The End of A Space Odyssey

"The photonic torpedoes were even shown in the existing torpedo room set!" exclaimed fan site Ex Astris Scientia, complaining about an episode of "Enterprise."

Plenty of the vitriol on the Web is directed at Berman and his co-producer for years, Brannon Braga, who some fans claim took "Trek" too far from Roddenberry's ideal and essentially killed it.

"There is an oversaturation of 'Star Trek,' " wrote Michael Hinman, news coordinator for SyFyPortal.com, under the headline "Rick Berman Gives Star Trek Fans the Finger." "But there also is an oversaturation of Braga and Berman. The Killer B's. They couldn't sit back and say, 'You know . . . we just can't keep this fresh.' . . . No, it was more about their stupid egos, and their nonsensical 'Even if it's broke, don't fix it' attitude."

Much has been written about Trekkers (please, not Trekkies). Now technology has allowed fans to take their devotion way beyond annual conventions and Klingon language school.

On two Web sites -- http://www.newvoyages.com/ and http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter -- fans with some money and a lot of time have created hour-long episodes of "Star Trek." "New Voyages," the better of the two, has produced two episodes. It's a novel idea: What if the original "Star Trek" had a fourth season? And what if the roles of Kirk, Spock and others were played by, well, your buddies?

"New Voyages," which flaunts meticulously re-created sets from the original "Star Trek" and digital special effects, posits that Kirk and the other crew members are timeless characters, like Hamlet, who can be played by any number of actors. In this case, Kirk is James Cawley, a lifelong fan sporting an Elvis haircut. His full-time job is as an Elvis impersonator.

"During the first two episodes, I was performing at Six Flags. If I'd have cut my hair and stopped impersonating Elvis, there wouldn't have been any income coming in to finance the film," said Cawley, 38.

In their third episode, set to begin shooting in September and starring Walter Koenig, who reprises the role of Pavel Chekov from the original series, Cawley promises: "I'll have a more Shatneresque hairdo."

"New Voyages" posted its first episode to the Web in January 2004. It racked up 6 million downloads. The second episode hit the Web last October and has so far recorded 22 million downloads.

The Web could and should be the next logical home for "Star Trek." The most recent movie and television series have shown that there no longer is a sufficient audience to support a $100 million movie or a television series that, even stripped down, costs about $2 million per episode to make. Fans can complain about "Enterprise's" producers and writers or its Friday night time slot on the lowest-rated network or find a dozen other excuses for its relative failure. The fact is, the show never found an audience. There is no honor in whining.

However, with the rise of high-speed Internet connections and Internet video comparable to television quality, the franchise could flourish on the Web.

The millions of downloads of the "New Voyages" episodes suggests there remains a reliable audience. Currently, Paramount allows "New Voyages" to exist as long as it makes no money. Smart Paramount executives might envision a partnership between the studio and "New Voyages" (or fan groups like it) in which Paramount provides some cash to improve the project's special effects and hire some more writers and actors, and "New Voyages" provides distribution on an up-and-running Web site. Cawley's group hopes for a licensing deal with Paramount.

"It blows my mind that if we charged even a dollar a download, that would be $22 million," Cawley said. "I'd be happy to give Paramount three-quarters of that."

As for future television and movie versions, that's less likely. Berman said that a producer, Jordan Kerner, brought a project to Paramount for a "Star Trek" movie that would be set in the same time period as "Enterprise" but with new characters. Berman said the film is in "the normal development process." However, the project was accepted by former Paramount Pictures executives Jonathan Dolgen and Sherry Lansing, both of whom have been replaced by Brad Grey. In Hollywood, orphan projects typically don't have a long life span.

Also working against "Trek" may be our different attitude toward space. The Cold War, which moved us to the moon, is long over. The Columbia and Challenger shuttle explosions still resonate. President Bush has said the United States should send people to Mars, but why?

The "Trek" franchise appealed to the exploratory curiosity of mankind. Once upright, we set out across the next mountain range; later, we set sail on the oceans. Space is the logical extension. Except it's not. Space is not a good place for humans. The more we know about it, and the more lives we lose to it, the better Earth seems.

All living things have an arc, and "Star Trek" had a hell of one. It lived long but, at the end, it did not prosper.

Maybe it's time to paraphrase the sage words of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, who always had to deliver the bad news to Capt. Kirk in the original series, as we say fond farewell to our happy compulsion of nearly 40 years:

"It's dead, Jim."