Photo credit: Farragut Films, Dracogen Strategic Investments and Vic Mignogna.

I wrote about Star Trek Continues two years ago. It aims to create new episodes of the original Star Trek series in a style as close to the original as possible. I consider Star Trek Continues to be the best of the many Star Trek fan films and series, from the scripting, to the follow-ups to original series episodes, to the cheesy special effects, to Vic Mignogna’s spot-on overacting as Captain Kirk. There are now four episodes released, and I have to say they have about the same level of quality as the original series. That means they’re hit-or-miss, but there are gems in there.

Episode 1, “The Pilgrim of Eternity” features the return of the alien “god”, Apollo, from “Who Mourns For Adonais?”, and it was pretty good. I thought it was a really creative revisit to the concept with an interesting twist, and well worth watching.

Episode 2, “Lolani”, is the story of an Orion slave girl seeking her freedom. I disliked this one. The script was sub-par, and Kirk wasn’t thinking things through, even by his standards.

Episode 3, “Fairest of them All” follows immediately from “Mirror, Mirror”, showing how Mirror Spock begins reforming the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe. I always enjoy seeing the characters hamming it up in the Mirror Universe, and this was no exception. I recommend this one.

Episode 4, “The White Iris”, explores the character of Captain Kirk in a rarely-seen depth. While some elements are pretty contrived, I very much enjoyed the exploration of how deeply hurt Kirk is by losing so many of the alien women he romances shows that there is much more to the captain than a space cowboy. I thought the primitive holodeck was a little over the top, though.

If you’re a Star Trek fan, definitely watch at least Episodes 1 and 3. If you’re a die-hard Original Series fan, I think you’ll enjoy all four. They could easily have been in the original series.

My rating: 4 out of 5 (on average).