more believable? Before, really, it was harsh.
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http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_10096.html
Much higher production values–including writing–than before, and excellent performances by Christina Moses (wow!) and George Takei, but these professional performances only serve to highlight how amateurish the acting of the regular cast is (and not even good amateurs–we’re talking nerds on a lark, not dedicated community theatre players). The series has risen from fan film to a better looking fan film with a couple of ringers, but it’s not going to rise above the level of fan film until it replaces the entire lead cast (not sure about the actress playing Uhura–haven’t seen enough of her to form an opinion). Even the extras walk around like they don’t know what they’re doing on a starship (though perhaps that speaks more to directing). I applaud Cawley for how far he’s taken his vision, but if he really wants it to go somewhere, he’s got to limit himself to producing.
I understand that hiring an entire professional cast and director may not be possible, but surely it must be possible to entice some aspiring professionals, some film students, into working on something that could look very good on their resumes if they can succeed in transforming it.