Gary Graham – Fan Film Factor

A video interview I did with GARY GRAHAM and J.G. HERTZLER back in 2018…

Fans are still reeling from the unexpected passing last week of beloved sci-fi actor GARY GRAHAM, who died of a heart attack at the too-young age of 73. In my tribute eulogy on Tuesday, I briefly mentioned my own personal encounter with Gary at the first AXACON gathering in Georgia back in 2018.

Unbeknownst to yours truly, ALEC PETERS informed me when I arrived that I would be conducting a number of recorded interviews with various Axacon guests as well as and hosting a number of panels that weekend, including interviewing both Gary along with his PRELUDE TO AXANAR co-star J.G. HERTZLER. And I have to admit that, despite having already done countless interviews with fan filmmakers for this blog site, I was feeling quite overwhelmed with being dropped into the deep end interviewing two well-known Star Trek celebrities.

Adding to the challenge for me is that Gary and J.G. were quite jovial and easily distracted themselves with tangents into all sorts of inanity while being interviewed. In other words, they both loved clowning around…especially at my expense as the poor, overwhelmed interviewer!

But ultimately, our recorded session came out really well and was very informative about both actors’ work not only in Axanar but also in other Star Trek fan films over the years like STAR TREK: OF GODS AND MEN and RENEGADES. They also discussed their stage craft in general along with sharing information about their backgrounds (did you know that Gary Graham got his start in ballet?!?).

As I thought about Gary after his death last Monday, I remembered that interview and contacted Alec, asking if he still had the footage (which was initially intended for a Blu-ray extra but was also released onto the Axanar YouTube channel shortly after the Axacon event). Fortunately, Alec still had access to the interview, and Alec gave me the green-light to edit the best parts together into a single video that could be (re)posted to YouTube so that fans could watch and enjoy it.

For anyone wanting to get to know Gary Graham a little better and see the kind of funny, vivacious, and thoughtful person that he truly was, this video is for you—and him…

R.I.P. – GARY “AMBASSADOR SOVAL” GRAHAM (1950-2024)

I hate writing eulogies. And when it’s the passing of an actor who was a significant part of Star Trek, it hurts even more. But when that actor was also a friend to fan films, that’s a Vulcan neck pinch, a phaser on stun, and a punch to the gut all at the same time.

GARY GRAHAM, who passed away yesterday from a heart attack and subsequent brain bleed at the age of 73, enjoyed a long career in Hollywood, beginning to act professionally way back in the mid-1970s when he was in his twenties. While he was never an “A-lister,” Gary achieved something few actors ever do: he became the lead in a network television series. In this instance, it was Alien Nation, adapted from the movie of the same name, which ran for a single season on the then-fledgeling FOX network and was later named by TV Guide in 2013 as one of 60 shows that were “Cancelled Too Soon.” However, Gary went on to star in five made-for-TV Alien Nation sequel movies that aired throughout the 1990s. Gary played human detective Matthew Sikes.

Although you can see Gary’s full filmography on his IMDb page, Star Trek fans are most familiar with his portrayal of the Vulcan Ambassador Soval on all four seasons of Enterprise. Gary also appeared as an Ocampan in the second season Voyager episode “Cold Fire.” But Soval was the character that fans really embraced, which was one of the reasons that Soval was one of only three non-main characters to appear in all four seasons of Enterprise (along with JEFFREY COMBS’ Andorian Shran and MATT WINSTON’s temporal agent Daniels…and no, VAUGHN ARMSTRONG’s Admiral Forest did not appear in season three).

Soval was so popular that ALEC PETERS brought the character into PRELUDE TO AXANAR back in 2014 and again in THE VULCAN SCENE the following year, and Gary knocked it out of the park both times. His line, “An Andorian acquaintance once said, ‘Don’t push the pink-skins to the thin ice.’ It wasn’t very eloquent, but the Klingons found it to prove quite prophetic…” became a fan favorite quote thanks to Gary’s incredible delivery.

Around the same time, Gary was also doing other Star Trek fan films. His original character of the mercenary Ragnar (nothing like Soval!) debuted in STAR TREK: OF GODS AND MEN in 2007 and then returned in STAR TREK: RENEGADES in 2015 and then RENEGADES THE SERIES in 2017.

Gary wasn’t just a gifted actor, he was also a talented singer and songwriter, and his band, The Sons of Kirk, would occasionally perform at conventions like the 2016 Creation 50th anniversary of Star Trek con in Las Vegas…

Two years later, fans would donate $21K to help Gary and his band produce their first album. Sadly, the pandemic interrupted the project, and the album was never completed.

I met Gary in person in late 2018 at the first Axacon gathering at ARES STUDIOS in Lawrenceville, GA. And let me tell ya, Gary was a trip and a half…!

GARY GRAHAM leaves the AXANAR project!

The following message from actor GARY GRAHAM was posted to Facebook on Wednesday afternoon:

An hour or so later, when asked what happened, Gary added this brief explanation:

This obviously comes as a blow to AXANAR fans who looked forward to once again seeing Vulcan Ambassador Soval in the two 15-minute sequel fan films. Gary had already played the venerated character to near universal praise in PRELUDE TO AXANAR and then a year later in the 3-minute “Vulcan Scene.” In the years since the lawsuit that shut down production on Axanar in 2016, Gary had been an ardent supporter of both the project itself and of show-runner ALEC PETERS. Gary traveled from California to Georgia to appear at AXACON in 2018, saying positive things about Alec and the original production in interviews like this one (skip to 14:40).

Gary’s announcement came without any warning. And in the last 36 hours, I’ve seen unconfirmed reports of “irreconcilable differences,” that Gary is hoping to land a role on the new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series and worried that an association with Axanar Productions would hurt his chances, and even political friction (Gary and Alec are on opposite sides regarding Donald Trump).

With so many unconfirmed rumors spreading on social media, I reached out to both Alec and Gary for comment. Gary has not yet responded to my request, but Alec confirmed that the first he knew that Gary was leaving the project came on Wednesday, and Alec provided me with the following statement (which has also been posted to the Axanar website)…

Even more AXANAR news!

It’s a FANtastic time to be an AXANAR supporter…with big news and updates coming fast and furiously now. It’s creating a feeling of excitement and electricity throughout the community. Meanwhile, the detractors are rapidly running out of things to complain about! (Seriously. After perk packets began arriving in mailboxes this week, the folks on the Axamonitor Facebook group were reduced to making fun of a single typo in the perk letter from ALEC PETERS and suggesting that they should all burn their perk patches. So yeah, lots to be proud of over there.)

Meanwhile, back on the side of goodness and light…

With only two weeks until filming begins on the first Axanar shoot in Lawrenceville, GA on the bridge of the USS Ares (plus recording of the audio version of the full Axanar script), all the pieces are rapidly coming together. In the last few months, a LOT has been happening behind the scenes, and now fans are beginning to see what’s been taking so long.

A fair amount of Axanar news was revealed in my audio interview with Alec Peters last week. But already there’s even MORE news to share! Most of that news came out last night during the first new Axanar Confidential podcast in three and a half weeks. I’ll include that video at the end of this article.

But for those of you who want the highlights, here’s what we now know that we didn’t before…

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 3)

Here’s a summary of Day One, and here’s a summary of Day Two.

My head hit the pillow on Saturday night, I blinked, and it was suddenly 7 hours later (thank you, daylight savings!)—I was that exhausted after two days of Axacon. But now I was recharged with only one day to go…and this day was much less hectic. I was only scheduled to lead two panels, and nearly everyone I could think of had already been interviewed in the director’s chairs alcove.

I heard the shower running in the bathroom that I shared with STEVEN “Admiral Slater” JEPSON (we each had our own bedrooms in Alec’s house), so I started packing up my stuff. I’d be leaving the con and taking the hotel shuttle directly to the airport a little after 4:00pm. When Steven was done, I hopped into the shower and got myself dressed.

Steve was already downstairs, and for a little while, it was just the two of us waiting for the others. Over the weekend, Steve quickly became one of my favorite people in the entire Axanar brother-and-sisterhood. A music and vocal teacher at the University of Missouri School of Music, Steve is also a singer and performer, and a really smart, well-spoken guy. And like me, he’s incredibly funny (see what I did there?).

As we waited for the rest of the posse to get ready, Steve and I admired the new Starfleet admiral’s uniform, had-sewn for Steve by Axanar costumers CLAUDE FRANCIS DOZIÈRE and ANGELA AVINO from Italy. Steve’s original Admiral Slater uniform was the same one worn by actor TONY “Admiral Ramirez” TODD…who is a BIG guy! When Steven tried the uniform on for his photo, it was like wearing a parka. So it literally needed to be clipped (with binder clips) all along the back in order for Admiral Slater not to look like a toddler wearing his daddy’s Starfleet uniform.

This new uniform had been specifically tailored for Steven, and when he tried it on, it looked amazing! And that gave me an idea…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 3)”

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 2)

Click here for a summary of Day One of Axacon.

As for Day Two, I can sum it up in just one word: WOW! It was unquestionably one of the craziest but most fun times I’ve ever had at any Trek convention (big or small). As I did yesterday, this will be a “deep dive” into what Axacon was like for me…

It began with breakfast at ALEC PETERS’ house. After Friday’s multiple skipped meals, I wasn’t gonna make the same mistake again…not with everything I was expected to do on Saturday! And anyway, Alec provided quiche!

After fueling up our bodies, the five residents of Casa de Peters piled into three cars to drive the 45 minutes to the Crowne Plaza Atlanta-Airport hotel. Arriving about 45 minutes before Axacon and its host convention SphinxCon kicked off, we each carried boxes and posters and Garth’s original costume and loads of other stuff in from Alec’s trunk.

I found myself immediately impressed by how organized everything seemed to be. Those Honor Harrington fan volunteers from the Royal Manticoran Navy certainly had their their act together (and looked really spiffy in those black military-style uniforms!) with folks assigned to security, check-in, set-up, etc. The fellow handling the A/V system carried along about 15 different cables and adapters to make sure anyone could get video and sound from their laptop to the large monitors in the panel rooms.

As things were set up, the only “oops!” I could see was the following (see if you can spot it)…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 2)”

AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 1)

I love a small, intimate convention…especially one with guest celebrities. While the huge Creation Cons and Dragon*Cons and San Diego ComiCons can be mind-blowing, the quiet, intimate setting of a small convention is a unique and treasured experience for me. In my youth, it was at small cons where I once had breakfast with James Doohan, went jogging with George Takei (okay, I rode my bike alongside him…and could still barely keep up!), and helped a falling-down drunk Colm Meaney find his hotel room in the Marriott Hunt’s Valley Inn (“This place is a fookin’ maze…!”). Good times.

I hadn’t been to a small con in many, many years. And I didn’t realize how much I miss them…until this past weekend when I went to Axacon in Atlanta, GA. Axacon was never meant to have tons of attendees. The 30-40 people who showed up over the three days was about what ALEC PETERS had expected. In fact, there were only about three dozen chairs in the Axacon panel room…a larger turnout wouldn’t have had a place to sit down!

This time, though, I wasn’t just an attendee; I was a guest. And Alec made sure to put me to work earning my free room and board. I stayed over at his home and even had my own bedroom, as did fellow house guests STEVEN JEPSON (Admiral Slater) and LEE QUESSENBERRY (Axanar art director and webmaster). Both of these men are now two of my favorite people.

In fact, the whole convention was filled with folks who are now my favorite people! That’s just the kind of weekend it was. There was love here, friendship, camaraderie, and a feeling of shared teamwork and dedication to bringing a dream to life.

It was a really FANtastic con. Let me tell you all about it…

Continue reading “AXACON weekend through Jonathan’s eyes… (part 1)”

Photos of the AXANAR bridge set!

Hey, guys. Not a lot of time to blog. I flew out on a red-eye from Los Angeles with minimal sleep last night, arrived in Atlanta at 6:30 am, and got to ALEC PETERS’ house about 8am. Thank goodness he didn’t ignore the doorbell (he’d been pulling consecutive all-nighters with the team to get the USS Ares bridge completed). After taking a 3-hour nap in one of Alec’s guest bedrooms, I got ready for my first-ever trip to OWC studios.

Alec put me to work almost immediately, tasking me and my co-host KEITH M. SEDOR with conducting a number of video interviews with various guests. I spoke with ALBERT MARTINEZ (the creator of Chasing the Infinite Sky), DON GAFFNEY (Star Trek prop-maker and Klingon expert), DANA WAGNER (who is supervising the completion of the bridge set), and his wife ALLISON (who works with the local school district getting high schoolers access to the the set at the studio for ultra-cool student projects). Keith got to interview GARY GRAHAM (Soval) and J.G. HERTZLER (Sam Travis/Martok). I’ve interviewed J.G. before, so Keith got the big celebrities.

Unfortunately, all that work prepping, doing pre-interviews, and conducting the interviews themselves didn’t give me as much time for photos and videos as I wanted, but Alec hired a 4-person professional film crew to record the entire event. This included about 40 people wandering through the bridge and, at one point, being treated to a live read-through of two scenes from the full 90-minute Axanar script (which will, eventually, be released in both written and audio format). The readers included Gary, J.G., Alec, and STEVEN JEPSON (Admiral Slater himself). It was really awesome hearing Gary and J.G. doing a dramatic script reading—they’re both incredibly gifted actors. There were even special Axanar cookies brought in by one of the attendees!

It was a super-fun day for everyone who made the, er, trek to Lawrenceville…and there’s even more on tap for Saturday and Sunday (including a panel of upcoming fan films with some footage debuting exclusively at Axacon!).

But the star of Friday’s show was the USS Ares bridge. Still not 100% finished, it’s now about 95% of the way there…with some fun little Easter eggs to find hidden in plain site on a few of the control panels. I’ve included some pictures of those along with the best of the photos I got on Friday…

Continue reading “Photos of the AXANAR bridge set!”

AXACON schedule released – and I need YOUR questions for J.G. HERTZLER, GARY GRAHAM, and ALEC PETERS!

The first-ever AXACON is less than three weeks away, and ALEC PETERS has just released the schedule. It’s a pretty busy weekend, filled with all kinds of activities and panels…most of them focused on AXANAR (both past, present, and future), but also a few opportunities to expand beyond just one fan film.

Here’s a look at some of the things that will be going on:

FRIDAY

A set tour of OWC Studios (including photo ops on the USS Ares bridge)
A reading from the full 90 minute version of the Axanar movie script (featuring J.G. Hertzler, Gary Graham, Alec Peters, and Steven Jepson)
Socialize at the bar with the actors and Axanar team (donor funds will NOT be used to pay the bar tab!)

SATURDAY

The Top 10 Star Trek fan films (at least in our opinion…and we don’t all agree!)
J.G. and Gary talk about their time on televised Star Trek
An Axanar UPDATE with Alec Peters and director/co-writer Paul Jenkins
Alec discusses how the Honor Harrington novels influenced Axanar
A special Axanar donor lunch with the actors and production team
Axanar fan fiction with three people who are writing/drawing/animating it
Alec and Paul discuss the evolution of Axanar from story to screenplay
The Axanar fleet – designing cool starships from 20 years before TOS
A preview of upcoming Star Trek fan films
Klingon kostuming…er, costuming
The Axanar project from a fan’s perspective
Everyone hits the bar again, including J.G. and Gary

SUNDAY

Starship combat in the Axaverse (when did we start calling it that?)
J.G., Gary, and Alec discuss working on Prelude to Aanar and plans for the remaining two Axanar films
When fan films become professional independent films…what does the future hold?
Alec discusses James T. Kirk’s hero: Garth of Izar, and Steven Jepson discuss the infamous “Admiral Scaredy”: Conrad Slater
Axanar trivia…with PRIZES!

As you can see, a lot of careful consideration went into filling this mini convention with diverse content while still keeping it centered around Axanar. I think the organizers did an excellent job with that.

They also scheduled me to host five panels and appear on an additional three…for a total of EIGHT panels in THREE days! Oy. But in one of those panels, I have to interview J.G. Hertzler, Gary Graham, and Alec Peters about their work on Prelude and plans for the two upcoming Axanar films. And that’s where I need YOUR help…

Continue reading “AXACON schedule released – and I need YOUR questions for J.G. HERTZLER, GARY GRAHAM, and ALEC PETERS!”

AXACON adds more guests – TICKETS now available!

Things are beginning to get very exciting when it comes to AXACON, the “con-within-a-con” that is happening during the first weekend of November in Atlanta, GA.

In the last few weeks, some major new guests were added, and last week, tickets finally went on sale. The guest list now includes GARY GRAHAM (who plays Ambassador Soval in AXANAR) and J.G. HERTZLER (who plays the surly Admiral Sam Travis in AXANAR)—both of whom are veteran television Star Trek actors—along with tribbles creator DAVID GERROLD.

Other announced guests include director/co-writer of the upcoming Axanar sequel fan films PAUL JENKINS, editor/sound designer MARK EDWARD LEWIS, art directors LESS QUESSENBERRY and ALEXANDER RICHARDSON, STEVEN JEPSON (Admiral Slater from Prelude to Axanar), and of course, writer/executive producer/Garth of Izar himself ALEC PETERS. There’s also a growing number of notables from the fan film community including Stalled Trek creator MARK LARGENT, Chasing the Infinite Sky creator ALBERT J. MARTINEZ, Axanar fan artist MARK PAYTON, and your favorite Fan Film Factor blogger JONATHAN LANE.

Also announced is that Axacon ticket holders will be invited for a Friday tour of OWC Studios in Lawrenceville, GA, where the Ares bridge set is located. Guests need to provide their own transportation to and from the studio, which is about 40 minutes from the hotel.

Tickets for the event can now be purchased. Note that these are “add-on” tickets, meaning that a ticket for Axacon (either $25 or $50) can only be purchased AFTER you first buy a ticket for SphinxCon (which is a separate $50 ticket). SphinxCon, a convention celebrating the Honor Harrington book series, is happening at the same location and is acting as the “host” convention (meaning they are paying the main expenses for the hotel facilities). Axacon is happening in a special area of the convention open only to Axacon ticket holders.

The event will be taking place at the Crowne Plaza – Atlanta Airport (free shuttle from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) on November 2-4, 2018.

Click here to purchase tickets for Axacon.

And come back tomorrow for a surprisingly candid interview with J.G. Hertzler discussing his recent political campaign, his haircut, and whether or not he’ll be appearing in the Axanar sequel films!