Improvised Star Trek, begun as a stage show in 2009 and relaunched as a podcast in 2011, has announced that the show will be coming to an end shortly. There are several episodes remaining in the can that’ll be released over the coming months, along with retrospectives and other finale-adjacent stuff. There’s also a final live show coming up this Saturday, August 24, in Chicago.
Update: The live series finale will be broadcast on Facebook in about a half-hour (9:30 PM, Central Time). Dan Granata, their live sound engineer, just posted a twitter thread on their truly remarkable live-show audio setup. Well, elevator pitch: It's a full-cast, fully-produced (sound effects, music, editing) comedy Star Trek show, set roughly in the era of "Peak Star Trek," somewhere between the last season of DS9 and the last season of VOY (individual episodes aren't consistent with whether or not the war is still going, or Voyager has gotten home yet; depends on what suits the scene), on board an old Constellation-class ship, the USS Sisyphus NCC-3541. While not penetrating as widely into the scene as some fan productions I could name, it's adjacent to many more well-known works: a few examples are the actor who plays the Captain, Matt Young, also stars as Usidore the Wizard on Hello From the Magic Tavern. Eli Mandel, another cast member, was recently hired as a staff writer on Saturday Night Live. And the show led to a Klingon language cover of the '90s pop song "Kiss Me." I think it's funny as hell. The cast knows comedy, they know their Star Trek, and it's clear a lot of love goes into every episode and scene. Sean Kelley, who plays science officer Crick Watson on the show, has a series of blog posts with some of his favorite episodes, which is a good start if you'd like to sample the show. If you want something faster than a full episode, there's a five minute preview where the ship's Emergency Tour Guide Hologram introduces you to the setting.