A new era in fanzines

I received a great email the other day from Jim Caswell: he and his collective of Star Trek fans are writing and producing their own audio presentations used my Efrosian essay as research for one of their ongoing characters' backgrounds, and wrote to thank me.

Star Trek Eras: The Audio Series

The episode in question (about an Efrosian character by the name of Ra-tevnarem, a communications officer on the USS Potemkin) is going to be for their second season. Currently they are working on editing the third episode in their first season, so it's going to be a while before this episode is actually recorded and made available.

"It wasn't until after we had created the character that we realized that there was a bit of confusion about the race," says Jim - coincidentally yet another fellow Star Trekking librarian. "Using your article as a base, I've come up with some strong ideas that should go a long way toward... a comprehensive answer. I just wanted to say thanks and let you know that your work is proving to be quite valuable."

In the meantime, there are other episodes already available for download. The "new era" of Star Trek fanzines is online.

The cosmic consciousness

There's a theory, isn't there, that writers and other creative people can tap into a kind of cosmic consciousness? And this is why two authors can seem to come up with an almost-identical set of thought processes at the exact same time. While some cynics may even try to label it plagiarism, I reckon it's amazing how often it is very definitely something more inexplicable than mere coincidence.

Last night, Jörg, a semi-regular Internet contact, was researching the Efrosian race, from Star Trek, and discovered that, only minutes before, I had added a comment to an old discussion page on Memory Alpha's Wiki on... Efrosians! We were both trying to ascertain details of a certain cut scene from "ST IV: The Voyage Home", for which a publicity still exists - of a short-haired Efrosian wearing a UFP (United Federation of Planets) badge. Had he ever been officially confirmed as playing a particular role? My theory was that he was intended to be an usher in the UFP Council scenes; the end credits mention "ushers", but the extras(?) playing them had no lines to spout in the final film, and didn't even seem to be visible in the onscreen footage. This comment of mine led my friend back to my blog entry about Efrosians. He'd been researching some embroidered patches bought at one of the big recent ST costume and props auctions from the 40th anniversary celebrations of TOS.

It was almost midnight here for me (and probably midday for him), but we shot an email back and forth - and suddenly he had new freeze frame shots from the various ST movies in my email tray. And lo, he found onscreen evidence of a male usher(!) in the matching uniform, but not the mysterious Efrosian. Technology is making us move so fast. I wasn't mentally prepared for obscure trivia after midnight, but it was fascinating (to us) anyway.

Above: Cut scene of Efrosian usher (left); closeup on cloth badge (dignitaries wore blue-enamelled metal versions that hung under the "UFP" badge); human usher stands near UFP President and Klingon Ambassador (right).

UPDATE: And years later, we found this:

The truth about Efrosians

Can you tell I was procrastinating (from a different, more difficult, writing task?) :)

Hy'Rell, the Efrosian librarian of the Eternal Gallery and Archive,
announces that this old blog entry from 2006 has now become a Page, and has moved here!