I download the first three episodes of the New Voyages.

I used uTorrent to download the files. If you are new to torrents, the file winds up on your disk from hundreds of others who are sharing the file. It takes hours (if not days) and you have to leave your machine on while it is working. uTorrent will notify you when it is done. These are very large files.

I used a program DVDFlick to burn them to DVD. I must say that DVDFlick does a great job and I have been using it to burn DVDs for a couple of months. I have lots of blues stuff on disk and tape and DVDFlick is the best way to do the actual burn. (Justine, if you want the DVDs, I can mail them to you).

The episodes are highly compressed WMV files and Jim’s old DVD player barfs a little at the compression, rendering the screen as a swirl of color from time to time.

We watched the “episode one” teaser last night at poker and we all laughed at the bad acting and direction. I had previously watched the whole episode and I found much to dislike, but I am nostalgic about the original series and for the most part these new voyages are a loving tribute. I can ignore the poor casting decisions and piss poor delivery of lines. I found myself getting into the strange and confusing story line, that seemed like a mishmash of all the worst episodes from the original series.

You have to watch these as a fan and ignore the obvious problems with them. They are made with love by people who respect what Star Trek means, even if they can’t write, direct or act. The episodes keep getting better and I hope that they make a dozen more. If you have watched the original series lately, you’ll realize that some of those professionally produced episodes were not much better than what this group of dedicated fans is producing right now.

Jim made the statement that I have made many times:

UPDATE: I watched the second episode last night. Much better than the first episode. It has a convoluted plot that only a trekky could follow, but the acting was better mainly because with all the action, there was no time to emote. Erica missed many of the references. Lots of “phasers on kill”!