Nerd heaven Adam David Collings

Blood of the Stars is an epic fantasy novel, the first of a series by debut author Karyne Norton.
Learn more about the book at https://www.karynenorton.com/
And check out my books at https://adamdavidcollings.com/books 
 

Bonus Episode - My thoughts on Indianna Jones and The Dial of Destiny.

Today, we're looking at the final episode of Star Trek Continues. "To Boldly Go. Part 2."
So how does this episode hold up against other series finales such as "All Good Things" and "What You Leave Behind". And how well does this episode tie together Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
There's a lot to talk about, including some cool stories shared with me by director James Kerwin.
Audio Player control at bottom of page.
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Transcript
Welcome to Nerd Heaven. I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars.
And I am a Nerd.
This is episode 107 of the podcast.
Today, we’re talking about the final episode of Star Trek Continues. “To Boldly Go, Part 2.” bringing our coverage of this show to a close.
 
The description on IMDB reads
The iconic mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise comes to an end, as Kirk and his crew battle the ultimate adversary.
 
This teleplay was written by Robert J. Sawyer and James Kerwin.
With story by Vic Mignogna, Robert J. Sawyer and James Kerwin.
It was directed by James Kerwin
And it first aired on the 13th of November 2017.
 
We pick up in a very tense situation from last episode’s great cliffhanger.
Kirk is unwilling to relinquish his bridge. He, Spock, and Uhura all try to fight back. To no avail. Even the security officer’s phasers are useless against Lana’s powers.
 
And then the big surprise twist happens. Smith’s eyes go silver. She is uplifted as well.
This was nicely foreshadowed in the last episode where they mentioned that she was holding Garry’s hand when they passed through the barrier. I felt then, that she was holding something back.
She uses the same lightning force powers that Lana was using. We saw Gary Mitchel and Elizabeth Denher use them in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. She forces Lana and Sentek to retreat to the Kongo.
 
So … it seems Smith wasn’t quite so unaffected as she claimed. I think this is a very cool development. But it raises a lot of questions. Where does Smith sit in the esper scale? Has she always been affected, but has been hiding it, or have her powers only just now manifested. And if so, why?
 
Kirk asks security to escort her to sickbay. At first, she’s taken aback. After all, she’s one of the good guys right. She helped them against Lana. But after a moment of thought, she relents. It’s probably a good idea. She understands the potential threat she represents. She sees things from Kirk’s point of view. Maybe she’d even do the same thing in his place.
She voluntarily goes with security.
 
The big question is, why are they just sitting there. Why have they not destroyed the Enterprise and her crew?
McCoy has the answer. It takes time for uplifted  espers to grow in their powers. Perhaps they’re biding their time until they all reach full strength.
 
Bones has a medical defence that might help with the illusions. Scotty recommends keeping their distance as the espers don’t have unlimited range with their powers.
The Kongo’s engines are offline. The crew must have shut it off before they were overpowered. Maybe the espers don’t know how to get them going again.
 
Kirk hasn’t slept for two days. McCoy doesn’t argue. Usually Kirk would be wrong, but not this time. He needs to keep going.
I’m not sure McCoy is right, actually. As Riker says in Best of Both Worlds, you can’t fight the enemy at the same time you’re fighting your own fatigue. Lack of sleep impairs human decision making. I know my mind is absolutely useless after putting in a day of work, and Kirk has been going much longer than that.
Yes, the situation is critical, but for the moment, it’s quiet, This might be the perfect time for Kirk to catch 30 minutes of sleep while the enemy regroups.
Of course, there’s a lot to accomplish while they have this time. Coming up with defences, a plan of some sort.
There are no good or easy answers, which is probably why McCoy is not arguing with him.
 

Today, we're looking at "To Boldly Go Part 1", the first half of the Star Trek Continues grant finale. See how this episode ties back to the Star Trek pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", how it sets up everything for the exciting conclusion, and hear some fascinating new insights into the episode from director James Kerwin.
Player at bottom of page
http://AdamDavidCollings.com/books
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Transcript
Welcome to Nerd Heaven.
I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars.
And I am a nerd
 
This is episode 106 of the podcast. Today, we’re talking about the first part of the Star Trek Continues grand finale, “To Boldly Go, Part 1”.
 
I got an email a few weeks ago. It was from James Kerwin. Yes, that James Kerin. Writer, producer and director for Star Trek Continues, including director of today’s episode.
 
He reached out to me to say he’d been listening to the podcast and enjoying it. This was a huge thrill. It’s very humbling to find that one of the creators of the show has been listening to the podcast, so I want to give a big shout out and thank you to him, not only for his work on the show, but for his encouragement.
 
And he pointed out a few fascinating things that I’d missed.
Remember in episode three, I talked about how good the shuttlecraft exterior looked. It turns out, they didn’t build that from scratch that was the real shuttlecraft Galileo from Star Trek The Original Series. How awesome is that?
 
I’ve made mention of Nurse Chapel a couple of times, but that wasn’t actually Chapel. They made a conscious decision not to have Chapel appear on screen in this show because she should be off at Starfleet Medical getting her doctorate at this point in time, which makes a lot of sense. So it was always Nurse Burke, a character who had appeared in Star Trek comics and novels.
 
And Lieutenant Smith has not actually been on the Enterprise the whole time. But we’ll learn more about that in the next episode.
 
But here’s a big one I missed. The actress who plays her, Kipleigh Brown, was the writer of episode 9 “What Ships are For” I didn’t put that together, but I think that’s really cool.
 
The description on IMDB for today’s episode reads
To solve the utmost mystery, the Enterprise must return to where Kirk's five-year mission began.
The teleplay was by Roberty J. Sawyer based on a story by
Vic Mignongna, James Kerwin, and Robert J. Sawyer.
It was directed by James Kerwin,
And it first aired on the 18th of October 2017.
 
Robert J. Sawyer was the primary writer of this two-parter. He is a very famous Canadian author who wrote FlashForward, which was adapted for TV by Star Trek’s Branon Braga, and Man of Steel’s David S. Goyer.
 
When Star Trek The Next Generation was preparing to wrap and move to the big screen, they gave it a two-hour finale. This idea was pretty unheard of at the time. Lots of shows in the 90s had movie-length pilots, but not finales. TV shows tended to pitter out and end with a bit of a whimper. TNG changed all that.
 
But the original Star Trek never got a proper finale, like TNG, DS9, and Voyager. 
Even Enterprise got a finale of sorts, which I will partially defend, though not the feature length extravaganza that others got.
But things were different in the 60s. TOS had no ending. It was cancelled. Turnabout Intruder wasn’t intended to be the end of the story, it was just an episode.
 
One of the greatest things about Star Trek Continues is that it rectifies this. It gives TOS the ending it always deserved. And it’s done so well.
 
Much like “All Good Things”, it calls back to a lot of things from the past, but it specifically links us back to the very first episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
Even the titles relate, each is part of Kirk’s iconic phrase. The symmetry is beautiful.
 
But hold on, I hear you say. “What about the Cage? Isn’t that the pilot of TOS?”
Well, yes it is. Star Trek had an unprec

We're taking a brief side-quest from our regular coverage of Star Trek Continues, to look at an episode of Star Trek New Voyages, because it sets up the back-story of Kirk and Carol Marcus's relationship, and I just like to throw it in there when I'm doing a re-watch of Star Trek Continues.
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Transcript
Welcome to Nerd Heaven.
I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars
And I am a nerd.
 
This is episode 105 of the podcast.
 
Today, we’re talking about an episode of a different fan series - Star Trek New Voyages. “The Holiest Thing”
 
Why? I just like to throw this one in when I do a re-watch of Star Trek Continues, because it does a similar thing to Continues, that is, to help develop the story filling in the gaps between TOS and the Star Trek movies. This one introduces Kirk to a much younger Carol Marcus, for the very first time.
So I figured, let’s have a look at this one. Next time, we’ll be back with part 1 of the finale of Star Trek Continues.
 
The description on IMDB reads
Captain Kirk and the Enterprise investigate the devastation of Lappa III, apparently by the terraforming efforts of Dr. Carol Marcus.
 
This episode was written by Rick Chambers
It was directed by Daren Dochterman
 
And it first aired on the 15th of January 2016
 
We start this episode in a very unexpected place. A shuttle flies past the camera. But it’s not a TOS shuttle. It’s an Enterprise D shuttle. We cut to the inside where we see a woman in TNG era uniform and an older Scotty. So, clearly this is set some time after the TNG episode “Relics” where a retired Scotty finds himself in the 24th century.
I have to say, they cast a pretty decent look-alike for older scotty.
A guy named Carl Sheldon. He hasn’t done a lot of acting.
 
Watching this scene, I’m again reminded just how professional the acting and writing are in Star Trek Continues. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Star Trek New Voyages. They did some amazing stuff long before Star Trek Continues was a thing. But the acting, and the dialog here just isn’t at the same standard as Continues.
 
But I want to give this show credit for set design and visual effects. What we see in this episode is great.
And not all the acting feels as amateur as this first scene.
 
The ensign has been doing some training with Captain Scott. They’re approaching the Lappa system. She asks Scotty if he’s ever been there. He recalls a time in his past, when the world was still very much on the frontier. It was un-inhabited back then. At least, that’s what they thought.
 
We then cut to the TOS present day.
A scientist, who we’ll shortly learn is Dr. Carol Marcus, is working to terraform this planet. Scotty is there, and in this show, he has a moustache. Another little nod to closing the gap between TOS and TMP.
 
Marcus says “we have Enterprise and her chief Engineer watching over our shoulder.”
This is something that bugs me. That she says “Enterprise” rather than “The Enterprise.”
Voyager was the first Star Trek show to drop the word “The” when referring to the ship. And I was okay with that because “The Voyager” somehow sounded wrong. In contrast to “The Enterprise” and “The Defant” which both sounded completely natural and right.
 
Then we got Enterprise, and on that show, they did the same thing. They called the ship “Enterprise”, not “The Enterprise”
That annoyed me a little, but I got over it.
 
But nowadays, in Strange New Worlds, they are referring to the original starship Enterprise, the one commanded by Pike and eventually Kirk, as “Enterprise.” I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong. That ship was always “The Enterprise” so that annoys me quite a bit. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.
Here, in New Voyages, we have the same problem. Carol is referring to Kirk’s ship. It should be “The Enterprise”
 
Marcus told the science council she could terraform Lappa III in less tha

In this episode of Star Trek Continues, we are treated to the return of John De Lancie is a new role. But just because he's not playing Q, doesn't mean he isn't awesome. "What Ships Are For" explores an issue that has been topical in our world in recent years - immigration and refugees.
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Transcript
Welcome to Nerd Heaven.
I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars
And I am a nerd.
 
This is episode 104 of the podcast. (Yes, I’m counting the chat about DC comics from last time)
Today, we’re talking about the Star Trek Continues episode “What Ships are For”.
 
The description on IMDB reads
Kirk struggles with aiding a society whose inhabitants view their isolated world in a very unique way.
 
This teleplay was written by Kipleigh Brown
With story by Vic Mignogna, James Kerwin, and Kipleigh Brown, 
It was directed by Vic Mignogna
 
And it first aired on the 30th of July 2017
 
When I first heard that Star Trek Continues was bringing in the legendary John DeLancie, but that he’d be playing a character that wasn’t Q, my initial reaction was “What a waste of John De Lancie.”
 
My thinking went something like this. The idea of having Q visit Kirk’s Enterprise would be fun. Something that could certainly happen in-universe because Q can travel through time with the click of a finger. But it couldn’t have ever been done in TOS because The Next Generation didn’t exist yet. It’s the similar problem to having Kirk and Spock make references to Archer and T’Pol. While Enterprise took place before TOS, it was created more than 30 years later.
These kinds of references and interactions can only be done by fan productions (or maybe Strange New Worlds).
But as fun as it would be having Q show up in a TOS episode, it’s unlikely a fan production would be able to get John DeLancie.
 
But Star Trek Continues managed to get him. But they didn’t use him for Q. They cast him as another character. Added to the disappointment of him not being Q, was the fact that De Lancie is a very recognisable guy, so seeing him as a different character would be odd to say the least.
 
After watching the episode the first time, I had to back-pedal my thoughts on this because of De Lancie’s great performance. He did a fantastic job with this character, and now it’s hard to imagine this episode without him.
 
The Enterprise is responding to a distress call from an inhabited asteroid with a limited warp capable society.
 
I like that it’s an inhabited asteroid. We always see people living on planets, but I think we need more inhibited moons and asteroids, not only in sci-fi, but in fantasy as well. If I ever write a fantasy book, the world I set it on will be a moon, rather than a planet.
 
And a nice bit of ongoing continuity, we learn that two Federation starships have been dispatched to investigate what happened to the hood. Both have suffered unexplainable damage.
We also learn that Nurse Chapel is already at Starfleet medical, studying to become a doctor. We know that by the time of Star Trek The Motion Picture, Chapen is a doctor. This is the first really big sign that Star Trek Continues is on a trajectory toward that movie, starting to set up some of the big changes that occurred off-screen between season 3 and the movie.
 
You sometimes see nurses who decide to become doctors in both fiction and real life. It can be almost viewed as a promotion, which, I suspect it technically is, if you look at the hierarchy of authority in a hospital. But nursing certainly needn't be seen as a stepping stone to medicine. Nursing is a respected profession of highly intelligent people. And interestingly, my wife works with a nurse who used to be a doctor, but decided she’d rather be a nurse. You don’t often see it go that direction.
 
The other hint of the motion picture you see is the white medical uniform the doctor at Starfleet is wearing. Kirk jokes that you’ll never get him in one of tho