he crew of the starship Exeter have boldly gone where few fans have gone before, creating their own, homegrown episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Created over the course of seven years, the episode "The Savage Empire" tells the tale of the Exeter, a Federation starship crewed with men and women just out of Starfleet Academy. As the episode opens, the crew of the starship Lexington have contracted the deadly Canopus Plague and traveled to the Andorian home world where a cure awaits. But when they arrive, contact is lost with the Andorians, and the Lexington's crew is in no shape to investigate. Instead, the Exeter is dispatched to find out what happened on the planet and to save the Lexington.
The episode is available on the Exeter's Web site as a series of five QuickTime videos. Everything about the episode broadcasts authenticity, from the design of the sets to the cut of the uniforms to the whiz and hum of the special effects. The production values and acting are obviously done by fans, but talented ones. The end result is an episode that's actually better than some of the "official" Trek that's been produced, and it just goes to show what fans can do with today's
technology and a heck of a lot of determination.
The Web site supports the episode with notes about creating the props and uniforms used in filming, but unfortunately much of the rest of the site is under construction. The links section is worth checking out—it has a number of Star Trek-related Web links, as well as links to mirror sites hosting the movies.
— Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week—January 13, 2003
onsider the fact that much of the mystical philosophy underlying George Lucas' Star Wars films derives from Oriental sources such as Taoism and Buddhism and Shintoism. Isn't it only natural then that the films would lend themselves to creative re-interpretation in other Asian media? I'm referring specifically here to the ancient art of origami.
OK, so paperfolding (or, as one Spanish Web site marvelously labels the practice, "papiroflexia") is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think high-tech spaceships, chrome robots, futuristic humans and weird aliens. But this almost pre-industrial artform can indeed accommodate SF iconography, as witnessed on the site known as Star Wars Origami. Here you'll encounter creased and crinkled representations of R2-D2, the Millennium Falcon, X-wing fighters and destroyer droids, most of them startlingly "lifelike." The irony of this low-tech handicraft being used to emulate the output of the zillion-dollar computers of Industrial Light & Magic is part of the charm of these fragile creations.
This site also guides the novice paperfolder through the basic chops of the medium, with diagrams and instructions anyone can easily follow. The handy links lead to a number of similar sites, proving that this unlikely fusion of 21st-century A.D. with 21st-century B.C. is more intuitive than you at first suspected. I was particularly taken with the Darth Vader creation by one Eileen Tan. Who ever knew a simple sheet of black paper could be so scary?!?
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—January 6, 2003
igital art galleries are the ultimate in democratic institutions. Whereas established museums and galleries, with a few exceptions, concentrate on "fine art" and disallow reproductions or borrowings, online collections embrace a multitude of "lowbrow" art that would otherwise never be seen except by collectors, and they allow you to print off hard copies for your offline use. Not only that, but they're often better organized than analog collections, free of admission and searchable to boot. That's a hard package to resist!
One of the more intriguing assortments of eye candy online is VISCO: The Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art. Here, after perusing a clearly written statement of purpose and easy navigation guide, you'll find more than 800 magazine cover shots ranging from the sedate and high-toned to the lurid and melodramatic. I was particularly taken by some British 'zines, those of the Spencer Group from the 1950s, which are little seen in the United States. Beautiful, hi-res retro-looking rockets, monsters and spacemen by such unsung artists as Gerald Facey and Ron Turner practically leap off the screen. Or consider the influential small-press 'zine from the late 1960s, Coven 13, with its eldritch images by William Stout, best known nowadays for his dinosaur artwork. You'll not likely encounter these paintings outside of convention dealer rooms in pricey bagged copies.
The site promises indexing by publisher and artist in the future, but for the present, access is via magazine title alone. Some useful links are appended, but you'll probably spend so much time browsing among these treasures that you'll neglect them entirely.
— Paul Di Filippo
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