Star Trek: Roddenberry's Dream Escapes the Screen

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Captain's log start date 4121.7.
We are en route to Akumal 7, anobscure planet on the border of
the Klingon neutral zone.
Starfleet Command has directedus to investigate strange
signals which have been receivedfrom the planet.
Although this is a dangerousmission, I am confident in the
capabilities of my new crew, whoare seasoned professionals,

(00:34):
intently serious about theirmission, the best assembled crew
in the entire Starfleet Command.
I am proud to serve with them.
Mr Spock has picked up anunusual energy force and
emanated to the planet.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Am proud to serve with them.
Mr Spock has picked up anunusual energy force.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a
podcast where we look ateveryone's favorite theme park
attractions, lands, textures andnovelties.
We talk in over about andthrough our week's topic and
then, with literally no concernfor practicality, safety or
economic viability, we come upwith ways to make them better.
My name is Kelly McCubbin,columnist for the theme park
website Boardwalk Times, andwith me, as always, is Peter

(01:25):
Overstreet University, professorof Animation and Film History
in Northern California.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So Pete yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
What are we?

Speaker 4 (01:42):
talking about today.
Well, hold on a second, let mestop energizers and we'll begin
this process here Today.
We're going to kind of dip intoour nerdy roots here and we're
going to talk about the manyattractions built around Star
Trek.
Star Trek, yep, good old StarTrek.

(02:03):
Okay, wait, let me de-energizethe bridge here.
Okay, yeah, more serious here.
Yeah, you want to cut power tothe bridge?

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah, that's fine, wait don't cut life so far,
we're going to follow Star Trek.
Well, I guess the show startedin 1966 and is still going now
in some ways.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
I would say like from the late 80s onward, has never
really been out of the publiceye.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Just it will not die.
And I will say this about StarTrek I am just a diehard Star
Trek fan.
I just love Star Trek.
Yep, I will even the Star Trekshows that I don't love.
I'm compelled to watch becauseI'm so in.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Got to have it.
You know it's like okay, I'llgive it a try.
You know, like I love Star Trek.
I love the original series.
I was a big fan of NextGeneration, love the movies.
I'm even a semi-fan of theKelvinverse films with Chris
Pine, etc.
They did some clever stuff.
So yeah, we're both Star Treknerds.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
We totally are.
And I will tell you and this isgoing to come up later I am not
only a Star Trek fan, but I ama fan of fan-produced spinoffs
of Star Trek.
Oh yes, absolutely.
Fan-produced spinoffs of StarTrek oh yes, absolutely.
Much in the same way and thiswill come into play later much
in the same way that I'm a fanof fan-produced spinoffs of

(03:32):
Doctor who.
Yes, I find them fascinating.
Even when they're bad, I findthem fascinating, and sometimes
they're quite good.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, doctor who has had itsfan bases Even back in the 60s
in Great Britain.
There has always been some sortof fan base.
But it's interesting, Iremember when I was growing up,
like the 80s and 90s, therealways seemed to be this
hierarchy of geekdom where StarWars fans were kind of like

(04:02):
these at the time, kind of like,yeah, well, lucas isn't making
much more.
We only had the three moviesand a couple of Ewok TV shows,
right, and a Christmas specialand a Christmas special and that
was it.
And we had to kind of take whatLucas was, you know, table
Scraps was giving us as StarWars nerds.
So they were kind of like, yeah, we like Star Wars, but there's
not a lot there and I don'treally want to read yet another

(04:24):
Timothy Zahn book.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
So I'd read another Alan Dean Foster or Brian Daly
book in a hot minute.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
I'd be all over it.
Yeah, another splinter of themind's other eye.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yes, that'd be great.
More splinters, more eyes thereyou go?

Speaker 4 (04:37):
That'd be perfect.
So Star Wars fans were notreally in the picture.
Yeah, you had not to the levelthat they are now.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
No, for sure.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
They have far outpaced the level of fanaticism
and financial commitment etcetera.
Yeah, to Star Trek fans Almostgotten a little scary about it.
Yeah, but it's interesting.
Back when I was growing up itwas like, yeah, you're kind of
in the Star Wars, but it waslike Star Trek.
Yeah, if you were Star Trek youbelong to a crowd.

(05:08):
It was like how the fandom isnow for Star Wars.
Star Trek was the thing.
You would go to these fanconventions and everybody would
have, you know, batleths andphasers and somebody would be
walking around with a replica ofNomad, right, you know, every
once in a while you wind up intoa William Holden fan.
You know M5 is the most perfectcomputer Kirk.

(05:30):
But then the Doctor who nerdswere like the outer margins,
like they were like the meganerds.
Like we don't mix with thoseguys, especially here in the—.
They're the chess club.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Especially here in the United States, because it
was much more rarefied here.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Absolutely yeah, but Kelly and I are devotees of all
you know of Of both.
Of both you know, Star Wars eh.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
But yeah, I certainly like Star Wars.
I don't want to say anythingbad about it, but it's not the
same thing to me.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
Yeah, it doesn't have the same emotional tie.
Yeah, but Star Trek really doesstand out, gene Roddenberry's
creation, along with LucilleBall.
Yeah, lucille Ball veryimportant, very important.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
There would be no Star Trek without Lucille.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Ball.
I know so anytime you guys aredissing Lucy.
Can you imagine if Lucy wasactually on the Enterprise?
Oh God, now remember, lassie.
You're going to stand here infront of this conveyor belt that
leads straight into the warpdrive and you're going to be
picking out all of the dilithiumcrystals that are not glowing,
and if any of them enter intothe warp core it'll call a hull

(06:33):
breach.
That will destroy the entireEnterprise.
All right, go and like EnsignEthel and Lucy are like shoving
dilithium crystals in theirmouths and stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Like I'm in man.
Fascinating Captain.

Speaker 4 (06:49):
Redhead seems to be exploding.
Yeah, suddenly, like Ethelturns into Charlie X and he gets
like silver eyes.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Whoa, you just went deep.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Oh, like I said, I'm a Star Trek nerd yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
And I think it's fair to say that you and I were both
kind of brought up on theoriginal series.
I love a lot of the laterseries, Sure, but you know my
heart has always been with the.
Enterprise with no lettersafter it.
Yep.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
Yep, the 1701.
There's something delightfullykitschy, optimistic beyond
belief.
Yeah, there's somethingdelightfully kitschy, optimistic
beyond belief.
I mean, that's the thing withStar Trek now is a lot of
cynicism has kind of spread intoit.
Yeah, it fights really hard forthat identity.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
It comes back, and this is a thing.
As I was researching thisepisode, one of the things I
kind of realized is that StarTrek is this sort of constant
dichotomy.
It's constantly fighting forits own ideals, yeah, and it
usually wins, which isremarkable, yeah, and it's just.
There's all of thesecontradictions.

(07:56):
Like you know, gene Roddenberry, this kind of amazing visionary
, also not necessarily thenicest guy no, no, no, no no.
Yeah, I mean no yeah.
Cheated on his wife and thencheated on the woman.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
He was cheating on his wife with Don't you think
you'd like to rephrase that?

Speaker 3 (08:19):
laddie, I saw a quote from Nichelle Nichols who said
that she stopped being involvedwith Gene Roddenberry because
she did not want to be the otherwoman's other woman.
Yikes, wow.
But the ideals won out.

(08:39):
Ultimately, what lasts is thefact that he did integrate that
set.
Yes, and he fought for it a lot.
He fought really hard and hecreated a series that was a
post-scarcity world where moneywas no longer relevant.
It was stunningly progressive.
I don't know if you've watchedLower Decks at all.

(09:01):
There's a great episode ofLower Decks from, I think, the
last season, where they go to aplanet just as they join the
Federation and all they're doingis running around tearing up
money.
We don't need it anymore,hooray.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
I'll give you $800 for it.
Is that a lot?

Speaker 3 (09:21):
But yeah the ideals tended to win out, like he kept
fighting that Starfleet was nota military institution and
there's give and take there, forsure, oh yeah, but ultimately
they keep coming back to that,they keep resting on it Like no,
no, no, we're exploratory.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
Right, you have to keep it on that in order to
really maintain it, otherwiseit's just another star.
Insert other noun here Stargate, star Wars yes, I mean for me
Star Trek.
Yeah, it's the optimism.
There was a comfort to it, eventhough, yes, characters would
be in danger, especially if theywere wearing a red shirt.
Yes, but you definitely hadthis level of comfort to it.

(10:03):
Yeah, these were people thatyou were exploring the universe.
You could attach to one, maybe acouple of them, as your
favorite character and they hadenough of a for the 60s, enough
diversity where that waspossible.
People who were Asian Americancould latch on to George Takei
as Sulu or Nichols as Uhura, forAfrican-American.

(10:25):
Like Whoopi Goldberg has agreat quote where she turned on
the TV and she says I saw thisblack woman.
I used to yell out to my momMom, you got to see this TV.
There's a black woman on TV andshe ain't no maid, you know.
And that's a great quotebecause that was a big deal for
television at the time.
Yeah, you had Bill Cosby on ISpy, but like a black woman who

(10:48):
is really making waves andactually having a certain level
of authority on board theEnterprise was a big deal I mean
just remarkably huge and justwomen at all in those positions
of power was revolutionary.
Absolutely.
And let's just for a moment,let us not forget that Star Trek

(11:10):
did dip into the usual sci-fitropes of women as space sex
objects, totally, you know.
This is why I say there'sconstant contradiction.
Angelique Petitjean, you know,dressed like a Jiffy Pop, yeah,
Off with green hair 500 Kwatlusfor the newcomers.
So yeah, I mean, you run intothat a lot.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
I think it's almost stronger because it's always
fighting these contradictions.
Yes, and always the idealismwins out.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
But the television show did not last for its entire
five-year mission.
No, the five-year mission.
It barely made three.
Yeah, it's five-year mission toexplore strange new worlds you
know, and it's like seek out newlife and new civilizations.
But it didn't finish and thefans were really upset by this.
Yeah, they lobbied, they wroteto CBS and Desilu going what the

(12:06):
heck?
And they bailed enough water orintergalactic space dust in
order to keep it going.
Yeah, but it was sadly pulledoff the air and the actors were
kind of thrown to the wind.
Nichelle Nichols went intoblaxploitation oh did she?
She did.
She appeared in a couple ofblaxploitation films, mostly as
a gun-toting mama, which isreally hard to watch actually

(12:28):
when you watch something asprogressive as Star Trek and all
of a sudden you know she'sdoing jive talk topless with a
machine gun.
You're like, really that's rough, but you're an actor, you got
to work and so you can't faultit you know, william Shatner
certainly was not doingShakespeare afterwards.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
No yeah, can't fault it.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
You know, william Shatner certainly was not doing
Shakespeare afterwards no, yeah,so a lot of them were just not
working.
But then a bunch of fans therewas a convention that invited a
bunch of them on board.
George Takei was certainly oneof them.
Yeah, Doohan, James Doohan.
And then, oh, come on, DeForestKelly.
Yeah, they all showed up andthey were like, okay, sure,
whatever, this will be a lark,I'll meet a couple of people,

(13:07):
whatever.
It's kind of fun.
And they show up in thisauditorium and there's like
thousands of people giving thema standing ovation and shouting.
They felt like we were theBeatles.
It was like, oh my God.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
And they had no idea.
I mean, this was a differenttime they didn't know how many
people were in it.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Yeah, early 70s at this point.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
I think it was around 74-ish, I think, yeah, 74.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, and it just it exploded, yeah.
And I know someone who wasthere for that convention she
dressed, she cosplayed, as aVulcan, which was pretty fun, oh
that's great.
But yeah, it was intense andthat was kind of that moment
Well, let's bring it back.
And so there was talk aboutbringing Star Trek back for a
short time in the 80s and thateventually led to Star Trek, the

(13:54):
motion picture Otherwise knownas three hours of I'm going to
stand up for the motion picturea little bit, so I recognize
that the second half of thatmovie is pretty slow.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
The second half yeah, but I was so happy as a kid.
This is like 1979.
I was so happy as a kid to seeall of these favorite characters
that I'd been watching insyndication for years.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Oh yeah, like back together and the animated series
which had come out before thisand just to see them back doing
something new, I found itthrilling.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I thought all the character stuff with them
re-meeting at the beginning ofthe film.
I really liked McCoy with abeard, mccoy with a beard, mccoy
with a beard.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
That is so great.
That is actually a great littlepiece.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
There's an interesting mythology about that
movie and believe me, folks,we're going to get to the theme
parks, we're not going to justgo through the history of Star.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
Trek no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
But one thing does lead to another, so that's why
we're mentioning this yeah,there's a mythology that Star
Trek the Motion Picture was abomb.
It wasn't.
Nope, it actually adjusted forinflation.
It had the highest gross of anyStar Trek film until the
Kelvinverse movies.
Really, yes, wow, yeah, it didvery, very well.

(15:21):
It was expensive, so that waspart of the issue.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Well, they hired the guy who did the effects for 2001
.
There's a whole Spock enteringV'ger sequence, which is very
2001.
Oh this is when we dropped theacid.
Yeah Right, oh, okay, wow, man,ghost Black.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
You know, they hired one of the most celebrated
directors of all time, robertWise, to direct it, which seemed
like an odd choice.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
I was waiting for the whole Enterprise.
Yeah, he directed West SideStory, by the way, and the
Haunting by the way, theHaunting, which is a masterpiece
.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
And Day of the Earth still.
Yes, indeed yeah.
And he co-directed one of myfavorite little horror films,
which is Curse of the Cat People.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Oh, yes, I love that movie.
Al Luton, baby yeah, absolutelyyeah.
So things changed and then itwas pitched like, well, let's do
Wrath of Khan, but let's do itso, that way it's run silent,
run deep in space, yeah, and itwas a hit.
Like Wrath of Khan came outwith phasers blasting, yeah, and
it was so good.
That is one of my favoritesci-fi movies to this day.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yeah, no question, I think it's kind of a masterpiece
.
They also did it on a very lowbudget, so they made some money,
oh yeah, and they pulled it offbrilliantly.
William Shatner gives one ofthe best performances in his
career.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
Oh yeah, and it's the death of Spock, one of the best
performances in his career.
Oh yeah, and you know it's thedeath of Spock.
Sorry, spoilers, but it alsofeatures one of the earliest
forms of CGI animation generatedby a Pixar machine.
The Genesis device sequence, ohyeah, was generated at
Industrial Light and Magic intheir computer graphics

(17:03):
department, and George Lucas waslike eh, whatever, computer?
Well, yeah, yeah, we'll letthem have a shot at it.
Yeah, no problem, I just wantto use models now.
Yeah, you know, and I had— Iwish he'd stuck to that.
Yeah, no, kidding.
So Wrath of Khan.
I remember EntertainmentTonight had a Save Spock hotline

(17:25):
where you would call it likelet him die or bring him back,
and the calls were like 88%,bring him back, we want.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Spock back.
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
Like what are you going to do?
So you know, it was a way forthe.
It was kind of like a weirdstudio.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
He wasn't Jason Todd.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
No.
And then, right around StarTrek 6, in between Star Trek V
and Star Trek VI, somethinghappened at Universal Studios,
actually a little earlier,Really.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, so it happens in 1988, which is right after
the Voyage Home.
Oh, okay, and this actuallyexplains a lot about the timing
for it, Because I remember.
Well, let's explain what it isand then I'll tell you what I
remember.
But yeah, in 1988, Paramount soDesilu had produced the

(18:19):
original series withRoddenberry's company and,
interestingly I just found out,had a third partner in William
Shatner's production company.
So he was actually in profitsharing for the original series.
Original series lost a ton ofmoney so he got nothing, but I
thought that was interestingthat he had enough clout to do
that.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
It is interesting.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
But so Desilu basically got co-opted by
Paramount.
Paramount took over theownership of Star Trek.
They actually offeredRoddenberry a chance to buy the
property outright.
And for those like adjusting,for inflation.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
It was about a million dollars.
They were asking Roddenberry'slike, wait, let me check my
couch for all of the money thatmy mistresses haven't gotten out
of me yet.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, he couldn't raise it.
So I mean it would have been adeal, man, oh man, it was such a
deal he couldn't raise it.
So Paramount held on to therights Right and in about 1988,
they licensed the rights to StarTrek to Universal Studios.
Yep.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
The theme park, yeah, and that became the Star Trek
Adventure, yeah, which coincidedalso with the launching of Star
Trek the Next Generation.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Right, so Next Generation comes very, very
closely.
Oh, Next Generation starts ayear before Mm-hmm, so 1987.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
Yep, here's what the attraction was.
Yeah, so the attraction was inthe theme park, up on the upper
level of the theme park, nearthe entrance, actually Not too
far from where Jaws the bighanging shark hanging off of the
scaffolding, and at the timeyou could still talk to the
talking kit car and sit insideof a car, like have a car talk

(20:02):
to you, which I guess for an 80skid was amazing.
But now we're like really, nowit's super irritating.
Yeah, yeah, it's like no.
But back then it was like wow,it's a kid.
Woo-hoo, yeah, woo-hoo.
Not too far from that is thestunt show in which cowboys for
many, many like this goes wayback into the 50s of a Hollywood

(20:23):
stunt show that is largelyderivative of Buffalo Bill's
Wild West show, yeah, which thistype of entertainment is a
whole show in and to itself, soI don't want to go too much into
it.
But across the way from that isa large building, yeah, and so
you would have this big open-airstage.
You look at it and I don't knowwhat the actual title of it was

(20:43):
, but it was a way for theaverage person to know what it
was like to be a stunt person inHollywood.
One of the greatest, probablyone of the greatest insurance
risks I've ever seen in anattraction, because they
actually had people do realstunts in this show from the
audience.
Madness, it's absolutely insane.

(21:06):
So here's and I remember doingthis I did one of the stunts in
the show oh, really, oh yeah.
They pull you out.
I was like 11 or 12.
And they pull you out of theaudience and you sign a waiver
and you are led backstage.
They put a kind of a Velcrocostume on you and then you're
given cues on stage and it waskind of like what the stunts
were like in the silent era, andso they would have a camera.

(21:28):
It's like, hey, get out, youknow, get out there and get
upstairs, now look at him.
Look at him, now swing the bagat him, yeah, and the whole
premise was like there was thisgranny's bag and there was
something shocking on the insideof it and what they would do is
they would film all thesestunts and then they would
intercut all of these stuntsonto a videotape with clips from
various movies to kind of makethis weird little madcap

(21:49):
mishmashy movie.
I mean there were clips fromthe Blues Brothers, 1941,
godzilla, I mean it was all overthe place.
But the whole premise was thiscarpet bag goes from person to
person, from stunt to stunt, andthen they look in the bag and
they're shocked at what they seeinside the bag and they throw
the bag up.
Well, you know, they pull youout of the audience.
I really wanted to do thisbecause I was like I want to try
this, I want to be like I'm inthe movies.

(22:10):
This is great.
It's the magic of the movieswhich I thought honestly, is
part of the charm of UniversalStudios is that you felt like
you were part of the moviemaking experience.
You weren't were going to beinvolved in it.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, I feel like they've lost a little of that
over the years.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
A lot of that and a lot of that is gone.
Yeah, we talked about this onour Dracula episode, about
Castle Dracula.
They would pull people out, andthis was the thing that I loved
about Universal Studios was thebig draw.
It's like I might be able topretend to be in the movies for
a day.
Cool, yeah, they.
Yeah, they pulled me out of theaudience.
They put this kind of weirdseersucker suit on me and I was

(22:45):
supposed to be—no, I was abandit.
They put a Wild West—I did ittwice.
So one time I was a guy wearinga seersucker suit rowing a boat
that springs a leak and thenthe whole boat sinks underwater.
Uh-huh, but you're attached toit.
So all of a sudden, you'reswimming around.
Yeah, the second time I did itwas like a year or two older and

(23:09):
you got to jump off of a cliffinto this giant water tank that
was made of plexiglass so youcould see underwater.
Oh, wow, and you had to be agood swimmer to do it, and by
that point I'd had plenty oftraining.
I'd have been in a water poloteam.
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I coulddo this, no problem, but they
would put, like this wild westvest on you.
That was a flotation device, andyou were pistol hat and you're
wearing a cowboy hat and abandolero and you would jump off
and splash into this and you'reswimming around and they're
filming.
You do this.
This is a terrible idea.

(23:30):
Yeah, this is insane.
Like this is adventure parkkind of nonsense yeah, like
someone's going to die, and thenthe whole thing ends with a
giant pie fight where everybodygets to throw pies at each other
why not?
and they do this, they did.
It was kind of fun because theydid some stuff around the theme
park where they actually wouldstart throwing pies at Cylons
and the Imperious Leader.

(23:50):
This shows you what era thiswas.
Then it ends with this greatgiant pie hitting jaws in the
face and it's the jaws from theattraction.
So that harkens us back to oneof our previous episodes.
And then you get a videotape ofit all mixed together and it
was like 20 bucks.
You get a videotape, you gohome.
Look, I made a movie, mom, itwas fun.

(24:12):
Well, they took that soundstageonce they got the rights and
they said okay, let's dosomething a little less risky,
let's not actually make them dodangerous stunts.
They put flying rig not putflying—they put flying rigs on
people.
Yeah, they threw them offcliffs, they put them underwater
, but it was like well, that'sinteresting.
So they took that apart andwith this licensing, they built

(24:36):
a replica of the Enterprise, abridge.
That's important to know.
Yeah, because it's very deftlybased off of the movies and it
was a very nice replica.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So it's the Star Trek , the Motion Picture Bridge,
yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
It looks like the Wrath of Khan bridge.
It's very beige, lots of beigeand maroon Blue lights
everywhere, and they would dresspeople up in the militaristic
crimson uniforms that were themotion picture uniform, and then
you would either be Federation,or you'd be Klingons, or you'd
be these weird brain creaturesthat would appear, which are the

(25:12):
obvious like MacGuffin of.
We're the dangerous creatures,but we've actually been testing
you the whole time and maybesomeday you will be able to
learn together, live together inpeace.
But you got pulled aside.
You learn what the process wasof going to wardrobe.
They put a little makeup on youto make you not so sweaty.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Now you did this right, I did this one, so you
did both the stunt show and thething that took over.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
I have the videotape somewhere of these stupid things
.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
If I ever digitize them.

Speaker 4 (25:38):
God help me, we might put them up for us to look at.
We need to upscale.
I have to laugh at my acne andmy bad 90s mullet.
So I was a Federation and all Ihad to do was walk onto the
bridge with a press boardclipboard.
They didn't even hand me a pad.
They handed me a clipboard Likewhat?

(26:00):
But that was the prop you had.
You walked on and it had thescript.
It had the schedule on it, soit was like a backstage
clipboard.
And then I was supposed to dothis, this routine of like
trying to open and close thedoor, and because I had good
comic timing, they actuallywasted a lot of film time on me
goofing around with this door,like, and I was gonna open, I
was doing like this laurel andhardy shtick with it, because I

(26:23):
was already like a big goofballat this time and like I got the
audience laughing and this waslike one of the first times I
realized like I could be funny.
Right, it was like my physicalcomedy was kicking in, yeah, and
like they got and they editedit all out, but I must have had
like two minutes of goofing withthis, this door.
Oh, that's great and it washyster prop guy laughing behind

(26:48):
because that was great man, thatwas so great, that was funny.
You're funny, you know.
And then you walk off and youwatch on this big screen the
whole thing edited together.
They had William Shatner do avoiceover Right, and they have
clips from various Star Trekmovies two and three, you know,
blowing up the Klingon ship andthen the Enterprise zipping
around and all that.
But that was about it and itwas.
It was entertaining and it wasa way to show Star Trek.
It was interactive in the factthat, like this is what it's
like to make a movie about StarTrek.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah, and you know, it's very interesting
narratively because so you beginto see, with Paramount and the
Star Trek rights they becomevery confusing after a while
Because Paramount splits kind ofinto Paramount movies and
Paramount television and thenlater Paramount parks, which
we'll come to, oh yeah, and atthat point the Paramount movies

(27:33):
and the Paramount televisiondivisions don't have anything to
do with each other.
Oh yeah, so this, this, theyhate each other.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
Yeah, yeah, like they actually hate each other.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Yeah, it's actually kind of a fight because the Star
Trek movies are starting toreally take off, yeah, and
Paramount Television's startingNext Generation and so this
attraction's right in that spot,like Next Generation's been on
for a year.
When it opens Mm-hmm, and Iremember going—because I saw it.
I never got to participate init, but I only saw it once and I

(28:04):
remember, wait, aren't theKlingons our friends?
Now, right, right, because NextGeneration told us that they
were.
Yes, but of course we were inthe movies with the original
cast.
Klingon bastard, you murderedmy son, right.

Speaker 4 (28:20):
Well, they explained.
Like the Uber fans would talkabout this later and say, well,
actually, you know that's wherewe act.
Forget the Kitterberg Massacre.
It was actually this thatstarted the whole process of the
Klingons and the Federation,because the brain aliens are
supposed to.
Maybe the Klingons and theFederation can work together in
peace and harmony.
That's actually part of thescript.

(28:43):
So, like the Uber fans are likethat's got to be canon because
Kirk's actually in it.
Yeah, and you know it could be.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
You're like that's got to be canon because Kirk's
actually in it.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
Yeah, and you know it could be.
So here's my Tribbles might flyout of my butt, yeah, you know,
like no.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
As long as you clean up, it's fine.
Hold on.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
My tribble.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
I just pulled a tribble off the shelf.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
He's throwing a tribble at me.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Yeah, I actually for those of you at home, I actually
pulled a Tribble off the shelf.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
It's a redhead, it's a ginger Tribble.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
But it I mean it was actually a pretty fun Attraction
.
It was fun At that point.
There were some walk aroundStar Trek characters Going on,
all Seemingly based on themotion picture timeline.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Yeah, mostly Klingons , Vulcans and some Federation
people.
Right, that was about it.
Yeah, Mostly hanging around theattraction going go get on the
Star Trek thing.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Right, yeah, because I think it was popular for a few
years and then it really faded,it went away quick yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
I think part of that was Star Trek V Well yeah,
because I think it was popularfor a few years and then it
really faded.
It went away quick yeah.
I think part of that was StarTrek V Well yeah, and also the
rising popularity of the NextGeneration.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
I think that's really the thing.
You know, that first year ofNext Generation, it's—forgive me
everybody, but that firstyear's terrible.
They're finding their feet andit's too obvious they are, and
uh, gene roddenberry's stillpretty involved and he's gone a
little off the deep end that.
You know when, when they weresetting up the show, he he

(30:19):
wanted, uh, marina surdice'scharacter, um, to have like six
breasts.
There was stuff like that thatpeople were like no Gene, stop
Gene.
And it was by the second seasonhe had started, he had kind of
gotten pushed off into a.
You go take your office on theother side of the lot and we'll

(30:43):
give you an executive producercredit.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
Yes, you're our executive.
Producer, which means go away,yeah, and by the third season,
he just wasn't involved anymore.
Producer, which means go away,yeah, and by the third season.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
He just wasn't involved anymore and really
wasn't much again ever after.
No, though I will say just tokind of jump ahead a little his
son, rod Roddenberry, is veryinvolved in Star Trek these days
and doing a really wonderfuljob.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
He's also involved.
Rod runs the Roddenberry DivingAssociation or something like
that, where it's into scubadiving and into underwater
exploration.
So I met him when I was beingtrained as a submersible pilot
oh, and a friend of mine was asubmersible pilot, he was
training me how to do it andthen we met up at a convention

(31:26):
in Long Beach.
He's like, yeah, rodRoddenberry, I go as in like
Gene Roddenberry, yeah, it's hisson.
So I got to meet Rod.
We went to the Long BeachAquarium and we're hanging out
by a shark tank and I'm liketalking to him about exploration
and how he's into diving andscuba and all this kind of stuff
.
So, yeah, he's very much intolike exploring the other 75% of

(31:47):
the planet that is still vastlyunexplored.
Wow that's amazing.
So like interesting littlething about Rod, but yeah, he's
still heavily involved in StarTrek.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
He is.
He seems like a really good guy.

Speaker 4 (31:56):
Yeah, he's pretty cool I like Rod and I think so—
and he only has one mistress, sothat's— no, that's a lie,
that's a lie.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
I thought making that up, not true.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
This, barry Jr.
No, no, no, no, that's memaking a joke.
It was tasteless.
I'm sorry, but I think you know, as Next Generation starts to
take off and by the time theyhit the third season they were
firing on all cylinders, oh yeah.
And it turned into thephenomenon that it became Boy.
And just after that we had StarTrek V, which really showed the

(32:31):
old cast fading, fading badly,and they got one more hurrah
after that.
But that attraction atUniversal started to seem real
outdated, real fast, because wewere looking at a show that had
already been supplanted by anewer show that was becoming

(32:52):
very popular.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
But I think that the—oh, beforewe get away from this, you
bought the videotape.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So this was the thing with thisattraction was that you would
go on and do—you would interacton the Enterprise and you'd do
whatever to fight the Klingonsit was mostly green screen stuff
, yeah.

(33:12):
And then they would sell youthis insanely overpriced VHS
tape of what you did.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
Yeah, yeah, I remember distinctly going.
I went with my grandfather.
My grandpa kind of blanched alittle bit and I went I know
it's expensive, grandpa.
Only once I promise I won't askfor anything else here.
Yeah, could you please?
And he goes, okay, and he gotit.
Oh.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
And then he got me some other things too, because
he was my grandpa.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
He was amazing.
Yeah, he was like oh, there'sFrankenstein stuff here.
I can't leave this placewithout getting my grandson
something from Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
I'm wearing a Phantom of the Opera shirt right now.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, it is.
It's a beautiful shirt.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
Yeah, I got that from Ron.
Actually, ron Chaney sold methis personally.
He was at Midsummer Scream andI got to hang out with Ron
Chaney and he's pretty darnedawesome.
Another descendant offranchises we like, yeah, anyway
, but it was quite pricey, butthey couldn't make a lot of

(34:09):
money on it because you onlyhave like maybe two dozen people
buying those videotapes everyshow, right?

Speaker 3 (34:15):
yeah, if you're lucky , yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Sometimes they would have a whole family up and only
one of them is going to buy thetape.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
So the economics of that were kind of okay, but not
so much and you have to imaginethe amount of work that was
going into it.
They were editing that thing onthe fly.
Oh yeah, you know, to make itwork, to make it fit on the
videotape and to have them dupedand ready to go by the end.
It's a lot of work.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Yeah, you picked it up after like an hour or two, so
you had to go off and do someother things and come back
around 3 o'clock and pick it up.
Yeah, and then you're videotapein your back pocket Right,
hoping that the boilingUniversal City sun doesn't kill
it.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Isn't going to completely wipe you out.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
So it was ruined by all the water from.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Jaws.
The Lowdown on the Plus Up is aBoardWalkTimes podcast.
At BoardWalkTimesnet you'llfind some of the most
well-considered and insightfulwriting about the Walt Disney
Company, disney history and theuniverse of theme parks
available anywhere.
Come join us atBoardWalkTimesnet.

(35:28):
So you know.
That thing's running for acouple of years.
It runs into about 93.
It's been limping along for acouple of years by that point.
Yes, indeed, and Paramount doessomething really interesting.

(35:51):
Paramount decides to form a newdivision that they call
Paramount Parks Yep, and theystart acquiring a whole bunch of
parks, a whole bunch of themeparks and amusement parks.
And so they I think this ismaybe a full list, but I'm not
sure I've got they acquiredKing's Dominion in Virginia, yep

(36:14):
.
King's Island in Ohio,california's Great America, oh
yeah.
Carowinds in North Carolina.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
And Canada's Wonderland.
It's such a strange eclecticspread of theme parks.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
It's really strange and I know Baton.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Rouge Right what.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Well, and a couple of these are pretty big and strong
theme parks.
Oh well, paramount's, greatAmerica, yeah, which is going to
close soon.

Speaker 4 (36:44):
I know, you know, it was Marriott's Great America.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
And then it fell into the hands of it wasn't
Marriott's, it was Marriott'sGreat America.
And then it fell into the handsof—it wasn't Marriott's, it was
independently owned briefly,and then Paramount bought it.
Yeah, and having grown up inthe South Bay, that was the
theme park that you could affordto go to short of a road trip
to Disney, or not, yeah afterFrontier Village was gone, oh
yeah, by the way, folks, if youever go back to one of our

(37:08):
previous episodes we did one onFrontier Village.
By the way, folks, if you evergo back to one of our previous
episodes, we did one on FrontierVillage.
Yeah, you should check it out.
Anyway, great America, I have asoft spot in my heart for it
because it really tried.
Yeah, but what Paramount reallydid, you know like I thought it
would be great.
This story, by the way, alittle name droppy, but it's a

(37:30):
good one, okay, so around 1993,when this is all going down I
was working a haunted house inMountain View, california,
called Gyro's World of Terror.
It was started by a guy namedDan Nelson who wanted to set up
a charity to fight drug abuse inteenagers, because GIRO stands

(37:51):
for Global Youth ResearchOrganization.
Oh, I never knew that it wasfounded because, well, I
probably shouldn't talk aboutthat.
But anyway, let's just saythere's some community service
involved and I'll just leave itat that.
Okay, okay, but anyway, it wasvery big In its initial years.
It was being held in atwo-story shopping mall.

(38:14):
Wow, and I don't mean a bit ofit, I don't mean like we took
over Sears, we took over theentire shopping mall.
That's crazy.
It was almost 800,000 cubicfeet of haunt.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Did they close the stores?

Speaker 4 (38:28):
during that time.
No, it was a derelict shoppingmall, it was an empty shopping
mall.
It was an empty shopping mallthat was built in the 70s and it
was called the Old Mill becauseit actually had like a water
wheel and it was one of thosewith the big open atrium in the
middle with lots of trees.
It had a stream running throughit.
Wow, I mean, you know, cue thedawn of the dead music, totally

(38:54):
cue the dawn of the dead music,totally.
You know so anyway, uh, but itshut down and nelson had a
connection to the owners of themall and he made a deal with
them.
We had a lot of volunteersworking for him because a he
paid for the materials so wecould build whatever our
imaginations would carry and the.
The focus of this haunt was fanrecreations of our favorite

(39:15):
monster movies.
We had the obvious stuff.
We had Freddy, jason,leatherface, the works.
We also had a Queen Alienfull-size that we built from
scratch.
We had an Army of Darkness roomthat I built.
I also built Evil Dead 2 cabin,full-size cabin, with the
laughing crazy dead-eyed elk andthe grandma in the basement.

(39:35):
The whole nine yards, nice, andit was all home-built, it was
all fan-based, it was a lot offun, based heavily off of Bob
Burns' Halloween shows inBurbank.
But we also had the Enterprise.
We joked we gave it a differentname, but it was basically a
Star Trek Next Generation bridgeset.
Okay, but we built it.
How we made it scary is it wasthe Borg had taken over.

(39:58):
Oh, okay, so the Borg were thebad guys and they were the
monsters coming after you.
Yeah, and it was this verydedicated group of Star Trek
fans that had built this set.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
And they did it for fun and it was like almost
screen accurate.
It was beautiful.
I started at this place in 1990.
I was like 17 years old and Iquickly worked my way up to I
was management by the time 1993had rolled about.
Okay, I was 19 years old and Iwas already running this massive
haunt as an art director.

(40:28):
No joke, yeah.
I don't know like what wasNelson thinking, right?
But sure enough, I gained a lotof knowledge.
I made a lot of mistakes.
I mean, I'm 19, but I was anart director of this giant show.
You learn by making mistakes.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
That's the way you do it.
Yeah, and I was responsible forthis.
And so, because of that, we geta phone call.
Actually, it was on the radio.
They said someone's going tocome on by Because Dan Nelson
also owned and ran AAAlimousines in Santa Clara.
Because of that, he wouldtransport all the celebrities in
the area if they were comingthrough Santa Clara or San Jose.

(41:10):
Well, one night one of themhappened to be John Landis, the
movie director.
Yeah, a guy behind BluesBrothers, the Thriller video,
american Werewolf in London,twilight Zone, the movie Trading
Places, trading Places, animalHouse.
Yeah, and he was coming throughbecause they were making a
movie at Paramount's GreenAmerica.

(41:32):
Oh, yeah, and so he's beingtransported from the airport and
he found out that Dan ownedthis haunt.
He says, well, I'd love to seeit, I love seeing haunted houses
.
Yeah, they transported him overand he and his wife, they came
through and we were supposed togive him a tour.
Well, the guy who ran thecreatureure Shop was this big
blowhard guy named James Bynum,big, big guy.

(41:54):
He would talk like this youknow, peter, you know what I
would do.
I'd do this, you know how youdoing, and he was very
egocentric, but he found it inhis heart to say hey, pete, go
around the haunt, turneverything on, all the music and
all the sound effects, so hecould see the show for what it
really is when it's operating.
We'll give him a tour and youcan come along on the tour.

(42:15):
You get to meet, I go JohnLandis, the guy directed
American Werewolf.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Heck yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
Yeah.
So I ran through the haunt bymyself, going to all the,
unlocking all the drawers andturning on the stereos and
turning on all the lights andgetting it all ready.
And I came all the way back, Igot it all turned on and they
were gone.
James had already started thetour.
Oh, what a jerk.
And it was almost halfway doneby the time I caught up with

(42:40):
them and I was like, oh my God,oh my God, I'm like I'm sweating
, I'm like I'm so sorry andJohn's like what's your problem?
I, I'm sweating, I'm like I'mso sorry, and like John's like
what's your problem?
I said I just ran aroundturning everything on.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
And like John's like wow, Ireally like this room and it was
one of the rooms I had designed.
I said yeah, I based it off ofthis article I found in Famous
Monsters.
He goes do you ever meet ForreyAckerman?
I go yeah, I met Forrey onetime.

(43:02):
We start like clicked with hima couple of times I got to tour
the Acker mansion.
Oh, he's a great guy.
And James started getting likewait a minute, what he didn't
know what we were talking about.
We finally finished the tour andthen James, the tour wasn't
even done.
James was like go back andstart turning everything off,

(43:23):
and he was my superior.
So I had to go do it.
So I started turning it off.
He was gone.
I was so mad.
So we had a office managernamed Beth Beth Herberger and
she said write him a note, I'llsee that he gets it.
I said I wrote him a note.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to meetyou.
I'm glad to meet somebody who'sa famous monster.
James Bynum kind of started thetour without me.
I really wanted to take youthrough and show you some of the
more interesting effects, but Iknow you're on a busy schedule.

(43:46):
But it was really nice meetingyou.
Thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, peter Overstreet.
Yeah, 24 hours go by and thenBeth walks in with this long
tube package tube and this bigmanila envelope.
He says Pete, something arrivedfor you from Universal Studios.
Uh-huh, I said what?
It was a letter from JohnLandis, and I opened it up.

(44:10):
It basically said hey, pete,don't worry about James Bond,
and he's like you know.
You did a great job.
I loved your room.
I love meeting anybody who's afellow monster kid, if you're
not busy this week, I'd love toinvite you to be an extra in
this new film.
I'm working on Wow and I hopethat these gifts will make up
for not being able to spend moretime chatting.

(44:32):
Yeah, it was a signed poster ofAmerican Werewolf in London.
Wow, and of innocent blood, ohyeah.
So he sent me two of those andan 8x10.
I still have the 8x10.
Yeah, but I was like, oh my God, cool, yeah.
And he says, yeah, show up atParamount's Great America on
Thursday.
Yeah, show up at 5 o'clock inthe morning and your name will

(44:55):
be on the list.
Go up to the desk and tell themthat you're here and they'll
get you fixed up.
Yeah, the movie was BeverlyHills, cop 3.
And this is supposed to, youknow, and the whole thing is
supposed to be about.
Basically, I think it's WallyWorld again and it's supposed to
be this kind of Uncle Walt-typecharacter in this Knott's Berry

(45:16):
Farm thing.
It's involved in some sort ofmurder mystery and Axel Foley
has to save the day and it's asnoozer.
But the best part is the timecapsule of what Great America
looked like in 1993, completewith George Lucas and Steven
Spielberg cameos.
Yeah, complete with George.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Lucas and Steven Spielberg cameos.
Yeah, really at its peak rightthen.

Speaker 4 (45:32):
Pretty much, yeah.
And I got to be one of the many, many people in the background
when Axel Foley gets his bigparade for saving the day.
Aw, and it was cool, yeah.
But the best part was not justmeeting John Landis and being
part of the movie, going up tocraft services for lunch, mm-hmm
.
And right across from me isAlan Young.
Oh, wow, alan Young, who do notknow.

(45:56):
He was the original voice ofScrooge McDuck.
He was Wilbur in Mr Ed.
And I said, mr Young, do youhave a moment?
He says, oh, okay.
I said I'm just a really bigfan, I love your performance and
he's expected to go ScroogeMcDuck, right, you know, mr Ed.
And I said I think you haveportrayed nobody has ever
portrayed a best friend betterthan you ever have than Philby

(46:19):
in the Time Machine.
You're so good in that movie.
I just wanted to meet you andhe goes, oh, and he walked off
and that was it.
That's all.
I didn't get an autograph.
I just got a.
I thank you kindly, and histrademark, scottish brogue, and
that was it, and he gave me awink and I'm like thank you, mr
Young.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, that's exactly what you want.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
And it was a week later that I got my summer job
working at Paramount's GreatAmerica as a Klingon Wait, you
never told me this.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
It didn't last long, they had walk-around Klingons.
So Paramount's Great America,you have to understand, is a
thrill-ride park like a SixFlags park.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, and just to kind of lead up to this, this is
what Paramount decided to dowhen they pulled the IP back
from Universal.
They said we're going to floodour Paramount Parks division
with Star Trek stuff and whatthat meant to them was putting a
bunch of people in Star Trekcostumes and having them walk

(47:19):
around.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
And that was it.
Yeah, you know, you had StarTrek models over fountains, you
had a Klingon ship and some sortof and lots of monitors playing
the music, yeah, but yeah, Iwas one of the wandering
Klingons for three months,because Santa Clara, if you do
not know, gets incredibly hot.
Oh God, it must have beenmiserable and wearing a turtle
head and full polyvinyl Klingonoutfits made me faint multiple

(47:44):
times from the heat, oh jeez.
So I couldn't do it.
But I had some friends likeJeremy Lefferts and several
other people who were full-timeKlingons and they loved it.
It was like a whole culture.
Yeah, they loved doing it.
It was great, but that wasabout it.
You didn't really have much.
It was like Star Trek as atheme park.
You're like that's notinteractive.
I can do this at a Star Trekconvention.

(48:06):
Yeah, why do I need to pay 50bucks to get into here for this
nonsense?
Yeah, it was very half-baked.
Especially having just been onthe Enterprise at Universal
Studios.
It's just like how are yougoing to top this dude?

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Well, right, right, and they were about to.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
So tell us how they did it Kelly.
How did they top it?

Speaker 3 (48:27):
So about in 96, they stopped doing this.
They were just like oh yeah, itwas short lived.
It was very short lived andsomeone came up with the idea
that they wanted to put a majorStar Trek installation in Las

(48:47):
Vegas.
Now this is interesting.
Again, we're talking aboutcontradictions with Star Trek.
Star Trek is post-scarcity, itis anti-money and yet the
biggest and probably, I think,pretty inarguably the most
successful Star Trek attractionever happened in Las Vegas.

(49:09):
Paramount made a deal with theLas Vegas Hilton and what they
did and there was some sort ofsketchy stuff going on behind
the scenes, but what they didwas they leased out a huge hunk

(49:37):
of the Hilton for what seemed tobe an incredibly low price.
The word is that the Hiltonpeople who made this deal got
fired very quickly after,because Paramount was just
paying too little, but they hadsomething like a 10-year
contract.
So once they were in, they werein.

Speaker 4 (49:50):
This whole thing was a giant hand-washing of Vegas's
bad reputation for beingmob-related.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
This was that period where they were trying to make
things family-friendly 100% yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
This is the family-friendly era of Vegas,
when people said, yeah, vegasgot neutered and it kind of did
on purpose because people werelooking too closely at what was
going on in Vegas.
So they said, well, let's getthe kiddies in here.
And it was kind of like HumanShield, it's like put the kids
in here.
We've got the rides, we've gotall this stuff here.
We have Caesar's magical empire, we've got all this stuff going

(50:24):
on here.
But it's all a front.
And that tells me thatsomething was probably, you know
, very similar was going on withthe birth of the Star Trek
adventure at the Hilton.
It's very possible.
I mean a lot of people— this isall speculation, by the way, so
I don't want to wind up with,you know, concrete blocks on my
feet at the bottom of thePotomac.
Where's Pete?
But this is speculation.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
He's sleeping with the fishes Historical
speculation.
He's sleeping with the fishesHistorical speculation.
So they decided that they weregoing to build an attraction and
a pretty massive environment toput the attraction in, and so
what they built was crazy.
It was it was huge.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
Yeah, the first thing you do when you would walk in
on this thing was poop yourpants.
It was so huge.
You're like, first off, it'slike the TARDIS, like you fit
this in this hotel, yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Massive.
They designed the main portionof it to look like the Promenade
in Deep Space Nine, which iswhat was running around that
time.
It had recently started and itlooks like the Promenade and you
can go drink at Quark's andthere's some sort of game that

(51:39):
they're calling Dabo, which Ididn't really understand how
that worked, but they had it.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
It was an amazing At least it wasn't that addictive
game that Wesley Crusher getsaddicted to where you put the
ball through the hoop with yourbrain.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
The game yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
They're so dumb they couldn't even come up with a
name for it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
And so you would go in Later.
There were two attractions, butinitially there was just one
Right and it was called KlingonEncounter this thing.
So it was designed by theLandmark Entertainment Group,
which is primarily this guy,Gary Goddard, who we've talked
about before Yep, Because heworked on the Terminator

(52:17):
Universal Attraction.
He worked on Jurassic Park theride.
He worked on the Spider-Manride.
He was also the director of thefirst Masters of the Universe
movie.
Yes, yes, so it was.
We talked about him in theConan episode.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
The Universe movie.
Yes, yes, you talked about himin the Conan episode, that's
right.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Yep, and he has like a kind of troubling end to his
career.
We don't really want to getinto right now no, that's just
oof.
But him and this guy, lukeMayrand, who designed a lot of
the sets for Babylon 5, designedsets for some of the Pirates of
the Caribbean movies, stufflike that.
So you know, prettyhard-hitting team of theme park

(52:59):
designers.
Paramount put a lot of moneybehind it.
They got some Star Trek writersto write the script for it.
They got Rene Echevarria forone, who kind of if you watched
that whole second phase of StarTrek, from Next Generation to
Enterprise, you saw his name alot and Ken Biller, who wrote

(53:24):
for Voyager.
They also got Michael Westmoreback to do makeup, yeah, so they
were loaded for bear, yeah, andthey built this crazy
attraction that still I meanpeople that went on this thing
will still talk about it, youknow, in glowing terms, with

(53:46):
like the hair standing on edgeon their arms.
It was astonishing.
And I'll describe the firstattraction.
Then we'll get to the secondone, the Klingon encounter.
On the surface it looks likeit's just another simulator ride
, right, but the meat of thatride happens before you get in

(54:06):
the simulator and it's nuts.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
Yeah, the simulator is just the finale.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
It's just the finale.
Yeah, you would go in and itwas set up to look like a
standard entrance to a simulatorride.
Right, and there was.
You know you'd go buy some coolStar Trek props and stuff like
that that were neat.
I have a picture somewhere ofme pretending to cry into a
hanky by the spot coffin missilething Because they had that

(54:38):
Nice.
You go in and you're standingin these lines to go into what
looks like automatic doors tohead into the simulator and
above it is your standard themepark safety spiels going on
right, and then something in thespiel starts to go wrong, right
, and lights are kind offlickering and the person who's

(55:02):
there that's supposed to be kindof guiding you through is like
making phone calls go.
I mean, they just go all theway with this.

Speaker 4 (55:08):
Yeah, fully immersive .

Speaker 3 (55:09):
Yeah, they're like something's wrong, yeah, and
then it happens what I mightdescribe as the most amazing
attraction experience I've everbeen through.
You hear this familiar noiseand you see these little
pinpricks of light around you,and you are standing on a

(55:30):
transporter pad on a starship.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
Yeah, you literally get beamed aboard a starship.
It's unbelievable.
It was ridiculously fast.
Yeah, it was very hard.
I've seen it operating with nolights on.
Yeah, I mean with the lights,with no normal work lights on.
Yeah.
And even that is impressive, onhow fast and smooth this
transition is.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Yeah, and how they somehow made it.
So I mean the you felt beamed.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
I mean they hit you with CO2 cannons.
There was air rushing and youfelt like lifted up and you were
like whoa.
And all of a sudden, how'd theywait?
What?

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Yeah, whoa, we got transported man and you're
standing there and you're infront of these Starfleet crew
who have just beamed you onboard Yep and somehow through
time, but who knows?

Speaker 4 (56:22):
We don't talk about that.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Yeah, and it's just incredible.
Now, what's interesting is thetechnology is Okay, disney
people are going to come at mehere and just please be kind.
The technology is almostexactly the same technology that
they use for the Guardians ofthe Galaxy Galactic Rewind

(56:45):
attraction in Florida, in Epcot,where you are transported to a
ship.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
They did it similarly for a Thor experience where you
are lifted up through the bitefrost to meet Thor.
In what used to be Innoventions, they would have these little
makeshift Marvel pop-ups.
Yeah, and you did it.
It was very clever.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
But the Guardians of the Galaxy version doesn't work.
It just doesn't work.
It just doesn't work.
It doesn't read.
Nobody pays much attention toit.
It's visually too busy to startwith so you're not exactly sure
what the end result has changed.
It's just, it's kind of a messand I know people love that ride

(57:25):
.
I really do, but that doesn'twork.
Do, but that doesn't work.
The version that was at theStar Trek experience it is so
perfect, so seamless, and Iremember my mouth was agape when
it happened, so much so thatsomeone that worked there came
and asked if I was okay.
You see this video of Rikertelling you that someone in your

(57:52):
group is an ancestor ofJean-Luc Picard and the Klingons
want to stop you.
So it's Star Trek Terminator.
Basically it's Star TrekTerminator.
Right, you get on a turbolift,yep, which during a Klingon
attack, yeah, so the turbo'sshaking and shaking and shaking.
Of course it's not going up anddown, it's just slowly kind of

(58:13):
spinning to give you a differentexit.
Right, you go out through theturbo lift into then the
simulator.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
No, you go to the bridge of the Enterprise, don't
you?
Oh?

Speaker 3 (58:23):
that's right, you go to the bridge of the Enterprise.
Yeah, yeah, well, that'sactually where you get.
The Riker message is on thebridge.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
Yeah, so you're beamed aboard the Enterprise.
Yeah, riker gives you thismessage, steps over a chair,
yeah, and then says, all right,get to the shuttle bay.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Yeah, yeah, you take, and you're right, you go to the
bridge, you then take the turbolift during a Klingon attack,
yeah, and then you know,basically, at that point, it's a
simulator ride, sure, but it'sa pretty good one.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
Yeah, it's Star Trek tours.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Yeah, Star Trek tours .

Speaker 4 (58:55):
Howdy folks, I'm Data .
Yeah, it's Rex.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
I'm retired from the Star Wars universe, but they put
me in here, and you know onething that's great about this
and we're going to see this evenmore so in the next iteration
of the attraction there's a lotof actors, oh yeah, there's a
lot of actors that are involvedand have to do their parts to
get you through this narrative.
Oh, yeah.
And they so, not only for theattraction but for the entire

(59:25):
environment, for Quarks and thepromenade and all of that.
These actors trained for awhile.
Oh, yeah, big time.
They had prior to opening, theyhad this his name was Captain
Dale Dye come out and takeeveryone that was going to be a
performer in this thing and do atwo-day military boot camp with

(59:46):
them.
What?
Yeah, like in Las Vegas.
So they're out doing push-upsand sit-ups, they're running in
the desert.
It's crazy, right?
Okay, Because the whole ideawas that they wanted to open
this with the particularly theStarfleet people feeling like

(01:00:08):
they were part of this bigorganization, Right, that they
understood how they workedtogether.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
They're jogging on.
I don't know what I've beentold.
Fling on foreheads are mightycold.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Whatever so they did that.
It was like 120 actors thatthey were working with for two
cold Whatever so they did that.
It was like 120 actors thatthey were working with for two
days.
Wow, it was evidently brutal.
There was a guy that was anactor that worked in the
experience for like the lastfour years or so that started
doing a whole bunch of filming.

(01:00:41):
Years or so that started doinga whole bunch of filming.
He's sadly passed away, but heput out about six hours worth of
documentary footage of justwhat that was like Wow, and
including interviews with peoplewho'd been there for the entire
run.
There were people who werethere for the full, like 11
years.
It was open, oh yeah, and a lotof them talked about this.
This experience of like yeah,it was open, oh yeah, and a lot

(01:01:02):
of them talked about this.
This experience of like yeah,it was awful, like we were just,
you know, none of us were inthat kind of shape.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
It was totally brutal , like that's almost a movie in
itself.
It is, yeah, like the making ofthis attraction.
It's like, how are we going tomake this so awesome?

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
It's like and then, you know, at the end of the
second day they brought them in,they told them to go put their
uniforms on, they brought themall into sort of the grand
corridor that leads into theexperience, and all 120 actors
and Captain Dye went andwhispered something in each one

(01:01:42):
of their ears like someinspirational thing for each one
of them, and we know that atleast one of them, he said just
keep up the good work.
You know something like that.
Oh, okay, but it was some sortof weird like you made it your
mother sews socks that smellyeah.
You know, like what.
But you know it was something.

(01:02:04):
You know that was like hey, youreally, you made it through
this hard thing.
Now you're going to go reallykill this Strangest thing.
I was like this seems excessive, but okay.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Why is Private Joker out there with a phaser?

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
I mean the only time.
I mean we had done an episodeabout the Galactic Star Cruiser,
yeah, and Evermore, yay, we'regoing to get more hits.
Thank you, taylor Swift.
Evermore If we stay in enoughtimes, we'll get some Swifties.
We're past the half hour mark,I'm just saying on YouTube.
Anyway, there's not nearly thattype of hazing and training

(01:02:44):
that goes into a lot of theseactors, yeah, a lot of these
interactive attractions, becausethis is on par with and,
frankly, more successful in someways, yeah, than Galactic Star
Cruiser, and I think that theyprobably should have put those
Disney actors through a heavierboot camp.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Well, one of the things that they did that I
think was very wise was thatthey gave their actors a lot of
leeway.
They gave them a little bit ofcharacter and a little bit of
motivation, and then just saidyou keep track of it from here
on, and so the characters woulddevelop, things would happen and

(01:03:22):
their experience would change,and this was over a course of 11
years.
I'm sure there werecontradictions, I'm sure there
was messiness to that, butpeople that came regularly would
talk about the stories as theymoved forward and I thought this
was really beautiful.
When the experience shut down,a couple of the performers

(01:03:45):
decided that they wanted toclose out the characters'
stories.
So they went around and made adocumentary film of everyone
that they could get who had anongoing character telling what
the end of their story was, andthen they showed it at a Star
Trek convention in Las Vegas.
Oh, that's fun.
So you got the end to the story.

(01:04:06):
That's really cool, man, Iloved being in that environment.
And when you came out ofactually both experiences and
we'll talk about the secondexperience in a minute when you
came out of both experiences,they basically faked a service
hallway and said faked a servicehallway and said, oh, because
things went so wrong you endedup in a service hallway.

(01:04:28):
So there was someone playing ajanitor leading you out of the
fake service hallway.
I mean, that's some dedicationto the bit, man, it is it
totally?

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
is so.
I heard that the nextexperience was originally going
to be titled the Big Borg BootyCall.
Now, that's nonsense.
That is absolute fabrication.
So what was the secondattraction?

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
So the second attraction was the Borg 4D
Adventure.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
That's not too far off.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Yeah, it's not too far off.

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
Wait, the 4D Adventure, 4d Adventure that's
not too far off.
Yeah, it's not too far off.
Wait the 4D Adventure, 4dAdventure yeah, I don't know.
Whenever anybody goes, it's 4D.
It's not 3D, it's 4D.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, and I mean, I assume a lot of this is the
interaction with actual people.
That's the other D and again,this does end in a simulator,
arguably a better one, and itdoes involve 3D glasses, like a
lot of simulators do now, butused to really good effect.
So there's your 3D and you gotsomething else.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
You put on your special 3D glasses Protective
lenses that will actuallyprotect you Safety goggles.
Yeah, safety goggles that willprotect you from the mental
machinations of the Borg queen,yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
And they did—so.
There's nothing as cool in theBorg adventure as there is that
beaming effect in the Klingonencounter.

Speaker 4 (01:05:59):
They don't actually assimilate you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Well, actually they kind of do.

Speaker 4 (01:06:10):
Well, hey, you know what happens in Vegas stays in
Vegas.
I got assimilated at the StarTrek experience.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
And I've been meaning to talk to you about your
dedication to the Borg Queen,this one they kind of changed
the tack.
You know, in the Klingon oneit's you are just who you are
and you're going on a ride.
In this one you're like no, no,no, you're in the Star Trek
world, right, and you're goingto the Copernicus station

(01:06:40):
because you and all the peoplearound you have a special thing
in your DNA that might keep youfrom being assimilatable.
The Peaches did his best toEdgar Kennedy, okay, go on.
And of course, the Borg attackthe station, right.

(01:07:01):
Can you imagine like the rideis like?
You have this special thing andthe Borg attack the station
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
Can you imagine like the ride is, like you have this
special thing and the Borg leavethe station alone?

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Yeah, and it's kind of neat.
So you're watching this thing,you're watching the doctor from
Voyager, robert Picardo, yay,and he's like telling you about
this.
And then something happens tothe screen that you're watching
and's very outer limitsy.
It's like the board taking overthe screen.
Oh nice, he gets back on for asecond and he's like all right,
we gotta all get out of here, wegotta send you to the escape

(01:07:30):
shuttle, and that's where itgets crazy.
So you start going throughcorridors.
I mean this is this is almostmore a haunt than it is a ride.

Speaker 4 (01:07:42):
Oh, count me in.
Yeah, and so you're going?
Wait a minute, this sounds.
Huh, this sounds reallyfamiliar.
Maybe a lawsuit's involved here, because we did do it first.
Yeah, all right, I'm justsaying Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
So you'll be running down a corridor and someone will
be, you know, an actor, will belike you got to come this way,
you got to come this way.
And you'll see a Borg come outand just grab them and pull them
off, oh jeez.
And so you keep getting sent indirections and then being sent
back because you're running intoBorg.
Oh God, there's an amazingeffect.
This really took me off guard.
Where there's a Starfleetofficer that you're going

(01:08:19):
towards and for me it was a sheit's just like come this way,
come this way.
This is how we get to theshuttle and a Borg arm comes out
of the ceiling, grabs her andpulls her up into the ceiling
Like full entire body disappearsinto the ceiling.
You're like, oh my God, that'scool.

(01:08:40):
And so eventually, like througha bunch of these mishaps it's
very cleverly done, a lot ofgood surprises yeah, eventually
you make it to the docking bay.
They give you your quote,unquote safety goggles, right,
and you get in and do thesimulator ride.
The simulator ride is actuallypretty neat because they do

(01:09:00):
something clever that I've neverseen anyone try on a simulator
ride, because it's 3D.
You know how in Star Toursthere's the robots and there's
controls and stuff and theyframe a video screen yeah, so it
looks like that.
But what you don't reallyrealize is that everything

(01:09:24):
you're seeing is the videoscreen oh wow, including the
controls and the frame aroundthe screen.
So they use this to greateffect.
It's really smart.
You get tractor beamed in bythe Borg oh wow.
And the Borg blow off the frontof your shuttle oh jeez.
So everything, like all theequipment and stuff, is just

(01:09:46):
gone and you're looking intoempty space oh jeez, it's really
really great.
Then Alice Krieg reprises herBorg queen, of course, yeah,
I've never loved the Borg queenconcept, but I do love Alice
Krieg.

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
Yeah, she's great, she's great.
The queen as a notion wasunderutilized and poorly
utilized when it was.
Yeah yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
I just I find the Borg scarier when there's not an
intelligence behind it.
That seems more frightening tome.

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
I just wanted the Borg Queen.
I really desperately and thisshould make you happy I
desperately wanted the Borgqueen to be Aaliyah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
Oh, yeah, yeah, that would be amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:29):
You know, she's got the little jewel at her neck and
the whole thing.
V'ger wants you to beassimilated.
I am bald.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
And there is I think there's been some retro canon
that has suggested that V'gerwas the origin of the Borg.

Speaker 4 (01:10:45):
Yeah, they did it in.
I forget the name of the videogame, but it was a canon-based
video game that a lot of fanswent.
That makes perfect sense.
Yeah, v'ger went out to theouter limits of space, was an
intelligent organic computerthat found an alien species and
startedilating it to replicateEarth and then just went wrong.

(01:11:07):
So cool, neat.
Yeah, not necessary, but it'slike okay, that's neat.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
I'll tell you my philosophy of canon.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
It's what you put a ball in with some powder.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
Yeah, yeah.
No.
My philosophy of canon is thatit's whatever you want it to be.
So if you like these novels andthese audio dramas and these
shows and you want to make yourown canon out of it, you win.
That's what it is.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Well, it's John Landis.
We'll go back to John Landisfor a minute.
John Landis once said to MaxLandis, his son, how do you kill
Dracula?
Oh, a stake through the heart,a stake through the heart right.
And he says no.
And Max goes what do you mean?
He says well, how else?
He goes well, like you know,holy water no, okay, garlic, no.

(01:11:54):
He says okay.
So what does kill vampires?
He goes anything you can wantit to be, they're made up.
Yeah, you know.
You know, like that's the point, anything you want it to be,
you can you make it up yeah soyeah, I mean, canon can be what
you like.
I I like the notion of aliabeing the queen, you know,
because that would have beenlike so nerdy oh it'd be great
you know, like one step below,like charlie x, suddenly popping

(01:12:16):
up again going yes, I'll, yeahmy own world, world it's a
little more superior to you,kirk.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
So you know she shows up and you're pulled into the
Borg ship, but the entire frontof your shuttlecraft is missing.
And you can see video of thisonline, obviously without the 3D
, but it's pretty effective.
And she's like okay, we'reassimilating all of you and so
the probes kind of come intowards you and then you start

(01:12:46):
hallucinating.
You start Borg hallucinating.
You're like going through thesecorridors with these trippy
light effects.
I mean it's just you're beingassimilated.

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
This is what it's like.
There's Locutus yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah yeah, and so it's
pretty.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
it's actually weirdly beautiful.
If you watch video of it now,it's like oh, this is
fascinating yeah.
And, at a certain point, robertPicardo injects himself into
what you're seeing, which is thenanobots in your head.

Speaker 4 (01:13:19):
He just kind of comes into frame like doot, doot,
doot, yeah, I found theanalgesic in your head.
He just kind of comes intoFrayland Doot, doot, doot, yeah,
I found the analgesic cream.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Yeah, if I could just interrupt, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
Let's interrupt this hallucination for just a moment,
please.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
And he shows up, he tells you to resist.
He's like we think you canresist.
Remember who you are yeah, youknow you evidently have this
special DNA.
Remember who you are yeah, youknow you evidently have this
special DNA.
Right, and you do eventuallyresist and the Federation comes
and saves the day.
You sabotage Like Voyager showsup and does something.

(01:13:54):
Okay, but that's not theinteresting part.

Speaker 4 (01:13:57):
This is Captain Janeway.
Very good job.
Yeah, you have resisted theBorg.
Bye, that's my cameo.
Where's my cameo.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
Where's my check Right?
Yeah, but it's fascinating.
I mean, you do get assimilated.
You have the front of yourshuttle torn off, that's awesome
.

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
It's pretty amazing.
That's pretty terrifying.
That's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
And then again at the end you kind of wander out a
fake service corridor into.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
Quark's again.
The janitor is fullyassimilated, but he's a good
assimilated.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Well, you know I'm stillmissing an arm, but it comes in
handy in a lot of ways, ain'ttoo bad, let me tell you, sonny,
don't knock Borg till you tryit, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
So that was the Star Trek experience.
It was amazing.
They shut it down after about11 years for kind of a lot of
reasons.
Their lease had run out.
It seemed like there were somediminishing returns, with people
coming.

Speaker 4 (01:14:56):
Because by the time that the Star Trek adventure was
shut down, it was like one ofthe stalwarts of the
family-friendly Vegas.
Yeah, because the rest of thestuff that had been installed
Treasure Island had all of itspirates stuff, its Bob Gurr
sinking ship had been taken out,yeah, and it had been turned

(01:15:18):
into the sirens of TI, oh God.
And then you know, the Miragewas not really what it was
anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:15:24):
Oddly enough, by the time of this broadcast, the
Mirage is now being demolished.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Is it being?
I thought it was just beingtaken over.

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
No, it's being completely torn apart.
Oh wow, they are selling piecesof the volcano.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Wow, the giant bronze sculptures, the naked mermaids
that greeted guests andeverybody would feel them up.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
All right now on this month at Boardwalk Times, we're
talking rumors about theMuppets returning to TV, a new
documentary about ChadwickBoseman, my article about the
hidden history of South Africanmusic in the Lion King and, of

(01:16:05):
course, the news fromDestination D23.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
Come check it all out at boardwalktimesnet.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
yeah, and I and I think this the the vegas thing.
The star trek experience isreally a great example of what
we've been kind of selling for awhile, which is actors human
people, human performers makeyour environment and they bought
in in that experience.
Like they put actors everywhere, like those attractions cannot

(01:16:49):
run without many trained actorsin them.
It was the right thing to doand it made it work and it's why
people think about that thingso fondly today.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
Oh, yeah, I mean I've seen video of the day they
literally closed the curtain onthe attraction and you can see
some of those longtime actorsthere saying goodbye and their
eyes are full of tears.
Yeah, they are just absolutelydistraught that this is gone.
Yeah, I mean, the time had come, but it was still very, very
sad.
It's like, oh boy, it reallyfeels like an end of an era.

(01:17:28):
Well, it's 11 years of theirlives for some of them,
Absolutely A full decade thatyou're dedicated to being a
member of the crew of theEnterprise.
Like, yeah, that's especiallyif you've gone through boot camp
training with Lieutenant F LeeErmey, you know, taking you out
in the desert and making you dopush-ups in a Star Trek uniform,
you know that's insane, but itworked.
It made it really feel good.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
That brings us to the last place.
I would like to stop on ourtrip through Star Trek themed
experiences, okay, and to getthere, I want to talk to you
about James Cawley.
Talk to me about James Cawley.
Talk to me about James Cawley.
James Cawley is, I think, mynew hero.

(01:18:07):
I love this guy.
I spent a good hunk ofyesterday just watching videos
of James Cawley.
He was born about when I was.
He's about my age, okay, so 27.
Right, he's about 27 for thelast 31 years, yeah, but he's

(01:18:29):
done a lot more with his life.
So far, so far 1984, he's tryingto do Star Trek cosplay stuff.
He calls up Paramount to askBill Theiss, who's the costume
designer for the original series, and some of Next Generation

(01:18:53):
for some details on somecostumes he's trying to make.
Oh jeez, paramount patches himthrough, of course, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:02):
Warner Brothers is Paramount.
Well, yeah, sure, no problem.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
He becomes a friend of Thijs.
Thijs is just like I like thiskid Thijs.
Sure, he helps him out.
And then at a certain point,you know, kali is showing
interest in filmmaking, kali isshowing interest in making
costumes and making sets andThijs brings him on as an intern
.
So Kali becomes an intern onNext Generation Nice.

(01:19:28):
He does it for a few years.
Thijs ends up leaving becausehe'd been doing Star Trek for a
long time.
Sure, kali has discovered hisnew career.
Kali, who is also trying tomake it as an actor at this
point, has discovered that he isa really good Elvis

(01:19:50):
impersonator.
He leaves and becomes afull-time Elvis impersonator.
A little less transportation alittle more shuttle baby, okay
go ahead.
He is so good as an Elvisimpersonator he becomes in high

(01:20:11):
demand.
He starts making a lot of moneydoing it, yeah, okay.
At a certain point Bill Theis,the costume designer, passes
away.
Oh dear, and evidently in hiswill, are all of the original

(01:20:32):
set design for the Enterprisefrom the original series.
Oh wow, the actual ones theyused.
Oh, the blueprints, theblueprints, oh jeez.
So one day James Gawley gets inthe mail all of the blueprints
for the original series.

Speaker 4 (01:20:50):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
He decides that he's going to use them and start
building those sets.
He buys a, rents or something,an old auto repair shop in
upstate New York.
Right, he starts building thesets in there, invites people in
to film Star Trek fan films.

(01:21:14):
Nice, which become Star Trek,the New Voyages, wow, which
later get called Star Trek PhaseTwo for some reason.

Speaker 4 (01:21:23):
The continuing voyages.

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
The premise is that these are the other voyages that
we didn't get to see, that arethe five-year mission.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Yes, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:32):
Including members of the original cast popping in as
cameos.
That's right yeah.
George Takei Nichelle Nichols.

Speaker 3 (01:21:38):
I just watched the one with George Takei yesterday.
I hadn't seen it before and thefirst half of it I was like
this is not that great.
By the end I was crying.
I was like this is beautiful,it's really good he starts
shooting these things withhimself as Captain Kirk, right.

Speaker 4 (01:21:58):
Because essentially Kirk really is Elvis in space.
Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, let'sface it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
And I gather that there's a lot of questions.
In fact, I have this greatquote, Atholian trap.
I have this great quote fromhim where he says people were
like, well, why does Kirk haveElvis hair?
And he says and you'd have toexplain Well, look, that's my
day job.
I'm not getting paid to playStar Trek.

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):
Elvis is paying for me to play Star Trek.
Okay, fair enough, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
So, yeah, he starts, he's building these sets, he
starts shooting the episodes,each episode, even though
they're like only an hour long.
They take about a year.
Oh yeah, because they'reamateurs, they don't have any
money.
Yeah, the only money they haveis coming from Elvis
impersonation gigs, and he'sdoing pretty well.
Evidently there's some talkthat early on to finish the sets

(01:22:53):
, it cost about $100,000, whichhe fronted himself, wow, and
then he was paying for theepisodes to be filmed.
Elvis pays.
I guess there was a Wiredarticle in 2005.
He was at a science fictionconvention in Pasadena.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
And he was near William Shatner because he was
going to go get Shatner'sautograph Right, because Colley,
in spite of all of these things, is just a fan, oh yeah.
And he's standing there andsomeone comes up and yells hey,
kirk and Collie and Shatner lookat the same time.
And someone goes not, you Billhim, wow, wow, wow.

(01:23:35):
So he does these for a while.
There's a couple other groupsthat are also doing fan films,
yeah, and some of them arepretty good.
The Star Trek Continues films.

(01:23:57):
I've watched a bunch of those.
They're real solid.
Yeah, lou Ferrigno's in one,that's cool.
Good old Lou.
Yeah, lou Ferrigno's in one,that's cool, good old Lou, yeah.
And so this is kind of going on.
Paramount is just turning ablind eye At this point.
I think it's CBS, which is justa division of Paramount, which

(01:24:17):
is a division of Viacom at thatpoint.
But CBS is kind of going.
It's fine, these guys aren'thurting anybody, yeah.
And then Axanar happens.
Do you know about Axanar?
I do not know about Axanar.
So Axanar was ostensibly a fanproduction.
Okay, it happens around whatyear is that?

(01:24:39):
Around 2015.
Okay, and he's still makingthese things.
So he's made about like nine orso of them.
Oh, wow, at a certain pointKali drops out of being Kirk and
has someone else do it.
But he's still behind the scenes, oh wow.
But in 2015, this other companystarts making another, a Star

(01:25:00):
Trek-based film called Axanar,and what they do is they get a
lot of money, like they put alot of money together, they put
out a short film called Preludeto Axanar, which they're going
to then use to massivelycrowdfund a big film, and

(01:25:21):
they've loaded the film withprofessional actors.
It's all people from BattlestarGalactica and Babylon 5 and
Star Trek and CBS finally goes.
Okay, that's too far.
You've gone too far, and youknow what they say.
Like you don't moon the bear,they mooned the bear.

(01:25:42):
Yeah, and don't give the mouse,a cookie, right, yeah, and so.
And so the people with accidentare, instead of doing what they
should have done, which is justshut up and shut everything
down, yeah, and say, hey, we'recool, they went to court, oh, no
, and so they spent a couple ofyears in court with CBS.

(01:26:05):
Cbs obviously won.
I mean, they own the rights forGod's sake.

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
Sorry guys, you do not own Star Trek.

Speaker 3 (01:26:14):
That's all there is to it, and so at this point CBS
came out and, to their credit,cbs didn't say you can no longer
do Star Trek fan films.
What they said was we have somestipulations.
And the two biggest ones wereno one who's working on our
shows can work on your shows.
Yeah, okay, fair, Fair, andthey can't be longer than 15

(01:26:34):
minutes.
That was a big one that knockedalmost everyone out of the
field, including Kali's NewVoyages, right the field,
including Kali's new voyages.
Right, kali, on his own, kindof said we were about done.
Anyway, we've been doing it fora long time, oh, yeah, a long
time.
But what he did was he went andrented out what used to be an

(01:26:58):
old dollar store in his hometownof Ticonderoga, new York, and
he moved all the sets there,okay, and then he finished the
sets.
So you know, he just he hadbuilt what he needed to film.

Speaker 4 (01:27:13):
Yeah, he was like but it's cut open in the back and
it's kind of you know it's notan actually immersive
environment.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
So now, he built the rest of it.
That's awesome, and so, as youknow, I did this very recently.

Speaker 4 (01:27:26):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:26):
I went to Ticonderoga to experience the Star Trek,
the original series set tour.
And it, my friends, is likegoing to Mecca.
Oh yeah, it's a big deal, it'sso crazy.
Go on.

(01:27:48):
This is exactly what it soundslike when you're in there.
Yeah, so what they do is so.
And he made the deal with CBSand because he knew some people
there he'd worked on TNGN onDeep Space Nine some people
there, he'd worked on TNGN onDeep Space Nine.
You know, at one point therewas an episode of Enterprise
where they actually named one ofthe ships, the USS Ticonderoga,

(01:28:11):
as a tribute to Kali.

Speaker 4 (01:28:13):
Nice, yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
He appears briefly in the 2009 JJ Abrams film.
He's on the bridge at one point.
Yeah, so you know he's got someconnections and he's like, hey,
we'll be cool, can we do this,can we open it up to the public?
And CBS, totally to theircredit, said, yeah, that's fine.
The only thing we ask is thatyou don't make any films, don't

(01:28:38):
let anyone film in there.
Okay, they can take pictures,that's okay.
Just no moving films.
We don't want anything thatlooks like a film.

Speaker 4 (01:28:45):
Yeah, okay, it's okay , reasonable.
Yeah, so Kelly went and he keptsending me photographs of this
and of course he wore a mustardyellow sweater, so he would be
command crew.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
Yeah, and I had a.
I totally busted him on it.

Speaker 4 (01:29:04):
I had an insignia.
Oh yeah, I totally busted himon that one, and that's fine,
because I probably would havedone the damn same.
Yeah, only I would probablybeen, you know, probably be blue
, because I would be more of ascience officer or something.
Actually, no, I'd be, I'dprobably be a red shirt, but you
know, because that'd be funnytoo, because, yeah, because you
gotta die sometime.

Speaker 3 (01:29:20):
Anyway, so I tell sometime anyway.
So I tell you about like it's.
It's a great experience.
It's taikon.
Dorog is a town that um,obviously it used to be next to
a military fort or taikon dorog.
It became a milling town.
The mills eventually all shutdown.
It's been hard on its luck,yeah, for a while.

(01:29:40):
Uh, one of the things that Isaw an interview with collie
where he was talking about itand he said you know, after we
put this in people and peopleweren't sure that this was a
great idea, but we put it in andwe started seeing that people
would travel there to see this.
And he's like, and I'm startingto see the Main Street in my
hometown wake up main street inmy hometown, wake up and he's

(01:30:02):
like, if this is all I can do isjust bring back my childhood
main street, that'll be enough.
And I'm like God, I love thisguy.

Speaker 4 (01:30:13):
That's so sweet, like that's pretty great.
If you can do that withcreativity and a love, with a
passion of what you love, likethat's pretty incredible.
Yeah, like you know, like welive Kelly and I live not too
far from a little.
You know, we live in Vallejo,california, and we live not too
far from a place called MareIsland, which was also a
military base and the actualaircraft carrier.

(01:30:39):
The Enterprise was actuallybuilt at Mare Island.
Yeah, yeah, the Enterprise wasactually built at Mare Island.
Yeah, yeah, but there's sometalk that Roddenberry had been
talking about using Mare Islandas the actual building spot for
the Starship Enterprise.
So there has been some talklocally like maybe we could do

(01:30:59):
something Star Trek-y out here.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Yeah, you know most people know it's going to be in
Iowa.
You know where it's built Anycanon followers.

Speaker 4 (01:31:04):
But again, it could be whatever you want.
There's nothing actually StarTrek related in Ticonderoga, New
York, except Kali making itpart of that mythos.
So fine, who cares?
That's really, really sweet andthat type of fan dedication is
what I love.
I love seeing that.

Speaker 3 (01:31:21):
I do too, and you know there's this quote and I
actually read this to Peteearlier, but I'll say it again.
I saw an interview with Kaliwhere he was talking about the
downtown.
But the other thing he said andthis kind of relates to what
you were saying before issomeone asked him about
following his passion and hesaid if you let people tell you

(01:31:42):
that your passion is foolish,you're going to destroy yourself
, you're going to go down a darkpath.
And he just he didn't.
He followed his passion.
He said I'm interested in StarTrek.
I'm going to call the guy, I'mgoing to be on the sets, I'm
going to build my own Star Treksets, I'm going to start
impersonating Elvis, I'm goingto make my own Star Trek show.

(01:32:07):
But I'll tell you about goingto this experience.
So you're in downtownTiconderoga, which is a
struggling city, and you kind ofgo there and there's this
storefront and there's videoscreens showing you episodes
outside, and then there's thiswhole thing of like biological

(01:32:28):
images of different kinds ofTribbles, and part of this, part
of their Tribble centricness isbecause David Gerald, who wrote
the Trouble with Tribbles,lives not far from there and
tends to go down and do eventsall the time.

Speaker 4 (01:32:43):
So, okay, little back back a little bit to Gyros.
Remember when I mentionedearlier that it was inspired by
Bob Burns and his Halloweenshows.
What was the writer's name?
Again, david Gerrold.
David Gerrold and DC Fontanawere friends of Bob's and would
actually help him with hisHalloween shows.

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
Wow that's amazing DC .

Speaker 4 (01:33:02):
Fontana actually met her future husband, one of the
Skotek brothers, while buildinga replica of the alien from 19,.
You know Ridley Scott's Alien?
Wow, and they were building and, like the Skotek brothers, are
like big Star Trek nerds,they're like hey, you know,
diane Fontana's here workingover there.
And finally, we're like man, Iwonder who this DC Fontana?

(01:33:23):
I can't find anything about whothis is.
And finally, like she invitedhim over to take a look at a VCR
that she had just bought.
Ooh, and they were both technerds and they fell in love.
Yeah, and it's like I'm datingDC Fontana.
His brother's like shut up.
Yeah, that's really cool.
What a little love story, right, but they would do all these
crazy shows.
You know we should do anepisode actually about Bob with

(01:33:45):
Haunted Houses and replicas.
Yeah, maybe that'll be a futureshow.
We can go into the wonderfulworld of Bob Burns.
Yeah, because that's anexperience all on its own.
But anyway, yeah, but thattotally falls in line with
what's going on in, you know,ticonderoga.
I'm not surprised that he'shelping out, because that's
right up the same level of fandedication as Bob would have

(01:34:07):
shown with some of his shows.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
Yeah, and you just you go in.
You buy a ticket ahead of time,you go in, and I'm going to say
this very carefully.
So my tour guide was wonderfulit was.
I mean, there was a group tour,but I had kind of bought the
special photo tour, which waslike $10 more.
It wasn't a big deal.
So it was just me and a tourguide.

(01:34:29):
She was terrific.
She just knew so much aboutthese sets and stuff.
So I'm not being disparagingwhen I say this.
When you walk in, there's thisarea with a bunch of kind of low
, a little bit ratty couches andthere are.

(01:34:51):
When I walked in there wasmaybe six people like five women
, one man, all dressed inoriginal series Star Trek
uniforms, lounging and lookingat you and it feels a little bit
like walking into a nerdy cathouse.

Speaker 4 (01:35:17):
Which Ensign would you like?

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):
And there very much was.
Like I kind of walked in andpeople sort of looked at me and
then they looked back to whatthey were doing.
I was like, okay.
And then I walked into the nextroom and told the woman about
my reservation and she was likeoh, okay, you have the photo
tour.
I would have reservations too,and one of the women stood up
and she was like I got him, I'lltake him.

Speaker 4 (01:35:43):
I'm Trixie.
I'm your ensign for today.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
And that said, it just looked funny, but the shoe
is incredibly nice, incrediblyknowledgeable.

Speaker 4 (01:35:56):
That's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:35:56):
And they set it up so that when you come in, you
don't see any of the sets.
You see this, uh wooden wallwith writing on it.
This is property of desilustudios nice, and so it's set up
to look like a studio nice okayand when you're in there,
everything's to the dimensionsof a studio okay, and so you can

(01:36:17):
see.
You know if you look the rightway.
In certain places you can seelike lighting rigs and stuff
above you that's cool yeah, likethat they really worked hard at
it.
You just you go through thisthing and it is they have like
craft services over there with ahuge ashtray.

Speaker 4 (01:36:32):
That'd be great cartons all over the place and
you, just you go through.

Speaker 3 (01:36:37):
They do the same thing that you experienced with
the doors, like she would goreach behind and pull the little
cord and open the automaticdoors for me.
And I got to sit in thedoctor's chair and I got to
operate the transporter and Ijust, you know, it's every set
that you see of the Enterprisefrom the original series.

(01:37:00):
It's beautiful, it's an amazingexperience and just you get
these kind of constant factoidsthat you didn't know before,
because they're all deepproduction information.
Sure, you know, some of thethings in there were screen used
from the show.
Some of them they built.
It's just incredible and, ofcourse, it all climaxes with you
going onto the bridge.

(01:37:21):
Yeah, and since I was in thespecial photo tour, I, you got
to sit in the chair.
I sat in the chair alone, youknow, and got to survey
everything around.
It was just General order 25.

Speaker 4 (01:37:37):
Yeah, blow them all up.

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
So you know, so it's you know.
It's a combination of this kindof in-depth experience and it's
it's something that that wouldhave fit very well in early
universal, where it's like youare part of this production.

Speaker 4 (01:37:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:56):
You know you, you are seeing behind the scenes, but
you were also in the scenes.

Speaker 4 (01:38:01):
Yeah, I mean, I kind of like that because it builds
you up to the imagination.
Part of it, yeah, and it's likeyou know, it's one thing to
immerse you into that world withnot a single nod that this is
still fun.
Yeah, it actually.
For me it was actually evenmore important the fact that I
could see the plywood, I couldsee the coats hanging off of the
back of the you know the flatsand stuff, and then all of a

(01:38:22):
sudden you're on the Enterprise.
It's like I don't care, I'm onthe Enterprise.
Yeah, this is great, I'm here,man, like, show me a Romulan,
let's go.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
It's just remarkable how quickly your mind will flip
Like I'm seeing backstage.
I'm seeing backstage, I'm inspace.

Speaker 4 (01:38:41):
And Kelly, I'm in space.
And Kelly, I have to say thephotographs that he sent me the
first thing, and I'm going tomake him smile here, because he
was on another trip and hehadn't had a chance to shave yet
.
I immediately started makingCommodore Decker jokes.
It's like start freaking out.
Look, it's the Doomsday Machine,
dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dunmachine.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Overacting Sweaty guy .

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
All right, pete.
Yes, I think we have reachedthat time.
Yes, yes indeed.

Speaker 4 (01:39:30):
Unless you have anything more you'd like to say
about Ticonderoga or Las Vegasor the Klingon encounter, or
you'd like to make fun ofGuardians of the Galaxy or Elvis
.
There was one attempt to kindof make this type of immersive
thing one more time.
There was a traveling exhibit.
It was like the science of StarTrek.
Oh yeah, I kind of recall that.
It was like the science of StarTrek.
Oh yeah, I kind of recall that.
That went rambling around theUnited States and it was a
pop-up traveling exhibit.
That was early 2000s kind ofthing and I'm not sure where any

(01:39:51):
of the.
I don't know who designed it, Idon't know what company built
it.
Yeah, or if any of the propsand anything were like taken
from Vegas, it would certainlymake sense that some of those
props would, you know, go fromhand to hand and wind up from
Vegas into this exhibit orwhatever.
Yeah, it was okay, you know ithit all of the right marks for

(01:40:13):
all the Trek nerds, but it wasmostly just like look at these
props and sets from the show,yeah, and some science was
thrown in there.
Yeah, kind of like yeah, youknow space there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:40:26):
Am I right?
Am I right yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:40:27):
space.
Final Frontier, who cares?
Okay, let's look at Klingonstuff.
You know, like, all right, theydid have Chancellor Gorkon's
outfit from Star Trek VI.
That was kind of cool.
Oh, that's neat.
David Warner's weird.
You know, the poofy pantsKlingon outfits, yeah, that
everybody hates, but I actuallykind of like it looks good on
Admiral Chang.
Right, christopher Plummer, helooks amazing in his poofy pants

(01:40:49):
outfit.
Yeah, I don't know if it was.
I found it was suitable for himto wear that because he's
supposed to be.
You know, he is this greatShakespearean actor from Canada,
yeah, and they make this bigdeal about.
You've never experienced, youknow, hamlet until you've seen
the original Klingon.
The original Klingon, yeah, andI think it's actually kind of
fitting that he has thissemi-puffy Shakespearean look to

(01:41:11):
his outfit.
Yeah, I find that slightlysuitable.
Like it's almost like you'rewatching A man for All Seasons,
but it's Klingon.

Speaker 3 (01:41:28):
Have you ever heard that great quote Christopher
Plummer said about Sound ofMusic.

Speaker 4 (01:41:32):
He said watching Sound of Music is like being
beaten to death with a Hallmarkcard.
Yeah, pretty much, Pretty much.
I love it.
So yeah, so on that note, let'sbeat our audience to death with
something else.
Yeah, this is the part of theshow where we talk about how to
improve or how to plus up, shallwe say, these attractions, or

(01:41:52):
at least this notion of anattraction, without any thought
of safety or budget or timeconstraints, and let's just let
our brains go wild.
Yeah, who goes?

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
first on this one If you've got something, go for it,
because I'm still fabricating.
Right now, my brain is like a3D printer and it's going real
slow.

Speaker 4 (01:42:16):
You know, oddly enough, I actually did kind of
come up with this while we weretalking about the Ticonderoga,
okay, and I thought first off Imean I was only I thought it'd
be.
I've seen this happen at StarTrek conventions and I think a
much more quote-unquote officialversion of this could actually
be very interesting.
Yeah, we have the technology todo this at relatively small

(01:42:38):
budget and this would be fun fora lot of mom-and-pop places
like Ticonderoga to actually do,and this would be fun for a lot
of mom and pop places likeTiconderoga to actually do, in
which they would at some ofthese conventions they will set
up two conference halls, so thatway they put a television
monitor like a projection screen, so you've got the and they
kind of set up rudimentarylittle stations like you're on a

(01:42:58):
bridge, yeah, and then theyhave space battles and interact
with each other as if they're onboard these ships.
Oh, nice, and it's clever.
Yeah, I think it'd be kind ofcool to actually have a couple
other fanboys out there.
Yeah, maybe set up anotherversion of the Ticonderoga Like
hey, send off.
You know, find another group ofdedicated fans who want their

(01:43:19):
version of it.
Yeah, send it over and let themget copies of those blueprints
and they build their Enterpriseset with the notion that the
Ticonderoga, on certain days, isactually hooked up to that
other bridge and they havescenarios between each other.

Speaker 3 (01:43:36):
Oh, interesting, or maybe one's a.

Speaker 4 (01:43:38):
Klingon ship.
Go see the Klingon ship over inKentucky, the Kentucky Klingon
ship, whatever, and then you canactually have ship-to-ship.
But you're actually likestate-to-state interactive.
Right, it's like a you know,star Trek, zoom call, yeah, but
you set up like interactivescenarios where, like, the
events on one ship affect theother.

Speaker 3 (01:43:57):
Oh, that'd be awesome .

Speaker 4 (01:43:58):
Back and forth for a couple, couple of hours and you
just play at it and have fun.
Yeah it's, you know it's likedoing cops and robbers, but just
for nerds.
Yeah, like, and I say that withall affection, absolutely.
So I think you know it'd begoofy, it'd be fun, but it'd be
kind of goofy, but I like it.
Yeah, so that'd be the closestthing I have to a plus-up,
because it'd be pretty hard totop the Star Trek experience at

(01:44:20):
the Hilton.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
Yeah, that was just a remarkable thing in a
remarkable time.

Speaker 4 (01:44:28):
And it hits a cultural milestone because it
was right in the middle of theperfect timing for the zeitgeist
to hit.

Speaker 3 (01:44:33):
For me, the tricky thing about putting Star Trek
into theme parks is that you aresort of pressured into
action-adventure Mm-hmm, becausethat's what a thematic
experience is usually.
Sure, it's like you have somesort of dramatic rise.

(01:44:54):
You have some sort of conflict.
You overcome the conflict, youget out.
Yeah, but that's not really thenature of Star Trek.
Star Trek can do it.
Wrath of Khan is proof of that.
Yeah, but that's not really thenature of what makes that
franchise great.
I agreed.
So I would like to seesomething that was more an

(01:45:17):
environment than an adventure.
Yeah, I can see that we loveadventures, but more of an
environment than an adventure.
Yeah, I can see that, like, welove adventures but more of an
environment.
And I'd love to see some sortof environment that kind of
deals with the history of theFederation and instead of like

(01:45:39):
attaching to a character andsaying we're going to go do this
and fight this guy, we get ledaround to like important scenes
of the Federation or Federationscience or you know, you know
how.
Welcome to the DaystromInstitute.

Speaker 4 (01:45:58):
I am great, you are great.

Speaker 3 (01:46:01):
I will show you around, kirk.
Destroy my work, kirk, youremember, like Space Station X-9
or the 20,000 Leagues exhibitat Disneyland, where you're just
going through and kind ofexperiencing what that
environment was like?
Yeah, and if you're lucky, theydid something.
This is my nerdery.

(01:46:23):
They did something really cleverin the third season of Star
Trek Discovery, which is theyput them in a time where the
Federation had died out oh yeah,gone, oh yeah.
And then challenged thecharacters to live up to its
ideals without all the supportsystems.
Wow, and it was brilliant,really brilliant, wow.
And so I would like and it'svery inspirational, like I've

(01:46:45):
talked to people who were like Igot choked up about this
because I reinvigorated in mymind why the Federation was a
great idea and I would like tosee something that does
something like that, where youget and they can fabric, they
can make up events, it doesn'tmatter, sure, just have someone

(01:47:07):
like led through a history ofthe Federation Museum and maybe
at the end, you know, captainArcher gets to give his big
speech that they should have lethim give at the end of
Enterprise, but they didn'tRight, they talked about all
episodes and then you never saw.

Speaker 4 (01:47:19):
He just reaches into his pocket and pulls out Ziggy
and cleans out Quantum Leapstyle.

Speaker 3 (01:47:24):
But I think that would be my thing More like an
attraction, that was more of anenvironment that gave you a
sense of what it would be liketo live in the Federation.

Speaker 4 (01:47:37):
That's cool.
I like that, yeah, bringing thehopefulness back.

Speaker 3 (01:47:40):
That's it, exactly Everything that we've talked
about.
I love Star Trek, theExperience.
I thought the Star TrekAdventure at Universal was a lot
of fun, but it's all aboutconflict and violence.
Sure, and you can have some ofthat for sure.
But let's do something hopefuland positive.

Speaker 4 (01:47:59):
Well, we live not too far away from Alameda, where
they keep the nuclear vessels.

Speaker 3 (01:48:03):
The nuclear vessels.

Speaker 4 (01:48:04):
That would be.
You could probably do it inAlameda.

Speaker 3 (01:48:06):
I don't think they keep them there anymore oh
that's too bad.

Speaker 4 (01:48:11):
I'm keeping the enterprise.
Well, here we are.
We are at the end of anotherepisode, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 4 (01:48:21):
In our next episode we'll take you to other regions
beyond, shall we say so.
Thanks a lot for listening.
My name's Peter Overstreet.

Speaker 3 (01:48:29):
Yes, and I would like to say live long and prosper,
Pete.

Speaker 4 (01:48:32):
Yes, indeed, you as well.
I have been and always shall beyour friend.

Speaker 3 (01:48:37):
That's right, there you go.
Of all the people I've met inmy travels, his was the most
human.

Speaker 4 (01:48:48):
On that note I'm Peter Overstreet, I'm Kelly.

Speaker 3 (01:48:51):
McGovern, you've been listening to the Lowdown on the
Plus.

Speaker 2 (01:48:53):
App.

Speaker 3 (01:49:05):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the
Lowdown on the Plus Up.
If you have, please tell yourfriends where you found us, and
if you haven't, we can pretendthis never happened and need not
speak of it again.
For a lot more thoughts ontheme parks and related stuff,
check out my writing forBoardwalk Times at
boardwalktimesnet.
Related stuff check out mywriting for Boardwalk Times at

(01:49:26):
boardwalktimesnet.
Feel free to reach out to Peteand I at Lowdown on the Plus Up
on Blue Sky, mastodon, instagramand all the other socials, or
you can send us a messagedirectly at comments at
lowdown-plus-upcom.
We really want to hear abouthow you'd plus these attractions
up and read some of your ideason the show.
To hear about how you'd plusthese attractions up and read
some of your ideas on the show.
Our theme music is GoblinTinker Soldier Spy by Kevin

(01:49:48):
MacLeod at incompetechcom.

Speaker 2 (01:50:25):
We'll have a new episode out real soon.
Why?
Because we like you.
The Joy of the Wild, Softly,without blame.
The joy is over the white gunbeneath the rose door.
Oh, I've lost you.
Yes, I've lost you.
I can't reach you anymore.
We are too tall to know.
Now the reason can't stand andmove forth from the night.

(01:50:45):
Sex should like.
The baby will be crying and youwill stumble Sleeping to the

(01:51:07):
door.

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