This past Monday evening, STAR TREK CONTINUES show-runner VIC MIGNOGNA posted a very special video onto the STC Facebook page. Principal photography was completed last February on the final STC episode, “To Boldly Go.” Shortly thereafter, Vic walked the corridors of the amazing TOS sets on a rainy day in Kingsland, GA, filming himself using a selfie stick as he discussed his feelings about wrapping up the series after nearly six years.
In the background, you can see how the sets are laid out in the warehouse, what some of the Enterprise “walls” look like from the other side, and how close everything was from the edges of the soundstage itself. They certainly filled that space.
The video shows a quiet and thoughtful moment for Vic, similar to one I experienced several years ago during my final visit to the Star Trek: TNG sets on display at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. For several years, I and friends from a local Trek fan club used to give docent tours in uniform once a month before the museum closed its doors forever. While I can’t completely equate that experience to Vic’s in terms of time commitment and dedication, I still understand a little of how he felt when he made this video.
Everyone else was gone (or so it appears on Vic’s video), and it was a final chance to take in everything this project had meant to him personally for those many years. Like Vic, I also did my final “set walk” alone. I stayed there for about 45 minutes in silence (the museum was now closed to the public and we’d been helping get props organized and stowed—I was the last one there). I sat in Picard’s chair, walked around Worf’s station, stood in the transporter, and took one last look at all the humorous details Mike Okuda had hidden in Geordi’s engineering cutaway of the Enterprise-D: Nomad, an airplane, the rubber duck. And for no reason whatsoever, I gave one final tour…to no one. I went through every part of the docent speech my friends and I used to give for the tourists, as I’d long ago memorized every line. It was just a special moment with the sets…one last time.
And while Vic obviously still has access to his sets, I can imagine how deeply introspective he must have felt when he made this video—and I’m glad he decided to share it with us…
Goodbye to Continues cast – It was quite a ride – What an amazing job with this series – CBS really should’ve been taking notes… :/ / P 🙂
CBS was busy making Disco. 🙂
More like protecting their property.
Wait…CBS taking NO legal action against STC was protecting their property? I don’t get it.
If Vic’s real reasons for creating and filming STC were not his main focus, I would be more sympathetic. However, that is not the case.
As to what will become of the sets, he could always have them sent to CBS/Paramount for better use as a future exhibit for fans. Or donated to a museum.
I’ll say this much. Both combined, the episodes of both Star Trek – New Voyages/Phase II and Star Trek Continues finally cover the fifth and final year of the Enterprise’s five year mission.
Like the animated series being the official fourth season of TOS(as stated by CBS/Paramount some years past), in some ways both NV/P2 and STC could be viewed at as the same, concerning – and ONLY concerning – the fifth season.
“If Vic’s real reasons for creating and filming STC were not his main focus, I would be more sympathetic. However, that is not the case.”
I honestly have no idea what that statement means, Blue.
“As to what will become of the sets, he could always have them sent to CBS/Paramount for better use as a future exhibit for fans. Or donated to a museum.”
You realize that the sets currently occupy 18,000 square feet, right? And they’re located in a small town in southeastern Georgia where CBS has no operational facilities. The closest major city to the sets is Jacksonville, FL, which is still an hour away and also has no studio-owned facilities. “Sending them to CBS/Paramount” requires the transport of these sets, carefully loaded onto and then unloaded from about 15-20 large trucks, to either New York City or Los Angeles, where the two studios have facilities for storage. That moving cost is probably about $250,000 easily in fuel and labor (likely more). I don’t think Vic has that money lying around, and it’s unlikely CBS or Paramount will spend that money themselves, as they really don’t want the sets. They don’t need them, and space at a studio is at a premium. They’re not about to store 18,000 square feet of sets that they’ll likely never need. (As an example of this, I visited the DS9 sets a day after filming wrapped on their last scene. I wanted to get some photos of the Promenade before the sets were struck. It was less than 24 hours, and those sets were already half gone! I was so sad because, man, those were some amazing sets! But Paramount needed that soundstage, so the sets had to be taken apart…and not stored. A few smaller set pieces were stored, but the bigger stuff just wound up in the dumpster…literally.)
As far as CBS and Paramount are concerned, it’s cheaper for them to rebuild the parts of the sets they might someday need for Discovery or else just take their crew to Ticonderoga, NY to film on James Cawley’s sets. Considering that Discovery films in Toronto, the flight time to Albany, NY or Burlington, VT is barely an hour…plus another couple of hours to drive to Ticonderoga. That’s about normal for a location shoot anyway. So why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars transporting and storing sets the studios might never need when they’ve already got them available for free?
As for museums, that idea is even more problematic. Most museums don’t have 18,000 square feet to devote to a permanent exhibit (unless they’re like the Museum of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art). So many museums only keep exhibits temporarily before they travel to another museum. And when that happens, it’s not a specific museum that would own the sets but rather an exhibition company. And again, the transport alone is a financial back-breaker. About ten years ago, The Star Trek Exhibition quickly went under and never fully recovered, and those items were much easier to move (they had only about a third of the sets that STC currently has, and most of the individual pieces were smaller and easier to transport). And remember, they still went bankrupt…twice!
And remember the biggest problem: licensing. Most Trek licensees get an exclusive license…meaning no one else gets a license to do the same thing. There is only one book publisher, only one comic book publisher, only one high-end prop maker, etc. And there is only one set tour. If there’s suddenly another TOS museum exhibit either traveling the country or permanently set up somewhere, then why would someone, um, trek all the way to Ticonderoga? James Cawley would be furious, as he’s likely paying for an exclusive license already.
The statement means that Vic created STC out of personal spite and as a petty vendetta to James Cawley and the Star Trek-New Voyages/Phase II production. Because of artistic differences and failed power plays that he had with Cawley and his staff, Vic decided to set off on his own and create his own show.
So you’re saying…what exactly? That Vic should have just fallen in line and stayed with New Voyages? Or that Vic should have walked away, moped in a corner, and never made Star Trek Continues? I’m not sure what your point is here, Blue.
You obviously thought STC was a quality fan series…you’ve pretty much said as much. So why does it matter how the show originated? Maybe Vic was angry at James Cawley, but no one else on the STC team was motivated by power plays, and they all worked just as hard as Vic did. Why judge STC solely on the alleged motivations of its originator when SO MUCH happened above and beyond that? It seems so petty and close-minded…qualities that, ironically or hypocritically, you are trying to fault Vic Mignogna for. At best, Blue, I think you’ve got a pot/kettle scenario going here. 🙂
While I’ll admit, it was quality in terms of the sets, SFX, and uniforms. As far as the acting goes – with the exception of Christopher Doohan – Vic and the rest of the cast were not all that great.
It would have been better if Vic had set STC at the end of ST-TMP. Maybe then, I would have cut him some slack.
Here is my original review of STC when it debuted. It sums up what I think of STC, entirely.
https://trekmovie.com/2013/05/30/fan-production-star-trek-continues-releases-first-episode/#comments
Where’s your review, Blue? All I see is a page worth of comments?
And you do realize that re-creating TMP movie era sets is much more challenging than re-creating TOS sets…especially when a whole bunch of those sets were already built by the Starship Farragut team. I mean, I would love to see a post-TMP Trek-era fan film, too. I’d also like to pay off our mortgage tomorrow. I don’t expect either is realistic.
It’s further down the list, after 500.
Maybe so. But it would have more preferable than repeating what James Cawley and the NV-P2 staff had done with their shows.
Paying off my mortgage would also be preferable to me and my wife. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen anytime soon…at least in this universe. 🙂