Star Trek [The Experience] LIVES!—or at least a little bit

As co-creator (and ST:TE actor/staffer-now-archivist) Vernon Wilmer himself says, here's a little gift to all those flocking to Vegas this long weekend for the big cahuna Creation blow-out—otherwise (now) known as Vegas Khhaaaan!

That's Vernon and writer-director April "Commander Tahryn" Hebert  at right in this brilliant flick—and it's for all you bittersweet fans missing Quark's, the museums, the rides and the "time station" at Star Trek: The Experience. Or, even more so, for all you young'uns since '08 with no memories of your own—just photos and tall tales to cling to.

But if you go looking in official sources about The Experience for any of Tahryn's topics heard here in this brilliant little flick, you will come up short. Nothing these guys talk about was ever planned—it simply grew: first as actors' therapy and the need for context and backstory in a random assignment as aliens at a Las Vegas tourist mecca ... and, later on, because the STTE family simply became its own monster and universe unto itself. Because Star Trek is hardly just your garden-variety tourist theme ride, you know; the Canon Continuity Monster devours all, of course.

I had a front-row seat on the building and opening and updating and closing for The Experience, 1997-2008, but Vernon's ongoing blip.tv series Star Trek: My Experience begins to catalog all the between-the-lines "other" that we at the old Communicator, startrek.com and the like never really got a chance to catalog until it was too late—and what many fans remember today as the BEST PART.  Thank Kahless for him!

And, in turn, both of them for this...



(Oh, and if any of you first-gen fans get a bit of a kick out of that headline... my pleasure.)