This is the first issue released after the merging with SS and it’s the longest, and to my opinion, the best issue so far. It’s not entirely by me as the previous issues have been and that’s been very relieving to me. From this point on, the magazine will be released bimonthly beginning in February.

Once again, I urge the readers to contribute to make this a more interesting and diverse magazine. I’m also looking for assistant editors to help me in the making of the magazine. It would in practise mean that you’d write something to every issue and have something to say about what the magazine should be about and what it should be like. But I of course am the control freak above everyone else. Single contributions are more than welcome as themselves.

But going to this issue: This is a special virtual series theme Christmas issue. All articles are about them and the reviews also. I’ve written an article about how to start a virtual series to help all of you who think of beginning one. Alan Holman, the writer of Banana Chan and The Creator, has also written an article about writing a series. It’s mainly concentrated on his series, but he also has excellent points about writing a series that can go with any virtual series project. There are also two reviews. One by me and one by Harry ‘The Goose’ Deckard who is taking the position of assistant editor starting next year. Danyea Burton will also take the same position but unfortunately he hadn’t got time to write for this issue.

The interview with Rob Jelley was interesting one. I’ve been a loyal fan of Star Trek: Renaissance project for over two years now and the chance to interview their executive producer was very interesting.

So, this is how Voice Over will be from now on. Bigger, longer and better. I have more subscribers than before and it really helps in planning the magazine. It will also be taken more seriously and that helps a lot.

So, what more than to say than have a merry seasonal holiday, depending on whatever religious group you might be part of. And of course a productive new year.

henrik anttonen
(could you believe that?)

----------------------------------------

-----------------------------
| Interview with Rob Jelley |
-----------------------------

Rob Jelley is the executive producer and staff writer of the gigantic fan fiction project Star Trek: Renaissance. The series began on 2001 and has over 50 episodes released to date. And with no end looming in any near future. They release 26 episodes a year and has a solid fan base who all seem to think that Renaissance is better than anything Paramount has seen fit to release in years.

Voice Over: I know the creator Harri Tusa isn't with you any longer, but can you tell me how it all started? When? And did the original concept differ in some way as to what it became?

Rob Jelley: Renaissance started in about January of 2001 when Harri responded to a post on an RPG forum asking about the future of Trek. He said that he thought the fans could do better than what Paramount was churning out at that current point in time and challenged the board members to help him do that. The topic quickly shifted over to the Trek Today message boards where Dan found out about it and then after that it quickly moved over to its own forums on the Subspace Comms Network (http://scn.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=frm&f=42310331). The original concept we started working from was Dan's aborted Star Trek Restoration project, which you can find out more about at http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/restoration/index.xhtml. There were some very significant changes made between that concept and the one we eventually ended up using, which I'm sure Dan can talk about much better than I can. We spent about six months in development before we started writing individual episodes and I th ink that benefited us a great deal. It gave us a good solid frame work to start from with room for us to move and grow as the series expanded beyond our original plans for it. On the whole though, we've known what Renaissance is about since its inception and we've stuck with it. We may have taken the show into some different, and unexpected, directions to get there, but we're still sailing on the same course from where we started and hopefully fulfilling our aim to make a show that can equal, or hopefully rival, Paramount's current series in the franchise.

Voice Over: If you do, how do you promote the series?

Rob Jelley: We put links to our new scripts up on as many script sites as we can, Simply Scripts and the Trek Writers Guild to name but a few. We got a lot of publicity when Aftermath first came out, which we were all very pleased with, but we haven't really met that level of critical reception again ever since. It's a shame really because it makes it more difficult for potential readers to find us and limits most of our publicity to word of mouth, but we give the PR machine a good whack a big episode is coming up and still hope for the best.

Voice Over: How did you got involved and when?

Rob Jelley: I got involved when an online friend of mine gave me a link to the Renaissance forum, I've been hooked ever since! ;)

Voice Over: Your on season time is from September to May or June, how long and when is your writing season? Rob Jelley: If you're a regular reader of Renaissance you'll know that most of our episodes are written as they air! We're trying to move to a place where we'll write an entire phase of episode (about 6-8 episodes) before we begin to publish that phase but that's more difficult than it sounds. With all of us having either college or work and other hobbies outside of writing REN it can make things difficult to get things done on time, but we're definitely trying to improve that aspect of things over the next few months.

Voice Over: How do members of the staff communicate with each other?

ROB: We use the Renaissance Development Forum over at the SCN and MSN messenger.

Voice Over: Who arcs the big storylines spanning from season to season and how far ahead have you made the plans?

Rob Jelley: At the minute we come up with a general idea for an arc on the board and get a good idea of what all of the writers want to do in it, before myself, James and Dan try and put all of those elements together, as well as our own, and develop a major story arc, such as the current Dominion arc. Myself and James are heavily involved in plotting out the final parts of the season at the moment, but once we've developed something that we like, we'll throw what we've got at the rest of the writers who will give us some input on what they think and things usually change from there. I think it's a good process and one that we've fine tuned since the Klingon arc at the end of season one - I also think that these arcs have given us our own style that separates us from other Trek series. We do have an arc that runs through everything, but it's very easy to come in on a stand alone episode, or at the start of what's usually something like a six episode arc and get to grips with the series. I think we all prefer doing things like that rather then having one big arc like, say, Buffy did in season seven. This way we still have some freedom to go in a different direction after about six episodes instead of sticking to the same storyline for 26 weeks.

Voice Over: You've been credited as executive producer. What does this mean in practise and are you the big leader above everyone else? In effect, what is the decision-making process in Renaissance?

Rob Jelley: I took over the big chair as executive producer from Yehuda Katz in the middle of the second season. That basically means that I oversee everything and (try to) read every script before it goes out and make sure that it fits with the arc and that what happens in it fits with the general vision for REN as well as my own vision for REN. Dan and James keep an eye on every other episode as it develops and then I look over them once they feel it's getting towards a final draft stage - or at least that's the theory anyway. It doesn't always happen like that, but we try.

Voice Over: Average script in Renaissance is about 60 pages. How much time do you give to the writing of each episode?

Rob Jelley: I honestly can't say. It really does depend on the episode, sometimes I can write an episode in 3-4 days, other times it takes a few weeks, like my most recent episode "Nor Bid the Stars Farewell" did, but that one ended up being something like one hundred pages, which was way too long really. It depends on what else is going on outside of REN at the time and one sort of episode it is. Sometimes I find that writing some of the more emotional episodes can be really draining and takes a lot longer than a light humorous episode.

Voice Over: When you have quite a big writing staff, how can you control that there isn't too much contradiction things in the scripts while keeping the series interesting and creative?

Rob Jelley: We try and develop all of the stories together so we know what everyone else is doing, that way we contradict each other as less as possible. There was an incident recently where a theme I wrote into one of my episodes was a major theme in James's, so that had to be rewritten, but we don't usually have that problem. I know a year or so ago there were a couple of episodes straight after each other that had virtually the same story, which was a little disconcerting, but these things happen and we have to live with them.

Voice Over: Do the writers work with their own ideas and episodes only, or is the writing staff a collective where everyone writes an episode with previously conceived plot fitting in the big arc of the series?

Rob Jelley: It really does depend on where we are in the season. Like I said before we do have one big arc that we're following what everyone knows about, but we try and keep that in the background as much as possible unless it really is a BIG arc episode. Otherwise, we have the smaller 4-6 episode arcs that I spoke about earlier where the writers have to stick to the flow and plot of the arc. They are sometimes a part of the bigger arc too, but they do all make sense in the context of that one arc and I think that's something that's very important when we're reaching a stage where we have almost 70 odd episodes in our back catalogue. Saying that though, we do have lots of stand alone episodes in the season as well that the writers are free to develop basically on their own, once we've all agreed to the general concept of it. We do have some other arcs in play that certain writers might develop through the course of a season in their own episodes, but like I said, we try and contain each episode into that one story so that the audience requires very little knowledge of the show to just jump in and start reading it.

Voice Over: Can you tell me the process of making an episode from an original pitch to the final release?

Rob Jelley: We usually follow the pitch, treatment, script method with various drafts of the treatments and scripts frequently known to happen. The Renaissance treatment is basically a break down of what will happen in the teaser and acts one through four that's about 3-6 pages long.

Voice Over: In the first season of the series you had a kind of open submission policy. Did you get a lot of pitches that way? How many of them ended up as releases?

Rob Jelley: Yeah, we did. We only pulled the plug on that recently due to the huge amount of writers we currently have and the amount of episodes each of those have. I know that we were really looking for a pitch that stood out during that first year, and a lot of what we got was very similar to what we'd seen before, so I think out of all the pitches that we received, we only ended up using "Between Two Worlds," "Mercy Bay," and later on "To Be Someone." This season we used Will's excellent "Regression" that really caught our eye and we brought another new writer on board a few weeks ago that I'm looking forward to seeing something from, maybe towards the end of the season. It's a shame we've had to stop doing it really because there are a lot of good writers out there who we just have to say no to, because otherwise we'll be swamped... and we'll have to start a spin-off! Dargh!

Voice Over: The series took quite of a turn when coming to the second season. Was this the original intention or was it something conceived later?

ROB: If by that you mean the season finale and the episodes that resulted from that, then no, it wasn't planned from the beginning at all. The original inception for the season finale was an episode where the Enterprise went to get rid of the Borg once and for all, called Crusade, that Harri was going to write. When he decided to leave the staff, Dan pitched an episode called "Heroes Descending" that later became "Shadows of a New Dawn," with some major changes that happened as we wrote it. We didn't set out saying that we want to pack as many punches as we can in this episode, we wanted to shock the audience and we wanted to have something a little more daring and controversial than usual but we definitely didn't go into it lightly. We knew that there would be consequences, both in terms of the series and in terms of the fan reaction, and we didn't really know where we were going in terms of the former. But over the summer, after a lot of thinking and a lot of plotting that never saw the light of day, we came up with the character arc that became the first half of season two. We were originally going to have a very cool storyline where the Enterprise got hijacked by the Klingons for the first four or five episodes of the season, with the Klingons after revenge for the attack on Coular, but we ultimately decided that it was too similar to what had been done on Trek previously and that it would have a very predictable end to it. I'm still very happy with the first 12 episodes of season two, and I've been hearing increasingly from the fans that although they didn't like a great bulk of those episodes at the time, reading back on them now has made them appreciate what we were trying to do and now they like them even more. Granted, some of them weren't our best episodes ever and we were still very new to the whole arc business at that point, so it wasn't our most cohesive arc ever, but we knew what we were trying to do and I think we pulled it off. It was very different and very ambitious and I thought that the ending of that was very satisfying.

Voice Over: There are quite a lot of people active in the Renaissance discussion board. How much do you spend time there yourselves?

Rob Jelley: It depends really, however much time I need to. We all appreciate the fans sticking with us and giving us feedback and so we try and repay that by hanging around on the boards every now and then to chat with them about our episodes and the series.

Voice Over: In real television land you have to be careful with character development. How are you approaching the matter in Renaissance?

Rob Jelley: Exactly the same way. Obviously we can do more on REN without having to worry about censors and sweeps etc. but we try and develop the characters in the best way we can - and that's naturally, and I think that we've done a good job on that over the last three years.

Voice Over: What would you consider your favourite episodes in Renaissance? You may pick as many as you like. And I'd like to hear some reasons as to why.

Rob Jelley: I still have a soft spot for "Mercy Bay." I was very pleased with that episode as it was very different to what we usually do. If we could have a couple of episodes like that every year I'd be very happy. Out of all my own episodes I like "Dead and Buried" and "The Walk" a lot because I think they had a lot to say on things like death and the grief or mourning that follows, as well as finding yourself again after you've been through all of that. Plus they've had more time to grow on me than some of my more recent episodes, which I'm never particularly fond of after writing them. Especially if I spend a lot of time on them, or I rush them, I find that I'm never very happy with them when I finish. "Nor Bid the Stars Farewell," my most recent episode, was something that I wasn't all that happy with when it was done, but it's grown on me a lot faster than my episodes usually do and I think that will become a firm favourite of mine when I re-read it in a few months tim e. Touch wood!

Voice Over: Going to the actual writing: What software do you use to the creation of the scripts?

Rob Jelley: I use good old Word!

Voice Over: Many writers have special love-hate relationship with writing. How do you feel about the physical work?

Rob Jelley: It's very rewarding when you're finished with it but it can drive me mad when I'm actually writing the damn things. I usually come out of writing an episode not in a particularly good mood, which is never good, but a day or so later I'm usually back to normal. I don't know why that happens but it's just something I go through. I love writing though for the most part, especially when I'm writing something that I love the concept of or the situation the characters are in and, like I said, I think it's a very rewarding experience, especially when there's a big fan base out there reading them.

Voice Over: When you write, do you require special conditions? Do you have any certain rituals you do when you write or can you write anytime, anywhere?

Rob Jelley: I wouldn't say rituals... but sometimes I do like to write parts of my episodes (especially the beginning of them) down on paper before I go anywhere near a computer. I don't know what it is but I've got this thing between my hand, the pen and the paper and I think you lose that when you use a computer. I'm not opposed to using computers, but I just like to start, and usually finish, on paper - it just feels more personal. I've also taken to writing some of my more recent episodes from the tenth floor of a building that looks out over the city where I live. It's very quiet and very calm and I like it up there - only problem is I get distracted by the view, but hey, you know...

Voice Over: Have you done released writings outside of Renaissance.

Rob Jelley: I've written original scripts, and I think most of the staff have as well, but I've never released any of my completely original stuff on to the net. I direct TV and the odd film on an "amateur" basis, but none are available on the net. I don't usually mix my net stuff in with people in real life and I don't tend to mix my real life stuff in with people who I know on the net - there's the odd few who crossover but not very many. I might release a few clips of a film I made last summer on the net in a few months time so keep your eye on the REN boards for more details about that. We'll see what happens.

Voice Over: And finally the big question: Why?

Rob Jelley: Why not? Seriously though, I try to disregard REN as fan fiction. This could make me a lot of enemies, but I don't really like fan fiction nor have I read any other then Renaissance. Don't get me wrong, there is some good stuff out there that I've read parts of, but I'm just not a fan fic person and I don't think I ever will be. I think Renaissance is unique in that it's script based, it has story and character arcs and a large amount of writers who want to do this for a living, so I think, or I hope, that that makes us stand out. If we're standing out and standing proud then I'll be here to see it happening... at least for a good few years yet.

Star Trek: Renaissance - www.startrekrenaissance.com

----------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------
| A Beginners Guide to Starting Virtual Series |
------------------------------------------------
by T. Henrik Anttonen

Introduction
------------

Let’s assume that you have a brilliant Idea. Let’s say a sitcom about a group of different people living under the same roof. Or a story about a police unit who dedicate their lives to solving crimes. Or maybe some other equally original idea that demonstrates how creative and innovative sort of a person you are.

Now, let’s continue by assuming that you’d want to make it as a virtual series with a staff of writers and producers and you want to release scripts in regular intervals.

This is all very nice and all, but you might not have an idea as to how to do it. Well, this is where I tell you one way of doing it. This is very basic and down to earth approach to this and there surely is no one way of doing it, but maybe some starting project leader will find something useful in this. This is based on the way I coordinated my series.

The Beginning
-------------

One of the most important parts after finalising the basic idea, are the technical ones. Will it be a half hour or an hour long feature? What will be the release format? How often will it come out? These and many others are the questions you should figure out before trying to gather a staff.

A note about script format: You should aim for as professional looking script as possible. It will immediately bring your script more credibility and it is more pleasant to read. I’d also recommend PDF file format since your script will then look the same wherever people read it. There are free tools for making PDF converts these days. Good looking free script software is also available so there is no need to do html files with poor script formatting.

Acquiring the Staff
-------------------

The first of all, you need to find the people to write it. Maybe you want other staff as well, but primarily you need writers. If you don’t have friends around you to do it or you don’t have other contacts to people already, you need to find them.

I would suggest that you put out an ad or announcement to scriptwriting message boards and to magazines like this telling a bit about your project and what kind of people you’d want to join the staff. If your series is concentrated on some basis a lot of people know already, you should post the ad to boards dedicated to the subject. For example, if you want to start a Star Wars fan series, you probably find interested people from Star Wars boards. The downside to this is that you might be considered as a spammer and get a bad reputation or maybe even get thrown off the board. The safest way may be to post to magazines with announcements and things of that sort. (Speaking of it, Voice Over will most happily include things of this sort in the announcements section.) To the ad, you should include some information about the genre of the series, your contact address and a lot or reckless self promotion to get attention.

You probably shouldn’t post the basic idea with the ad because it may be wise to keep the idea in a small circle. If you let the idea loose you might lose people’s interest if they know the idea before the launch of the series. There is also a good chance of those who want to rip off your idea. Especially if your idea is original in any sense. If and when you start to get contacts, then tell them what the series is about. I can tell you that from more than 30 or more contacts I got, only about 10 wanted to join the series after learning the idea of the series.

Then the most important: Ask them for an example of their writing. Never, ever hire anyone as a writer before knowing if they can write. From the 10 willing to join only 6 met with my approval. This is understandably vital to your series’ success.

If the series is going to be made just for fun and practise without any money involved, you should make it very, very, very clear as you ask a person to join. You should also make it very clear that they’d actually need to work in the staff. If they still want to join, welcome them in a heartily manner. (Only 5 left…)

Development & Schedule
----------------------

Well, now you have a staff who you know to be excellent writers and who like and understand your concept. You should now get to know them and let them know you and each other. For this I would recommend that you set up a development board somewhere where you can talk freely. It should be a restricted board so you know someone won’t just barge in and let the whole world know your great eleven season story arc.

At this point it might also be good to let your staff tell their opinions about everything relating to the series. You might gain valuable ideas and suggestions.

Once you know how many writers you’ve got and how long one episode should be, you need to build up a schedule. This is one of the hardest parts. You could of course delegate it to someone else, but being a responsible and hard-working project leader (= control freak), you decide to do it all by yourself.

You should firstly think how many episodes a season will be constructed of. And when will you be on season. It’s a good idea to have separate writing and release season since delays are inevitable. You should have at least a good few months between the writing deadline and the release date.

You should take an almanac and notice that year has suddenly become very short. From the original episode pitch you need to give time to at least:
1) Full story treatment
2) First draft
3) Second draft

You might also want to give time to giving treatments and first drafts to the whole staff to comment, so that the writer will have several ideas and options on what to do to better the script.

You have to approach the matter on how many scripts can be in production on the same time. Then you think how many episodes you need in a year. Then you try to fit those into a year in a way that it doesn’t overlap too badly with the release season. You also want to give couple months of vacation in a year or you find yourself without a staff very fast.

You don’t want to give too little time to writing because it will cause in bad scripts and bad morale. You can’t give too much time. You just don’t have it.

For example, if you want a 20 episodes and you have 10 months to produce them, with 2 months of production time for each script, you need 4 scripts in production at all times. Then you position this 10 months so that there are enough ready scripts when the release season begins. And some extra as some people do have real lives as well. (Not me, though. How else could I spend my time editing Voice Over?) Of course these aren’t very practical figures as you probably want more episodes for a season. But this is the principle.

Don’t try to save time by dropping the second draft from the list, because that would prove to be catastrophic as to what the quality of the series.

There is also the whole issue of submission policy. Do you want to give anyone a chance to write to the series or do you confine it to the staff. If you do decide to take episodes from outsiders, you have a whole new problem of how to fit them into your schedule, but that’s another story and I won’t go into it in this article.

Conclusion
----------

So, if you really do manage to go trough all of this and still keep your staff together, I congratulate you. You have a very healthy basis for a series on your hands and hopefully a good future with creating your series. Of course, this is only one way of approaching things. You might know better and wiser ones and I’m not going to argue. As I said, there is no one right way of doing this. But I hope I have helped some of you who think about starting a series but don’t know how.

So, you want to know what happened to my series? Well, first of all the staff wasn’t too big as you can determine from my earlier comments. 4 of the six staff members left after seeing the schedule. They apparently weren’t too keen about the thought of working after all and the series finally met demise when one of the staff thought there was money involved although I tried to make especially clear that there was none. The member left after a huge fight. Two people don’t make virtual series, so that was the end of it. And now I’m an ordinary writing staff goon in another virtual series. And that feels like a breath of fresh air after the numerous responsibilities of command.

----------------------------------------

---------------------------
| A Writers Point of View |
---------------------------
by Alan Holman

When Henrik announced that the "virtual series" phenomenon is this issue's theme, I NEEDED to write this article about BANANA CHAN and THE CREATOR.

MANY drafts have been written for both my anime BANANA CHAN, and my dramedy THE CREATOR. As of present time, BANANA CHAN has twenty episodes, and THE CREATOR is on hiatus with nine scripts!

I'm 22 years old, and both BANANA CHAN and THE CREATOR are combined and refined products of stories and scribblings from ages 14 to 19, when I was in high school. BANANA CHAN was inspired first, in 1995, when YTV (Canadian broadcaster specialising in programs for children and teens) was still airing their first runs of DRAGONBALL and SAILOR MOON. I admired the epic storytelling of DRAGONBALL, and the long legs of SAILOR MOON. Both shows were my introduction to the fascinating world of anime, and they were my first inspiration for the collection of stories that would eventually conceive the first official episode of BANANA CHAN, which was posted to my web-site many years later, on October 5th, 2002, when my inaugural "virtual season" began.

My first BANANA CHAN script was completed a full year before the pilot episode was posted. Two weeks before the first virtual season began, I had already written eleven complete episodes! And then, one week before posting the first episode, negative criticism forced me to re-edit the ENTIRE series until only the first seven episodes were ready on October 5th, 2002, the day of the series' "launch." In other words, a continuity error in episode five forced me to delete eighty-eight pages of script! For what it's worth, I'm now CONVINCED that the first eleven episodes of BANANA CHAN have air-tight continuity! Basically, the point of this paragraph was to show you that I'm dedicated ;)

THE CREATOR was inspired by a librarian, and a principal, at E.D. FEEHAN HIGH SCHOOL in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, Canada. Those staffers taught me that some jerks will go out of their way, to get into my way. Though some scenes in THE CREATOR include verbatim copies of actual conversations, the series was inspired by fantasies and daydreams I scribbled down whilst sitting in desks, bored out of my mind in high school, thus it's pure fiction.

Finally, here's what I've learned about writing a virtual series:

• Don't announce that you've written anything, until you've written A LOT!
• Seek criticism from EVERYWHERE before you begin your first virtual season. Don't be afraid to show EVERY episode to several people before posting the first episode to your series' web-site.
• Don't begin posting until you're confident that the first six episodes (or multi-episodic story arc of another length) have NO continuity errors, because IF YOU CAN eliminate all continuity errors from the first batch of episodes, you'll learn advanced methods of detecting continuity errors, and your imaginary world will solidify to such extents that continuity errors will appear very infrequently.
• Find out how long it takes you to bring a typical episode from rough draft, to perfect draft, and then schedule double that amount of time for the writing of most episodes. It's not a race if no one is producing it ... yet.

Episode four of BANANA CHAN took a day to write, whereas episode eleven took two weeks. Lately, a single episode of BANANA CHAN takes a month, or more, to complete, but that's just because I need to support myself with a day job. If writing BANANA CHAN were my professional job, I'm confident that I can now produce about two QUALITY scripts per week!

• Only write what you know! In other words, if one of your characters is an expert cosmologist, either become an expert cosmologist yourself, or read dozens of articles about cosmology until you know SEVERAL VERY INTERESTING FACTS! Concordantly, if one of your characters is a Koala, read about Koalas!
• Edit everything vigorously, and don't be afraid to throw away a good joke, or an otherwise brilliant piece of writing. If it doesn't fit perfectly into the scene, either throw away that brilliant piece of writing, or save it until you write a scene in which it fits.
• Let the story veer into unexpected tangents. If it's interesting, keep it. If it's not interesting, it should be thrown away without regret. Also, be ready to re-strategise the entire concept for your serial at any moment!
• Despite what others say, don't write for an audience. Write for yourself, until every word keeps you entertained, even during your fiftieth time reading it! If it keeps you entertained, you'll be more inclined to write it, and the negative criticism will hurt you just enough that you'll learn ... heh heh ... what you need to know...heh heh. Episode seven of BANANA CHAN is the only one that's boring to me after my fiftieth time reading it, but I keep that episode in the series because my brother Darren likes it (and because it introduces the "dark sky" concept of scientists in space, a concept which is integral to the story of the series.).
• Play by your own rules, or only follow the rules that you feel like following, because if you were relaxed when you wrote the story, people will relax while reading it! You want people to be able to relax and get comfortable while reading scripts, because one of our goals is to turn teleplays into a popular form of literature, akin to "the novel" -- read by everyone, everywhere, because they're the simplest way to tell very complicated stories, and thus teleplays are COOL!

-My virtual series' BANANA CHAN and THE CREATOR are at http://www.bananachan.com
-You can e-mail me at radiomovie2003@yahoo.ca
-The first twenty BANANA CHAN scripts will soon become nineteen scripts, thanks to a continuity error! The superior edit includes enhanced scenes and a new pilot episode, and it hits my web-site on FEBRUARY 4TH, 2004!

----------------------------------------

-----------
| Reviews |
-----------

Review by Harry ‘The Goose’ Deckard

NAME: The Creator pilot
WRITTEN BY: Alan Holman
PRODUCED: No
DRAFT: Final draft
FILE FORMAT: .html
URL: http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2003/scripts/1.html

Synopsis: Brian wants everything to be his way or no way at all. Nothing can stand between him and his dream of becoming an American producer of anime. This episode is about Brian falling in with the wrong crowd in high school -- a crowd of geeks who steal computers!

Genre: Comedy/Drama.

REVIEW:

Let’s just get one thing straight here, Alan Holman is an extremely talented and funny author. Right so I sit at my little computer and load it up:

The first couple of pages introduce the characters, including a GREAT Introduction of a character named Cap, which says “He’s a tiny, hormonal thing in a wheelchair”. Brian is obviously based on Holman himself it’s obvious, but there is a fictional side to the character which is in the “Great Anime Puzzle” on simplyscripts.com. Although the real problem I had with it as some of the stage directions are slightly rushed. I liked the idea of Monkeyboy printing out the “Terrorist’s handbook” which is apparently and I quote: “It was written by a screenwriter as a resource for other screenwriters; in our hands, it's a powerful tool for breaking into places”. (On a slight note a really weird thing happened when I clicked on that to load it up, it said “What do you think you’re doing, Dave”).

Anyway, yeah I highly recommend this well written series, I think although I only meant to read the first episode but I read the other four as well. Yeah, it’s a great virtual series and I think you should really try and read it. Although from reading the synopsis of it, it rather confused me. Because there are no real horror moments. So why it's rated as a horror I'm unsure but Holman is a classy writer.

Overall rating: Eight out of Ten.

----------------------------------------

Review by T. Henrik Anttonen

NAME: Aftermath
WRITTEN BY: Harri Tusa
PRODUCED: No
DRAFT: Final draft
FILE FORMAT: .pdf
URL: http://www.startrekrenaissance.com/episodes/episode/?id=1

Aftermath is the pilot for the humongous project Star Trek: Renaissance. I believe it is the first Star Trek fan fiction project based entirely on script format. I won’t give away the story since it really is quite interesting and I think everyone of you should experience it for yourself.

The episode is written by the creator of the project, Harri Tusa, who left the series in an early stage. It’s sad, because the pilot clearly demonstrates that Tusa is a competent writer. Not to take away from other writers of the project, since there really isn’t nothing less than professional level of writing in the series.

Tusa brings us a really huge opening for the series. The story is so big and full of aspects that it can really be compared to every scifi-movie without a shame. He drives the story forward so compellingly that you really have to read the whole of the double episode at once.

The characters are presented in such a way in the episode that you immediately get a clear idea about who they are. The episode uses the old trick of bringing new cast members into the series in the pilot, but this is done so well in this that it feels natural and you don’t even pay attention to it too much. (Well, some people may find the way the character Quinlan is brought to the show as being less natural, but she’s my favourite character so I’ll let it go.)

There is one of thing I’ll have to whine about though. The way the character of Captain Cross is presented at first resembles very much to the one used in the case of Commander Sisko in DS9. Thankfully the character gets in its own feet pretty soon and is not Sisko.

But basically Aftermath is a very interesting story and is excellently written and it builds a solid ground on which the series is continuing to bloom. One of the best I’ve ever read. It’s hard to write a long and detailed review when there’s nothing to complain about and I don’t want to reveal the plot.

Now I have to say something about the continuation of the series. Trying to be as cryptic as before, making oneself wonder does this kind of review have any purpose at all.

But talking about the series: The first season was a great one. The writing staff clearly wasn’t afraid to experiment on the basis of the series, characters and Star Trek. There was also a clear hint of the staff not taking themselves too seriously in it as well and some great scripts surfaced on that season.

This all changed on the second season however and was replaced by a well conceived arc and planned outline. I’m not saying that this wouldn’t be a bad thing. The atmosphere just took a huge turn and the whole series suddenly went to darker themes. The third season really follows this chosen path.

Something was lost to my opinion when the experimenting ceased, but it also gained much in that transition, so I actually don’t know what to think about it, but I’ve remained a loyal fan of the series.

I recommend it to all Trek-enthusiasts. And others who don’t practically hate Star Trek as well.

Good work. And I don’t say this often.

---------------------------------
| End of Voice Over issue 4/2003 |
---------------------------------