New CROSSOVER fan film “ORIGINAL PARTS” on tap for 2024, a UNITED KINGDOM collaboration between AMBUSH and INTREPID! (interview with GREG LOCK)

Back in 2022, after being in production since 2014(!!!), the long-awaited TOS-era fan film AMBUSH (out of the United Kingdom) was finally released by showrunner GREG LOCK and his team. This past year, Ambush won “Best Fan Film” in the 2023 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS…along with wins in a dozen other categories…making it the top award-winner overall.

Since then, fans have wondered if and when Greg Lock might return to Star Trek fan films and whether we might see the return of members of the crew of the U.S.S. Ambush someday. That question was answered the day before Christmas with the release of the following very unexpected trailer featuring none other than NICK COOK and DAVID REID from the fan series INTREPID wearing Pre-STAR TREK: PICARD-era uniforms. Check it out…

David Reid is returning to the role of the Intrepid‘s Romulan security officer S’Ceris, a character he hasn’t reprised in nearly a decade. And Nick Cook is, of course, playing Captain Daniel Hunter, a role he’s performed not only in episodes of Intrepid but also in other fan series like TREK SHORTS and CONSTAR.

Indeed, crossover collaborations like this are proliferating recently in the fan film world! In fact, one of the most recent examples, CRISIS ON INFINITE EXCALIBURS from the AVALON UNIVERSE (which I will be covering once I can schedule a Zoom interview with the very busy star of that release) was a major collaboration among nearly a DOZEN different showrunners and fan series!

Frankly, I think this trend of collaboration is awesome, as fan filmmakers can pool resources, knowledge, characters, filmmaking equipment, props and uniforms, and all sorts of other things to make more and even better productions.

But how did this particular collaboration between two of the U.K.’s most prominent Star Trek fan filmmakers (the other being the omnipresent SAMUEL COCKINGS…I wonder if he’ll be a part of this, too) come to happen? For the answers to this and other questions, I spoke to Greg Lock himself…

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After nearly a DECADE in the making…we finally have AMBUSH! (video interview with GREG LOCK)

Way back in 2014, there was a Star Trek fan film that held a successful Kickstarter, shot a bunch of footage, and was still not completed as the calendar turned to 2022. Oh, and the title of that fan film started with the letter “A.”

You know from the title of this blog that this fan film’s title was AMBUSH, not AXANAR. But eight years is still eight years. The Kickstarter for this United Kingdom-based Star Trek fan film managed to generate £4,649 in donations, which would be about $7,200 today. Donors were treated to frequent news on the project, with 32 separate crowd-funding and production updates posted in 2014 and 2015. Things slowed down a bit in 2016 with only three additional updates posted, the last of which coming three months after CBS and Paramount announced the new (at the time) fan film guidelines in June.

Then nothing…for over a year. Many of us in the Trek fan film community assumed this was just another case of the guidelines convincing a production to shut down. There weren’t many, but it seemed likely that Ambush might be one.

But at the end of 2017, a quick update to the backers titled “We’re still not dead” assured us that Ambush had not been abandoned. Showrunner GREG LOCK and his co-producer had simply found some paid film production work that had kept them too busy to finish up the project. No other update was provided, but there was a general feeling of optimism.

A few months later (February of 2018), still no release date, but Greg shared a number of “character posters” that showed the unique uniform style and the shuttlecraft interior set that had been constructed…

Unfortunately, nearly another year would go by before the next update in January 2019 that wasn’t so much an update as an apology for taking so long and an explanation why the finished product probably wouldn’t be as ambitious as they’d hoped.

The next update didn’t come until May of 2021, more than two years later, and it was also apologetic. A still-unfilmed scene now looked like it would never be shot, as most of the team had moved on over the previous seven years, COVID was now an issue, and even the technical equipment they’d used had become outdated. But a rough cut had been assembled, and plans were to release a version of Ambush using the footage that was shot, which Greg felt was still pretty decent. Also, perks were going to FINALLY be sent out to donors!

A September 2021 update promised a release soon, as they were close to locking picture on the film…leaving only a final visual grading, a sound mix, and tweaking some VFX. Then two updates in 2022 and finally, on February 15, 2022, this…

So…what took so long? I decided to ask that very question (along with a bunch of others) directly to Greg Lock in this enjoyable video interview across the Atlantic Ocean…