Tag: George Takei

Fans had been expecting a special Christmas gift from JOHN ATKIN and STAN WOO, the show-runners behind the long-awaited YORKTOWN: A TIME TO HEAL. A fan production that began filming way back in 1985 and featuring GEORGE TAKEI as Sulu and JAMES SHIGETA as Admiral Nogura, Yorktown spent two decades on hold before being started up again in 2010 when John joined the project to help Stan complete the film.

Another ten years have passed since then, with scores of filmmakers from across our fan film community pitching in to help shoot scenes, build sets and props, lend uniforms, create visual FX, and a ton of other tasks. (You can read the entire behind-the-scenes history here.) Yorktown has continued on a steady path of progress over that time, and a trailer from July promised a release date of December 25…

Throughout the day, in addition to Christmas and holiday wishes, I’ve been texted and IM’d and e-mailed by a whole bunch of people all asking me a variant of the same question: “Has Yorktown been released yet?” I answered each one with “Not yet, as far as I know.”

Finally, after many hours of this, I received word from John that they weren’t gonna make their announced deadline because of sound issues. A few minutes later, he issued the following public statement:

Hi everyone… Unfortunately, I have a bit of bad news tonight. The final edit of Yorktown is finished and looks wonderful, but we haven’t fully completed the sound design. We want the sound to be the best it can be before we post it, so we are going to push the release date back 6 days to December 31 (New Years Eve) at 8:00pm (Pacific Time).

And then he posted this shot video snippet for a quick chuckle…

So fingers crossed for next Thursday, folks!

You guys are in for a real treat. Assuming you enjoy reading about the rich histories of Star Trek fan film projects (why else would you be here??), then you are going to LOVE what I have coming later on this week!

If you think AXANAR, PACIFIC 201, FIRST FRONTIER or STARSHIP FARRAGUT “Homecoming” are taking forever to come out, those are just wee bairnes compared to YORKTOWN: A TIME TO HEAL! Those other projects have been in development for maybe five years at most. But Yorktown began production way back in 1985!!! That’s 35 years, folks. And while there was a lull in production and post-production which lasted nearly two decades, work started up again in earnest in 2010. But it’s now 2020…and still no Yorktown in sight.

However, that all changed when the first new trailer for Yorktown since 2013 was released on July 5th, 2020…

No, you’re not seeing things. That is indeed GEROGE TAKEI, and he is playing Hikaru Sulu. That’s also actor JAMES SHIGETA from Die Hard, Midway, and Mulan (and a hundred other things you’ve seen) playing Admiral Nogura.

If you’re a hard-core follower of Star Trek fan films, you probably know at least something about Yorktown. But do you know EVERYTHING??? There are so many stories and interviews out there, scattered across the Internet. Finding them all is like a scavenger hunt, and even when you do, many of the stories sound almost unbelievable. A few even seem to contradict each other. What’s true, what’s myth, and what’s legend?

I decided to find out!

I’d actually been wanting to cover Yorktown for many years…the “lost” fan film. But was it really lost? From the time I first began covering Star Trek fan films back in 2015, I’d heard rumors that work was still being done on this fabled project. Eventually, I discovered a Facebook group and joined it, but I’ll admit I didn’t check it all that often. And truth to tell, there were so many other fan films and news and interviews and articles to write that Yorktown kinda fell off my radar more than a few times over the years.

But then that trailer come out, and I had the perfect excuse to do a deep-dive. Little did I realize how deep I was about to go…!

Continue reading “COMING THIS WEEK – The complete 35-year history of YORKTOWN: A TIME TO HEAL!”