Star Trek: The Legacy (Star Trek: Das Vermachtnis) is shaping up to be Europe's most ambitious fan film yet! Christoph Hees, the film's director, has come a long road since he caught the Star Trek bug at a birthday party in 1993/4 and completed his first 'hobbymovie' "Largus" on a borrowed camera, in the Spring of 1996.
It has been a rocky road as well, for after a Construction problem in their first year, 1997, necessitated a complete rebuild, the project went into hiatus for two years, restarting in '99. However from that new start they have gone from strength to strength, completing their first set, the Klingon bridge, by the end of their first Winter.
In 2000 Christoph phoned Willi Weigand or Vulcan Willi as he is commonly known, something of a fan celebrity because of his uncanny resemblance to Mr. Spock, and asked him whether he would like to play Spock in Das Vermachtnis. Said Willi ... "He had seen me before on the television where I had made an appearance as Spock. I had only to consider, as I had heard it was a fan film but when I saw the first photos of the sets I assured him I would immediately."
Their second set the Enterprise D of the Next Generation, was completed and their third set, the NCC 1701 of Captain Kirk, had been started, by May of 2003. This was when they achieved international fame in "Trekkies 2" when Denise Crosby, Lt. Tasha Yar of TNG, who visited their set and was stunned by the complexity and quality of their work. Understandably this gained them an immense amount of publicity, especially after its DVD release in the US on August 31st 2004.
2005 has been an exciting time for them. In March Vulcan Willi, who had become their defacto spokesman on several English language fan film forums, announced that they were now building a Next Generation shuttle set. The Klingon bridge has been completely rebuilt as the Original Series bridge set and between May and July they shot the Original Series scenes on it. On April 1st, Willi announced to a slightly sceptical world that their much admired Original Series bridge set was for sale $15,000. Sceptical? Well it was April Fools Day!
However by far the most momentous day for Willi was Saturday May 21st, when he married his girlfriend Irene on the Original Series bridge set in a Vulcan wedding ceremony. Willi's last shooting day was October 15th on the TNG Shuttle set.
By July $30,000 had been spent on the sets, mostly by Christoph personally. The Original Series bridge was still for sale (and still is) the latest asking price being 10,000 euro which would be used exclusively for new sets.
Christoph and his crew hope to release the movie before the end of 2006 but they have to go through the critical period of post-production. The film (it won't be separate episodes) will be between 60-90 minutes long and it will be shown at Conventions and made available on the internet as a free download. A professional synchronstudio will probably dub the film in English if everything goes well.
The story behind the film is a secret, although obviously it is a TNG/TOS crossover. The fact that Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by the director, Christoph, is so young is rationalised by the presence of Q on board.
As they get closer to completion, ST: Legacy and its creators are getting more media attention. In mid October a PRO7 camera team of FOCUS TV was at the set to film a report that will probably be shown at the end of November or start of December. Just recently Willi appeared on RTL, a German private TV station with Dirk Bach, a rather overweight German comedian.
Willi very kindly granted interview as part of Week 3 of the TrekUnited Fan Film campaign which you can read on our Forum.
NOTE: You can still send cards & envelopes even though the "week" has ended: Hopefully Paramount Germany will get a steady trickle of international letters over the next week from overseas fans! | Discuss this in the Forum
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Star Trek, FanFilms, Entertainment, Fandom, scifi, Science Fiction
Episode 25 - Don’t bite my arm, Zombie Tom Hanks (aka the Hallowanukah Episode)
