After watching "The Tressaurian Intersection" a few times, I feel it's time to open a new line of discussion of what this fan-film has accomplished.
Unlike other fan films, which have tried (with varying approaches and degrees of success) to revive/extrapolate certain aspects of the STAR TREK Prime Universe, STARSHIP EXETER seems to have staked out new territory. Obviously, any fan film is endeavoring to build and project its own vision of the STAR TREK Universe. But EXETER seems to have tried to create a strongly parallel vision to that of TOS. In many respects, its as if Jimm & Josh Johnson and their army of like-minded fan-film makers wanted to do more than just create a "home made" STAR TREK episode. They seemed to want to create characters and situations within the story that you could imagine as inhabiting the same Universe as TOS, or, at the very least, would be as close to TOS as, say, TAS was.
To be sure, unlike NEW VOYAGES / PHASE II, FARRAGUT and CONTINUES, which also very heavily borrow from TOS' characters, sets, costumes, FX, "look & feel", music, etc., EXETER's second (and probably last) episode seemed to have its own identity that inserts itself in the "shell" of the TOS Universe.
Let's try imagining something. Let's envision a scenario in which you could somehow "Forest Gump" the TOS characters into a situation in which they interact with the characters and situations from "The Tressaurian Intersection". If, for sake of argument, we could somehow make that work technically, would it work in terms of how the characters of both shows behave? (In other words, if you could somehow shoe-horn together a scene showing the Enterprise and the revitalized Exeter in a rendez-vous at a distant frontier outpost or starbase, and show Capt. Garrovick beaming over to the Enterprise to confer with Capt. Kirk, would it work? Can you envision John Quincy Garrovick making a virtual appearance on TOS the way other starship commanders did (Stone, Decker, Wesley, Tracey)? If not Garrovick, could you see Cmdr. Harris or Cmdr. Cutty working with Spock, Sulu, etc.?
And do you feel that the atmospherics of EXETER (not the costumes, sets, music, etc., but instead what the characters stand for) are compatible with TOS? There are little quibbles I could think of. Despite the mythos that seems to have arisen around "In A Mirror, Darkly" on ENT, I never saw the Tholians as being super-powerful, and there was never anything about them (in the TOS Universe, anyway) that ever suggested they were responsible for the demise of the U.S.S. Defiant. In contrast, "The Tholian Web" always struck me as the Enterprise and Defiant encountering a natural phenomenon that they lacked the technology and wisdom to cope with, and the challenge for Spock, Scott and McCoy was to find some new and innovative way to survive in this unconventional environment without Capt. Kirk's guidance. By contrast, EXETER seems to re-imagine the Tholians as both a huge threat to the Federation (on par with the Borg; maybe worse) that are capable of a Delphic Expanse-style scheme to re-align this portion of our Galaxy in their favor. But the most eyebrow-raising mention in EXETER was during Garrovick's letter to Ensign Richards' parents, suggesting that she was being recognized for "military" honors. Perhaps this was Jimm & Josh Johnson's own conceptual shorthand for Starfleet's military attributes, but it does seem the whole tone of EXETER was even more militaristic than that of TOS, which was actually made in the heart of both the Cold War and the Viet Nam Conflict in particular. This seemed to chime in with Cuddy's remark that the pseudo-Gorn Tressaurian prisoner was a "cold-blooded bastard", a significant departure for the rest of the episode's profanity-free atmosphere.
It would be a thrill to imagine John Quincy Garrovick either meeting face-to-face or otherwise teaming up with James T. Kirk. I don't know if the hyper-aggressive Tholians or Tressaurians would fit into the TOS Univserse, but the Exeter and her crew could easily be seen working with the Enterprise crew. (I wonder if Garrovick & company could share a drink with the Enterprise's characters on Space Station K-7...)
Of course, it could be argued that this wasn't what EXETER was about. It's not about reviving TOS exactly. It's about the fans saying that, despite Hollywood's movies and spin-offs, many fans really wanted to "get back to the basics" of TOS all along, and EXETER managed to do something that no STAR TREK movie, spin-off TV series, or other fan film really tried to do: it tried to faithfully capture the essence of TOS (with some compromises) and bring it to life with a story which accepted that essence as a good thing, not something to be restyled or repudiated in the name of fashion and film-making trends.
Did they succeed?
Unlike other fan films, which have tried (with varying approaches and degrees of success) to revive/extrapolate certain aspects of the STAR TREK Prime Universe, STARSHIP EXETER seems to have staked out new territory. Obviously, any fan film is endeavoring to build and project its own vision of the STAR TREK Universe. But EXETER seems to have tried to create a strongly parallel vision to that of TOS. In many respects, its as if Jimm & Josh Johnson and their army of like-minded fan-film makers wanted to do more than just create a "home made" STAR TREK episode. They seemed to want to create characters and situations within the story that you could imagine as inhabiting the same Universe as TOS, or, at the very least, would be as close to TOS as, say, TAS was.
To be sure, unlike NEW VOYAGES / PHASE II, FARRAGUT and CONTINUES, which also very heavily borrow from TOS' characters, sets, costumes, FX, "look & feel", music, etc., EXETER's second (and probably last) episode seemed to have its own identity that inserts itself in the "shell" of the TOS Universe.
Let's try imagining something. Let's envision a scenario in which you could somehow "Forest Gump" the TOS characters into a situation in which they interact with the characters and situations from "The Tressaurian Intersection". If, for sake of argument, we could somehow make that work technically, would it work in terms of how the characters of both shows behave? (In other words, if you could somehow shoe-horn together a scene showing the Enterprise and the revitalized Exeter in a rendez-vous at a distant frontier outpost or starbase, and show Capt. Garrovick beaming over to the Enterprise to confer with Capt. Kirk, would it work? Can you envision John Quincy Garrovick making a virtual appearance on TOS the way other starship commanders did (Stone, Decker, Wesley, Tracey)? If not Garrovick, could you see Cmdr. Harris or Cmdr. Cutty working with Spock, Sulu, etc.?
And do you feel that the atmospherics of EXETER (not the costumes, sets, music, etc., but instead what the characters stand for) are compatible with TOS? There are little quibbles I could think of. Despite the mythos that seems to have arisen around "In A Mirror, Darkly" on ENT, I never saw the Tholians as being super-powerful, and there was never anything about them (in the TOS Universe, anyway) that ever suggested they were responsible for the demise of the U.S.S. Defiant. In contrast, "The Tholian Web" always struck me as the Enterprise and Defiant encountering a natural phenomenon that they lacked the technology and wisdom to cope with, and the challenge for Spock, Scott and McCoy was to find some new and innovative way to survive in this unconventional environment without Capt. Kirk's guidance. By contrast, EXETER seems to re-imagine the Tholians as both a huge threat to the Federation (on par with the Borg; maybe worse) that are capable of a Delphic Expanse-style scheme to re-align this portion of our Galaxy in their favor. But the most eyebrow-raising mention in EXETER was during Garrovick's letter to Ensign Richards' parents, suggesting that she was being recognized for "military" honors. Perhaps this was Jimm & Josh Johnson's own conceptual shorthand for Starfleet's military attributes, but it does seem the whole tone of EXETER was even more militaristic than that of TOS, which was actually made in the heart of both the Cold War and the Viet Nam Conflict in particular. This seemed to chime in with Cuddy's remark that the pseudo-Gorn Tressaurian prisoner was a "cold-blooded bastard", a significant departure for the rest of the episode's profanity-free atmosphere.
It would be a thrill to imagine John Quincy Garrovick either meeting face-to-face or otherwise teaming up with James T. Kirk. I don't know if the hyper-aggressive Tholians or Tressaurians would fit into the TOS Univserse, but the Exeter and her crew could easily be seen working with the Enterprise crew. (I wonder if Garrovick & company could share a drink with the Enterprise's characters on Space Station K-7...)
Of course, it could be argued that this wasn't what EXETER was about. It's not about reviving TOS exactly. It's about the fans saying that, despite Hollywood's movies and spin-offs, many fans really wanted to "get back to the basics" of TOS all along, and EXETER managed to do something that no STAR TREK movie, spin-off TV series, or other fan film really tried to do: it tried to faithfully capture the essence of TOS (with some compromises) and bring it to life with a story which accepted that essence as a good thing, not something to be restyled or repudiated in the name of fashion and film-making trends.
Did they succeed?
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...). It would make sense that Starfleet would divide up unknown space into equal pie shares and assign their exploratory starships to all head out in different directions from its center location in an effort to maximise information-gathering.
