On the making of Return to Gothos Chapter Two

Star Trek the Machinima Series. Return to Gothos Chapter Two (released 7-7-10)

This chapter introduces Dr. Nylan Tay, renowned physicist, inventor, and former instructor of Mr. Spock. At Spocks request, he has agreed to help the crew of the Enterprise try to find a scientific alternative to fighting General Trelane Ship to Ship.

I decided to include this character in the story because I wanted a piece of back story for Spock. I have often thought that Spock needed a mentor after leaving Vulcan to join Starfleet. As a science officer, it makes sense that he would choose as this mentor, a scientist. This episode shows the reunion of the student and the teacher.

For the design of Dr. Tay's character I chose traits I thought Spock would admire and want to emulate. Dr. Tay is Vulcan, and his voice, tone and speech patterns I tried to incorporate a mixture of three different styles. The first was Spock, the second was Carl Sagan, and the third is Hugo Weaving. The unusual stops and starts in his speech is Hugo Weaving's character "Agent Smith" from the matrix, How Dr. Tay pronounces some of the words is Carl Sagan, a famous cosmologist, and it was recorded in my Spock voice, and I turned the pitch up a few decibels to make him sound different than Spock.

Also in this episode you will see some of my own original artwork. I wanted to incorporate this for two reasons. First, there are a lot of machinimas coming out now that use Star Trek Online. To distinguish this one from those I will need to be more creative and add in things that you will not see in the game. The second reason is because my episodes need to feel like a star trek episode. I want to include unexpected things even for those that are familiar with Star Trek Online. I think it will peak the curiosity of those that are following the series. It also makes it easier to tell a story when the only limit you have is your imagination.

The episode takes place mainly upon the bridge of the Enterprise. The bridge I am using is one of the bridge designs available in the game. Star Trek Online bridges are social areas in the game and serve no other purpose in the game. None of the consoles work, the viewscreen displays the same image all the time. It is a real afterthought by the game designers. In my opinion it was a huge mistake to neglect the bridge. In my episode though the bridge has a use. I wanted to show the crew utilizing it, and I wanted to make its use part of the story. It is just one more thing that I hope fans of the game will appreciate about this series. Thankfully the game designers are working on ship interiors and will release them some time this month. It will make it much easier for me to tell a story with those sets in game.

This episode introduces a new technology. The Photonic Fleet. This ability allows the Enterprise to emit holographic projections of itself to confuse an enemy target. I first heard of this when playing Star Trek Online. The ability is available to science officers at higher levels in the game. I googled the ability to see if the game had taken the idea from actual star trek canon, and it does not seem like they did. So I confiscated the concept and used it for a story element and made Dr. Tay it's inventor. The timeline of star trek online is well past the timeline of this episode so I greatly diminished the technologies effectiveness, it is in my episode still in an experimental phase, in fact it is used for the first time in this chapter.

About half way through completion of this chapter I had considered making the second chapter the conclusion to the story. It would have meant that I would have to exclude some of the plot ideas I had originally planned and find a quick ending to the story. I decided against that idea when I came up with some new ideas, and this will be 2/3 not 2/2.

The next chapter of Return to Gothos will conclude this episode and it will be very good. The story is already written and some of the footage and sound is already completed. I should have chapter three out later this month, or early next month at the latest.

Episode three I plan to change the series up a bit and do a Next Generation Episode. There is a preview to episode three on my you tube page, and i think I may have connected that video to this site as well.

I hope you are enjoying the series. Until next time. Hip Hip Hooray...Tally Ho!