Summer Star Trek beaming down to Wellington!

It’s warp speed ahead as Enterprise Entertainment brings their crowd-pleasing show Summer Star Trek to Wellington for the second year of their five-year mission.

Summer Star Trek is a live performance of a classic Star Trek episode. The show is February 7 at Dowse Square and February 12-14 and 19-21 at Aro Park in the Aro Valley.

This year’s episode is the much-beloved The Naked Time (no nudity involved). Captain Kirk and his crew find themselves up against their own uninhibited fears and desires, as an unknown virus plays havoc with their minds. With the ship plunging towards catastrophe, will they regain control in time, or will they go up in the ‘biggest ball of fire since the last sun in these parts exploded’?

Expanding on the popularity of the event last year, Enterprise Entertainment have partnered with Urban Dream Brokerage to present “A Gallery of Fandom”, showcasing the set and props from the show. The gallery will invite people to take a spin in the captain’s chair, dress up as their favorite character, and share their own fan experiences (venue TBC, January 27-February 21).

Says Director Shannon Friday, “This whole project is built on fan love, and our audience is made up of so many big-hearted fans. I’m really excited to get more people on board with sharing their stories of the series.”

In addition, the crew will be beaming over to Dowse Square on February 7 for a koha performance to benefit Starship Children’s Hospital. Says Friday, “Starship and Enterprise -- it just makes sense. And this is something we’ve wanted to do for a while. Geeks should do good in the world.”

The cast and crew are a combination of old and new faces, with James Bayliss returning as Captain Kirk, Jono Ensor as Spock, Alida Steemson as Lieutenant Riley, and Thomas Pepperell as The Door. Joining them for their first mission are Mouce Young as Sulu, Tillz Matafeo as Uhura, and Simon McArthur as Scotty, along with many others.

So put on your red shirt and head on over to Aro Park for a show with phasers set to stunning!

Who: Enterprise Entertainment present
What: Summer Star Trek: The Naked Time
Where: Aro Park and Dowse Square, rain venue tbc with Urban Dream Brokerage
When: Dowse Square show 12PM on the 7th of February; Aro Park preshow at 6PM, show 6.30PM on 12-14 and 19-21 of February
Why: Because it is fun
Cost: Free -- Koha gratefully accepted

Interview with the director, Shannon Friday:

How did you come up with the idea for Summer Star Trek?

I really love what Summer Shakespeare do, creating this large outdoor event. It is great -- you get to go with friends, bring a picnic, enjoy the sunshine. It is so different from the experience you get at somewhere like Circa or the Opera House, where you go and sit in a very defined seat and be good and quiet while the show is on. Outdoors is looser, friendlier, and as a director you have to be willing to compete for your audience’s attention. And I wanted to do that, but all the other events I could think of like it are music-based, and I really wanted to do something with outdoor theatre.

Why Star Trek?

So I was thinking what I could base a big outdoor show on, and I started riffing off the idea of Summer Shakespeare, just looking for something that has a kind of similar cultural place to Shakespeare: familiar to lots of people, loved and studied, with catch-phrases that have entered the language, that people already really care about, and my mind went to, actually, Star Wars, which is my favorite movie ever, but I couldn’t think of how to do it -- there’s just too much in it, and there are too many special effects. But then I thought back to all the afternoons I spent watching Star Trek: The Next Generation after school, and my mom talking about watching Star Trek the original series when she was a little girl, and I started to think that maybe this was the thing that had that cultural position and stamina I was looking for.

Star Trek is great, it has this huge scale and sweep -- they’re still out in space, having to negotiate on their own -- but the stories are very human, intimate when compared to something like Star Wars, so it’d be better to adapt to the stage. And when I had that thought, it was just like, “Yeah, duh, of course I have to do this now.” As Spock would say, “Logical.”

What did you learn from doing this show last year?

Be louder.

Also, that people are incredibly motivated by this fandom, and it is amazing what people will put in to back up that passion. Our publicity manager turned into a production manager last year, just wanting all the things to be done, and done so well to live up to the standard set by the series. And I can’t think of another show where we’ve had such a generous audience response, with people coming up and telling their stories or saying thank you. This is the first show I’ve been stopped on the street about, which is incredibly gratifying and humbling, to make something that obviously resonates so much.

What do you say to folks who worry about what you’ll do to their beloved series?

Everyone doing this is doing it because we really love Star Trek. I’ve been blown away by the work that the cast have done -- some have come into rehearsals already owning costumes, others have read the biographies of every actor on the original show. And if you like something that much, you’re not going to stomp all over it.

I came in the first day of rehearsal, and we were setting down our guiding principles, and one I put in there was: we can always laugh at ourselves for trying to do this impossible thing, do a TV show in a park, but we cannot laugh at the Trek.

What do you say to people who aren’t the die-hard fans of Star Trek?

Obviously, come along anyway! We think really carefully about the episodes we pick, and I want to do one that is a really good story. And this year’s is a doozy! The crew all get infected with a virus that make them act like five-year-olds on a sugar high. Not exactly the people you want in charge of a space ship. But we have fun onstage, and I think that makes it fun for folks watching.

Do you have a favorite character?

I grew up with Star Trek: The Next Generation, so my heart will always belong to Lieutenant Worf.

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