5 years ago
If you?re a believer it in fate, it would seem Jack Marshall?s final frontier was determined one night when he was 10 years old.
At the time, Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry was going city to city with his projector, showing pilot episodes and bloopers of the show.
Young Jack was at one of those viewings. Not knowing any better, he wandered backstage and found himself looking up at the huge, costumed characters he so often watched on television. The "big people" finally noticed the little boy and tried to shoo him away. But Gene Rodenberry himself stepped in and told Jack he could stay.
"He let me hang out all night," the Gaithersburg filmmaker said.
That awestruck evening, and a little boy?s realization that television wasn?t reality, set the course for Jack Marshall?s future. "That?s one of the reasons I went into TV production. When I was that I age, I figured out the stuff I watched wasn?t real and I wanted to know how they did it," said the 38-year-old, born one month before the original Star Trek series aired for the first time in September 1966.
Today, Marshall?s production company--Cow Creek Films--has launched two hour-long Star Trek episodes that pick up where the original series left off?three years into its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. It?s called "Star Trek: New Voyages."
Marshall and his crew of film professionals released its first episode in January 2004 and the second in October. So far, the free Internet DVDs have accumulated more than 22 million downloads.
The characters are the same icons the world first met nearly 40 years ago. There?s Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura and Lieutenant Commander "Scotty" Scott. And coming up in the third episode, set to begin production this September, the real Chekov--played by original actor Walter Keonig--returns to the Enterprise. In the story, he?s suddenly aged and has to deal with living out his twilight years.
Eugene Rodenberry, the son of the late Star Trek creator, is a consulting producer on the film.
Plus, the next episode?s written by a name no doubt familiar to many Star Trek fans, D.C. (Dorothy) Fontana, a writer on the original series. Back then, she had to use a pen name because it wasn?t common or accepted for women to write television scripts.
Through Chekov?s character, the pioneering writer deals with an inescapable aspect of the human condition: aging. And the human condition is really what Star Trek?s all about. The series is set in the 23rd century and offers Rodenberry?s vision of a Utopian society where people are created equal and social ills have been resolved. Indeed, for it?s time, the show had a diverse crew: white, black, Asian and, of course, Vulcan.
Marshall says his series works off the same premise, offering a way to comment on life in the 21st century and hopefully inspire viewers to seek out new solutions to world?s problems.
"Sci-fi allows us to look at issues close to our hearts and put an alien face on it," he said. "It allows us to distance ourselves in order to deal with issues like racism, disease, overpopulation."
Marshall and his crew are now in a position to keep the legacy of Star Trek alive. With UPN?s cancellation of the television series "Star Trek: Enterprise" last week, it?s the first time since 1987 that the series, in some form, hasn?t been on TV. There was the original 1966-69 run on NBC, followed by "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Star Trek: Voyager", then "Enterprise." Not to mention 10 movies.
It?s a tough job, especially when the filmmakers are producing on their own dime. Marshall?s paying ? not getting paid ? to make "New Voyages." But he?s got the donated services and expertise of veteran actors and even some Academy Award winners in the crew.
"Besides carrying the torch, it is a living resume," he said of his efforts. "It?s opening doors. We?re fans, but we?re professional fans."
Marshall?s wife and co-owner in the Cow Creek Films venture agreed to be breadwinner for a few years to see where her husband?s film career might take him.
"My wife considers this as similar to putting me through college," he said. "I get my two or three years to make this happen and then I go back to working for Discovery or something. But sure enough, things are happening."
His company starts production this spring on a film written by Chekov-actor Koenig and has some feelers in the water for a television series or two.
Plus whatever Marshall works on seems to quickly gain an underground following. Flogging the old animosity between fans of Star Wars and Star Trek, he?s produced remixes of films from both sides.
He first chose to tackle "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" because he couldn?t stand to see how the story-telling had changed since he was a kid.
"As a child of the 70s, I went to see Star Wars 30 times in the theater," Marshall said. "Then here we are in 1999 and Star Wars is coming back and oh, my God, it?s such a pooper. It?s just a kid?s movie."
So Marshall cleaned up the potty humor, edited out most references to Jar Jar Binks and released it on the Web. It became a huge hit online.
Next, he went after the movie, "Star Trek V." Despite what everyone else said, Marshall felt it was one of the best films among the 10 Star Trek movies released.
"I just edited it down, cut it like a TV show instead and everybody loved it," he said.
While he considers himself part of the Star Trek camp, he?s a fan of both. He still hasn?t gotten around to seeing the much-hyped "Star Wars: Episode III ? Revenge of the Sith," but he plans to go before the weekend is out.
It?s not going to distract him from his continuing work on the next Star Trek episode, though. Marshall experienced a moment this past weekend that brought him back to childhood and his evening spent with Gene Rodenberry. He was at a screening with his son and sure enough, the younger Rodenberry pulled out an old projector and started playing clips. Just like his dad decades before.
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Written By Kari PughOnline Regional Reporter
