Five-Minute Excelsior

September 25, 2013

Happy April Fool's Day!

You heard me. April Fool's Day. 2012.

See, it's like this. A few years ago, our good friend Wowbagger plunged into the "let's everybody make a fan film" Kool-Aid (but just the shallow, audio-only end). His fan series, Star Trek: Excelsior, premiered in '07 and has run for three full seasons.

Not being much into fan series (despite evidence to the contrary), I took a long time to check it out. What got my attention was Wowbagger's thread calling for fivers -- which he would then have his cast actually record as an April Fool's thing. That was too cool to pass up. I called dibs on the pilot episode, but, being me, got it in late. (We're talking March 31 late.) I was proud of my work, but ashamed that I had either delayed his event or forced him to proceed with the recording without me.

But Wowbagger wasn't mad. He explained something to me: he had written this into his timetable. Knowing I would be late, he had set a May/June target for the audiofiver's actual release.

I was glad I hadn't caused trouble. I was impressed with his foresight. I swore revenge.

As it happened, the Excelsior cast had a rough year and didn't make the May/June target. In fact, production fell so far behind that Wowbagger decided to save it for the next April Fool's. (He's still convinced I did that with the anime event on purpose. Didn't.) Unbeknownst to him, I decided I would also publish the fivers here, and even finish the first season, which was only three-quarters covered by the audiofiver.

But not on the same day. Oh no. I would make him wait. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Wowbagger did his end of the April Fool's event, unaware that there was another end. The audiofiver went online (scroll down) and was announced at our forum. You'd expect at least a mention of this on the site itself, but no. Not so much as a link. In private, I listened to the .mp3 with great delight, and I told Wowbagger I'd have more to say later.

And he's waited for it. For a year. And. A. Half.

Cold enough for ya, Wowbagger?!

Let this be a lesson to all and sundry. Three lessons, in fact. One, I do things I say I will, whether writing fivers or exacting vengeance. Two, my procrastination may be a big problem, but it's my problem. And three... if you decide to secretly plan around someone's bad habits, for God's sake don't tell him you did it!

Okay, enough intro. Today's update is the launch of a brand new subsite: Five-Minute Excelsior. For now, it's in the Trek category. I think what I'll eventually do is make a separate category for fan series, since we now have four of them (this one plus the two for Voyager and the one for DS9).

The new subsite, which I'm dubbing 5MXL, has four fivers, comprising the whole first season:

Five-Minute "The Valandrian Expedition" by me. When you listen to the audiofiver, you'll notice some small differences; this was mostly Wowbagger correcting for the fact that I wrote it not knowing which characters were going to be important.
Five-Minute "Turns of Events" by NAHTMMM, a longtime community member. If I'm not mistaken, this is Nah's first fiver on the actual site, but he's written many at the forums for things we don't cover yet (such as Trek novels and history).
Five-Minute "Wildfire," also by NAHTMMM, who incidentally, as I mentioned in the T100 a while back, is married to guest writer Katy Jane. And this site is where they met!
Five-Minute "Down the Rabbit Hole" by me. If you've heard the audiofiver, this will be the only one of the four that's new to you.

The subsite also has its own About page.

But that's not all! There are three extras to accompany the launch:

TJI #52: Paramount actually seriously making Excelsior show, for real. The context here is that Star Trek VI and "Flashback" inspired a lot of Trekkies to campaign for a show set on Sulu's Excelsior. It was the most visible Trek fan campaign for several years, and Takei himself was on board. Hopes were high leading up to the announcement of ENT, but of course they announced something different (ENT). This set back any possible Sulu show a few years, and between that and the fandom redirecting its attention to ENT, the Excelsior Campaign petered out. No one was more disappointed than Takei, and since then he's been complaining about it every couple of years in interviews.
T10 #108: The Top 10 Signs That Your Girlfriend is a Valandrian. You knew this was coming.
T10 #109: The Top 10 New Year's Resolutions of Captain Cortez. You didn't know this was coming, but it came anyway.

I think that about covers it. Now, of course, most of this won't do much for you if you haven't listened to the first season of Excelsior. But you know how to solve that problem, don't you?

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