First off, please accept my humble apologies.
I have not, as of yet, introduced myself; please let me do so now.
I have had Star Trek in my life as long as I ca remember; when I was still small enough to sit on my father's lap as we watched Star Trek after he got home from work.
In the eighties, I hated junior high, but discovered the hobbies of model building & miniatures. I started with classic cars, but Santa & my folks noted my interests in sci-fi, so AMT/ERTL kits for TOS & the movies became the norm, with Gundam mecha and Dalek & Cyberman minis rounding out the growing collection. I literally could not get enough of the Star Trek SHIPS; plastic minis & metal mins! They devoured a sizable chunk of my miniscule allowance, and was one of the few things that could keep me out of the friendly neighborhood arcade...
And during this time I got the Doctor Who rpg from FASA & the Atari 2600; two very different introductions to gaming. It wouldn't be until the nineties that I would learn about Star Fleet Battles, and it would be the early 2000s when I finally got educated on FASA having made both RPG and Tactical Combat games for Star Trek. Why did I not see these at conventions? …
During the last 2 years of purgatory; I mean, junior high, I made a friend who shared my interests, as well got reunited with a friend from my previous school, so now I had friends to game with and build ships with. During this time I had the ideas that would, respectively, become my main Trek persona of Commodore Sarvour, and a small group called Sarvour Shipyards.
In the nineties I got involved with KAG (Klingon Assault Group), and created two personas (i'll try to get the spellings right; memory is a touch rickety); first was Le'sAr of House Krull, an engineer. The second, was K'Zar of House Sov'vaj, an engineer from a House famous for their engineers and shipyards. I also had varying levels of involvement with numerous sci-fi groups, and even kitbashed 2 Galaxy-class kits to make a Galaxy Dreadnought for one of them, the only commissioned model I've made... It was challenging, but fun!
From 2001 to 2006, most of the groups I was involved with shrank and disbanded, with only a few lasting to the present day. It was during this time I had gotten into Warhammer 40,000, and was fairly active in the hobby. At Games Day Canada 2003 & '04, I was unbeatable, and represented the Imperium and the U.S..
After the Bush Recession I drifted from temp job to temp job, some brief some lasting many months.
Went back to school at ITT Tech in 2014 for their Design program; ITT was closed permanently in September 2016. Before i could complete the program and get my degree.
Soon as I find a school that won't insult me by screwing me on credit hours, I will work on finishing my degree in traditional and computer assisted design.
In 2017 the March Challenge caught my interest, and I hunkered down to do a ship redesign that had been percolating in my mind for a few years. It was a fun project and I am glad I got to do it.
Star Trek & Me:
TOS/TAS & the TOS Movies are my #1!
Deep Space Nine is a very, very close second!
MY Third? Enterprise. DS9 & ENT are the only spinoffs that had me hooked in the pilot, and kept me engaged throughout the series' run.
Fourth favorite is TNG; the pilot was interesting, and good enough to still give the show a chance. Despite I (at the time it was airing) hated the look of the ship, and those uniforms were awful. But some fans love them. *shrugs* To each their own I guess.
Kelvin Timeline. Yes, the KT has taken VOY down a notch; despite VOY having some of my favorite episodes of all Trek. Despite the KT films being hampered both creatively and progressively by corporate bungling, they have overall disappointed me less, and satisfied me more, than VOY has overall. My biggest complaint was the poorly-rationalized super-sizing of the ship. And CBS repeated that blunder rather than own up to being too cheap/lazy to fix the shuttlebay to fit the 366-meter-long ship mister Ryan Church had designed so well.
That leaves Voyager in sixth; in danger of getting taken down a notch by Discovery. VOY could've, and should have, been better than TNG. I blame the show runners and the writers. They had a good cast, interesting characters, and an interesting premise that set it apart from all the Treks that had come before. But the Kazons came off as garbage-patch Klingon-wannabes. They didn't do enough for the supporting cast, as they seldom got stories in which they could shine, as the show became over-focused on Janeway & Seven, and to a lesser extent The Doctor.
Chakotay. My favorite character on the show, had 3 really good episodes, but was so sidelined by the writers and showrunners, it hurt. Instead of getting more Chakotay, we got a few episodes I can not watch; I have to leave the room or turn the tv off (for reasons).
*deep breath*
Discovery. The new Trek on the block. The most controversial Trek yet; but the showrunners wanted it that way, to generate publicity and entice those who would watch it out of morbid curiosity. I like the cast, not so much the redesigns...
I am reserving judgement. They have interesting characters, though 3 of the principal 6 appear to have been significantly plagiarized along with plot/story elements. And this I will admit sours perceptions of the show, my own included. I am optimistic things will improve; trailers for the second season are rather promising. While I still have misgivings (which we can discuss at length elsewhere) I am hopeful things will only improve from here on.
And the supporting characters about whom we still know no more than when they first appeared, we need to get to know them. I can't even recall their names, as they have barely been used, and any random extra could replace them at this point.
