After 5 television series, a gross of movies, a cartoon and more merchandizing than you can shake a stick at, one would think that Star Trek had been mined to exhaustion.

Apparently not.

Soon you'll be able download a new episode of the original Star Trek series, complete with cheesy costumes and the largely original set, on the internet.

Marshall first met 38-year-old Cawley - where else? - on the bridge of the Enterprise. (The two had been in phone contact about other Trek fan films.) For almost 20 years, Cawley has been assembling the Enterprise piece by piece, initially in his grandfather's barn. It's a perfect re-creation of the set used during the 1966 to 1969 run of Star Trek. When Marshall walked onto the set in upstate New York for the first time, he looked at Cawley, cast his arms wide, and exclaimed, "Brother!" Soon after, they decided to make New Voyages together. In addition to filmmaking chops, Marshall brought promotional skill and a crew of aspiring actors from a previous independent film project. Cawley provided funding, costumes, and the bridge. Still, Cawley would have been content to film himself and his friends playing dress-up for their own amusement. It was Marshall who wanted to put the finished product on the Internet - and maybe change the course of Star Trek history while they were at it.

This isn't kids with towels for capes. The current desktop video technology is light-years ahead (heh,heh) of what was used to make the original series. Episode 3 of season 4 is due own in the Spring, but don't look for it on the Sci-Fi channel (at least not yet). Instead you'll be able to download it on the internet. Hopefully by then Star Trek the New Voyages will have popped for more bandwidth (their site is abominably slow...).

Its apparently a serious enough venture for Walter Koenig (Chekhov) and George Takei (Sulu) to reprise their roles, which I hope means that its good.