What about character arcs? I notice you're doing some interesting things with the medical officer [Kyle Wilson, played by Gabriel Diani], who's being very snide and mysterious.
Okay, here's your exclusive: think Section 31. When I was directing Gabe how to read the character, I told him, "Think of a nasty Dr. Phlox. Think of Dr. Phlox, who's a sweetheart, and make him into a horrible, disgusting, sleazy little person." And that's exactly what he did. He sounds just like him!
Who do you think is going to change the most, or have the most to go through?
[Executive Officer] Darius Locke [played by Stephen Perkins] is going to be molded into a more trigger-happy man by the captain, because he's from the past and Darius Locke is from the 24th century -- he gets assigned to them in the second episode, which is why we've got two first officers on the site. So we've got this guy coming in, he's a historian for Starfleet, but Edwards likes him and says, "You want to come with us?" and he says, "You know what? I'm tired of reading about history. I want to start making it."
You garnered some marquee value and community goodwill with pilot guest star Lawrence Montaigne. Any more guest stars lined up that you can mention now?
Unfortunately not. I'm working on that night and day, trying to find someone who will suit a role. In the next episode we have a Klingon general coming after the captain -- he commands a fleet that attacks the Starbase, and he's played by a rather accomplished IT engineer -- he was just on NBC today, in fact, doing his stuff about going to the Moon.
Once you've done the launch there'll be more awareness. How's the response been in fandom so far?
We've had in the region of half a million people visit the website in a week. People in forums are talking about it all over the place. It looks like there's going to be a lot of people seeing what "Ghost Ship" is like on Christmas Day.
Clearly it's Edwards that's the glue here -- Tim Renshaw's voice is really pulling everything together.
Tim Renshaw is the captain. And he really takes the role extremely seriously. Which is good.
The rest of the crew approach this very professionally. Our youngest member [Tomoko Leonard, who plays science officer Numi Natukov] is an 18-year-old girl in high school, and she does sound kind of younger on the show. But it's important to give people who are younger and have talent a chance. I'm pretty young myself -- I'm 21 -- and I need a chance from people to make this work. I need to give her a chance to see if she can work too.
Other nonprofit productions, like New Adventures, have had cast turnover in the first few episodes. Is your cast pretty solid for the upcoming stories?
I think so. Like I said they take their roles very seriously. They're all very funny, smart actors who are extremely professional. We all got together on a Skype call for the first time a couple of weeks ago, so we were all in the same sort of quote-unquote room, and it was incredible. It was electric. I love my team.
You and Andy both have day jobs. Do you think down the road you'll need to add some help on the production end to help you both stay sane and keep the schedule?
What we try to do is balance it, because we don't want it to take over completely, but it does require a great deal of thought and attention. We did bring in one of our cast members, Patrick McCray [who plays Chief Engineer Jack McGuire] very early on and said, "We need you to help us out here." And he carries that role out beautifully.
I know Andy has worked in the Doctor Who universe, where there's been a lot of audio drama. Was that part of the inspiration, do you think?
His work on Doctor Who, where he worked with a bunch of kids actually, which was really nice of him because he wrote and produced it for them and they were in it [on the podcast "WhoUniverse"]. His work on that, he called it "practice." This is "the game," right now, and my God, is it more complicated than doing Doctor Who with kids. We have over 700 sound effects in one scene.
The layering and attention to detail is really clear.
We have no idea what it's really like, because we've worked on it from nothing.
If you had the money and the time, would you like Continuing Mission to go video someday?
Well, I really like Star Trek. And I enjoy working on it right now. And at this point Star Trek would become a career. I do want to work in films. If someone at Paramount came up to me and said, "Would you be interested in being a producer on Star Trek XII?" I'd say, "Yes I certainly would," because then I'd be able to apply some of this, for want of a better word, "vision" to Star Trek for real. Not that what we're doing isn't real Star Trek, it's just as real as any of the others.
What's been the most satisfying moment so far for you in putting together Continuing Mission?
There's been two moments that come directly to mind. The first moment was maybe a couple of months ago. I was talking to Andy on the phone, and I could hear this music and a shoot-out on the other end of the phone, a phaser fight, and I said, "What episode of Star Trek are you watching?" and he says, "That's ours!" So it fooled me. And I've been watching Star Trek for the better part of twenty years.
The other moment would have to be when I was watching the results from all the interest from the fans for the first time, and the CNN article was up and there were a few other articles in place, and we were getting a load of traffic and a load of emails, and I said to Andy, "I think we've done it." And we realized that we may have actually made that impact that we were looking to make. And I tell you, it's a religious moment.
I hope that the fans like it. I think they will. I think that it's a new kind of a "looking back to look forward" kind of Star Trek. We really care about what we're doing, and we want to make something that they'll care about too.
