STV: It's FarragutFest! Celebrate with two REAL and local crew of the Farragut & Enterprise

If it's the first weekend of December, it must be FARRAGUT FEST down in Kingsland, GA, home to the Farragut Studios that boasts the rebuild of Desilu's storied Stage 9...i.e., the original Star Trek sets of the 1960s whose amazing recreations are used here now for both the Starship Farragut and Star Trek Continues indie fan film series, of which I've come to be quite familiar.

If you are lucky enough to be in the region—I hope to go one year, but families already come from several states away to get to walk those hallowed corridors in these incredible lookalikes—I hope you tell Royal Weaver and Sam Rooks hi, if you meet them (video below the fold). Those two, and many more, are part of the local crew who build and maintain those stages year-round in-between times the rest of us are away.  In between the tours, panels and even vendors of FarragutFest, they are among the many who can tell you all the history and backstage detail you'd ever want to know.

And that's why I took time during the "Mirror" shoot for STC's "Fairest of Them All" last spring—our own chat cut short by the needs of the shoot, as you'll see—to get both of these guys on camera and get them their due. The photo (left) just happens to be them atop and steadying a ladder to be able to run the Tantalus Field cover during that filming.

Also during shoots, Sam spends a lot of time with lights, while Royal is everyone's number one door man—and I don't mean the taxi-hailing kind, I mean the sliding Starfleet kind. It's a special art, as anyone who's seen the original bloopers knows all too well!

So—in honor of another FarragutFest this weekend, here's my chat with the locals, to celebrate! If you can't be there, try for 2015—I know I will—and meanwhile check out the Farragut Films Facebook page where I'm sure there'll be pics a-plenty. Go "Like" their page—and of course, go "Like" the Star Trek Continues page as well— if somehow *gasp* you haven't already!

Wyatt is back! Star Trek Continues' Ep. 3 debuts Sunday

Here you go! Aside from the great new WiredTV series and all our usual site videos, I do have some sneak-peeks of my own for Star Trek Continues' Episode 3, the mirror-tale "Fairest Of Them All"—filmed in mid-March and getting its world premiere tonight at SupanovaCon in Sydney, Australia...online Sunday, June 15 at noon Eastern!

And what better way to start off "safely"—a spoiler-free tease, natch—than with a chat with Wyatt Lenhart, who took one episode's leave offship from playing Chekov, but is back now in all his mirror-snarly glory here for "Ep3." I ask him all your pent-up questions!

As I promised, leaving the on-camera world of STC for now did not mean an exit from the production family, and part of my world now is continued documenting of STC in the Trekland style... like this quick chat with Wyatt on a pivotal day of shooting. It's just the first of many more to come:

Happy birthday, Armin!—and check out this comedy's Kickstarter video

Armin and I during the 2007 Writer's Guild strike "Trek Day"

Yes, happy birthday today to a great actor, scholar, novelist, genre fan, union guy, Ferengi—and the man who first opened the door for us on opening night at Quark's!

Our best greetings to Armin Shimerman — who I hear also made a wicked recurring name for himself as Principal Snyder on  Buffy and tunneldweller Pascal on Beauty and the Beast).

While we wish him well today and I have your attention, check him out with Harry "Tam Elbrun/Nathan Samuels" Groener in this YouTube for a Kickstarter campaign on a hilarious indie comedy they and a host of genre names are involved with—Armin's wife Kitty, Barry Bostwick, many more ... and co-created and produced by Gabriel Diani, the guy who portrayed Spock to straight comic perfection in the tiny yet brilliant and even licensed 2004 production of "Spock's Brain" at an OC comedy club. How many in-jokes can you count? And this is just one of a dozen shorts featuring a lot of familiar faces in the film and, uh, "dry" wit... it's Diani & Devine Meet The Apolcalypse:

Now that I have my own attention free to look at other projects, I hope you all check out all the many cute vids and make a donation—a lot of your favorite actors are helping Gabe and Etta out with their project. Gabe even does a great turn in one as young sarcastic Mark Twain on the Internets machine ...

STV: Marc Zicree and SPACE COMMAND, before making history

And before they hit Comic-Con this weekend!

Welcome to Part One of a lengthy sitdown we did informally with Treklander Marc Scott Zicree here in L.A., back when we barely had a glimps of the amazing momentum and excitement his SPACE COMMAND would spark. But the optimistic, non-dystopian four-film family space saga has since become  the fastest ever to fund on Kickstarter—and then double its goal!

This weekend at Comic-Con San Diego, Marc, Doug Drexler and company not only party to countdown the Saturday evening end of this amazing Kickstarter crowdfunding—and you can still contribute right up until midnight Saturday (EDT)!—but have planned an amazing 8:30 pm panel Friday, including a drawing for one lucky fan from the audience to  be sketched up as an alien by the films' concept artist, Iam McCraig.

Meanwhile, read up on Marc's long out-of-limelight but huge award-winning career in good sci-fi filmic works, including DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars" story ... and enjoy Part I of our chat.