There’s another website of fan-created Star Trek episodes. These are done in the style of the original series and take place aboard the starship Exeter. I think it’s very cool that fans are taking the time to make these great shows.
In other Trek news, startrek.com has a write-up of the Grand Slam convention that took place in Pasadena over the weekend. They talk very favorably about Wil Wheaton who has written about the experience on his own website.
You might wonder why I write about Wil a lot. I don’t know the guy. Even though I probably live only about 10 miles from him and I’m a Star Trek fan, I’ve never met him. He’s kind of my hero. Wil’s a year or two older than I am. He went through his teenage years on screen at the same time I was going through mine in the real world.
In the summer of 1986, I had just moved to Boston from Detroit. I was going into junior high and had more than my share of teenage geekiness. I had recently grown about a thousand feet over night and I no longer seemed to have control over my voice. The neighborhood I moved into had a lot kids in my age and I was trying to make new friends. One night my mom let me go see my first R-rated film in a movie theater with some of the other kids from the neighborhood. It was “Stand By Me.”
I read a lot of Steven King books and it was exciting to go see one in a theater. With NO adults. And it was rated R! I felt so “grown-up.” I immediately identified with Wil’s character and by extension with him. Or at least I wished I could be like him. He was smart and confident and seemed to be so cool. Of course as we all know, there is nothing more important than for a junior high student to be “cool.”
More recently watching those first few seasons of TNG again, I again saw myself at his age in the character of Wesley. Too smart for his own good and socially a little bit on the awkward side.
It was his website more than anything that was the inspiration for my site. I’ve mentioned before that I have had or worked on various websites for ten years, but I’ve never done one that was so personal. The first website I made in college was a Mighty Mighty Bosstones fansite. Years later I did another band fansite for The Donnas. There was my writing for the RTC zine that had a bit of my personality in there, but mostly it was a fictional persona I hid behind. This is the first time I’ve come out and said, “This is me. This is who I am and what I’m thinking.” It’s a little frightening if I think about it too much.