Day 9: Star Trek Gaming

Talk to most people about Star Trek fan productions and they will instantly think of fan films, many of the older fans will identify with fan fiction but other than that, they might have heard of the occasional animation, music video audio drama but that's about all. It might come as a surprise to realise that fan-made games have a history nearly as long as fan fiction and for sheer diversity of content have virtually no equal!

Today we look at the world of Star Trek gaming as for the third year we have the new and improved Twelve days of Christmas "Compendium of Games"!

Day 8: Music Videos

Last year's survey of Music Videos was a popular addition to the Twelve Trek Days Of Christmas and this year, Sebastiaan van Mierlo, the owner of Final Frontier Media, has graciously provided us with his listing of the top music videos of all time!

Day 7: Twelfth Night

One of the things that I've been quite proud of over the years that we have been doing the Twelve Trek Days Of Christmas has been the fact that every year we have broken some new ground. In 2007 it was a full cast Star Trek audio drama/Podbook series produced by Save Enterprise and in 2008 we started publishing fan fiction novels as pdf eBooks, more of which are coming this year!

This year, I would like to invite you along for the ride as we create some experimental media.

Sometimes coming up with something new just means combining existing media in new ways or putting them to a difference purpose. Hmmm, let's see. Shakespeare is always fertile ground for classic motifs in drama, but has anyone ever done Star Trek Shakespeare? LOL! No? How about a comedy for tonight? I mean a comedy about this very night, the traditional Twelfth Night after Christmas! A night of revels and pranks, turnaround and mistaken identity!

And just to make it a little harder I'll do it as a BlogScript so that we can all learn something about creating a CSS Blog... whilst juggling three knives and balancing a rubber chicken on your nose! No? Well just put the knives and rubber chicken back in their box and follow this link over here to Star Trek - Twelfth Night 2009

Day 6: Animation!

Making a fan film takes immense resources in time, effort and money - building, housing, maintaining, storing, props, sets, special effects! "Greenscreen" filming, where live actors are 'overlaid' onto a computer generated background cuts out a lot of that expense but you still need cameras, lights, costumes, getting everyone together at the same place and the same time ... and heaven forbid that you should need to re-shoot something! !CoughExeterCough!

Animation takes this a step further by making even the actors virtual! Its a challenge to breath life into two or, more frequently three dimensional graphics but if the creative team have the necessary skills and talent to pull it off it, there are very real advantages. Not only can the most fantastic scenery be used but you also have unlimited wardrobe, props and special effects departments that can be generated graphically, especially important in science fiction where we might want to have six-armed Thoats battling under the hurtling moons of Barsoom!

Who is doing it and, more importantly, how are they doing it?

Day 5: Five Fan Films

Where have we come from? Where are we going? Well if I knew where fan films were going, I'd be investing in the share market right now! Where have they come from is an easier question! To be fair, the 1997 Star Wars fan film, "Troops" set the stamp for the 'made for internet' fan films we are used to today, but There is another! In fact, there were quite a few "others" - Star Trek fan films created between 1969 - 2000.

Here are just five of them.

Day 4: Audio Dramas

In the five years that fans have been making Star Trek audio dramas we have built up a sizable body of work with over 170 episodes. Recently there have been attempts to create directories of them so its only fair that I open the archives of The House of L'Stok to the public to give you the details as they were recorded by my loyal minions.

Today's present is a listing of every Star Trek audio drama known to me as the posting date. Are they good? That's for you to decide!