A limited-run web comedy series coming this summer will head where Star Trek never dared to go: Off the record.
“These are the voyages that don’t make the captain’s log” is the tagline for Voyage Trekkers from Squishy Studios and ICM Media. Written and directed by Valley native Nathan Blackwell, the show will take the premise of a massive exploratory starfleet and focus on one crew during the worst possible moments of their adventures. These are probably not the heroes who would be called upon to escort the Klingon chancellor to Earth, if you take my meaning. They include the cocky Captain Sunstrike (Adam Rini), an exasperated Doctor (Gabrielle Van Buren) and the unfazed Commander Powell (Logan Blackwell, a high school classmate of mine).
Shooting for the six, two-and-a-half-minute webisodes wrapped in December and the show is now in post-production. For the past few months we’ve had a nice teaser trailer to look at — see below — but now Nathan has sent me an exclusive first look at the Voyage Trekkers poster — see above, and click to enlarge!
Sure, we’ve seen this kind of formula before — it would be hard to top Galaxy Quest or various episodes of Stargate SG-1 in the sci-fi parody department — but let’s be honest: This is fertile ground for the web-series format, is it not?
Also in production from Blackwell and Squishy: Normally This Weird, a web series about two geeky newlyweds who move into a neighborhood full of bizarre and fantastic characters. Blackwell calls it “essentially four times as ambitious (more pages, more money) than ‘Voyage Trekkers.’ And yes, it was completely insane to do two web series at once. Basically I’m an idiot.”
But at least he’s a talented one.
As for why Voyage Trekkers will be a limited series, Blackwell says:
“Well, to be honest, we just wanted to do something that was fun. We didn’t want another web series we were obliged to upkeep as it’s heck of a lot of work. I’ve always wanted to do a sci-fi comedy and we’ve never had a chance to give it a proper go. By making it a ‘limited run’ it came down to how many episodes we could shoot in one weekend. We wrote seven episodes but could only finish six. And yes, six episodes in two days was nuts. As was previously established, I’m basically an idiot.”
But Blackwell says “there’s a really good chance” more episodes could be made in the future.
