Rick Chambers has boldly gone on to new frontiers. A communications professional, journalist and novelist in Kalamazoo, he happily adds "Trekkie" to his list of achievements. Memories of watching Star Trek as a four-year-old are still vivid in his mind, drawn to the cast of characters in the show even as he shivered in delicious fear at their grand adventures and a parade of alien creatures.
Since 2011, Chambers has written several scripts for Star Trek: New Voyages, the ongoing Web-based continuation of the TV series that originally aired on NBC-TV from 1966 to 1969. Chambers says it’s a childhood dream come true.
“Star Trek encouraged me to play games in the back yard,” he recalls. “Running around with communicators made out of cardboard and masking tape and in uniforms and such. As I got a little older, I started writing these adventures. So it’s really at the heart of helping to create me as a writer.”
With skills that improved over the years, Chambers jumped at the chance to submit a script when the series returned to life on the Internet. He was pleased - and surprised - when his submission was approved. He now writes regularly for the New Voyages series launched in 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFjikVnvypg
Its producer, James Cawley of Cawley Entertainment Company/Retro Film Studios, wanted to bring Star Trek back “because so many of the things it dealt with are still relevant in our society today,” Chambers says.
Chambers says that emphasis continues today. His latest episode deals with gender issues and women’s rights, as Captain Kirk travels back to an earlier time and is institutionalized for a particularly strange case of amnesia in “Mind-Sifter.” The episode was nominated in several categories for the Independent Star Trek Fan Film Awards, with guest star Clay Sayre winning in the Best Supporting Actor category.
In the new series, characters and even old sets from the original series are faithfully recreated, down to the recognizable “whoosh” of the automatic doors of the starship Enterprise opening and closing. The new series stars Brian Gross as Captain Kirk, Brandon Stacy as Mr. Spock, and Jeff Bond as Dr. "Bones" McCoy.
Chambers has written four episodes of the series so far and has seen three of them filed in Ticonderoga, New York. As he sat beside the director and watched actors deliver lines he had written, Chambers says, “At one point I even got a little misty-eyed. Who would have thought that I would have gotten to write episodes for a series that was canceled 40 years earlier?”
Chambers is the former director of external affairs and communications at Pfizer Inc. in Kalamazoo and now runs his own communications and public relations consulting firm, Rick Chambers and Associates, LLC, from his home in Portage.
You can watch Star Trek: New Voyages episodes at YouTube or on the series' website. Chambers’ new episode, “Torment of Destiny,” will be filmed this summer.
Listen to WMUK's Between the Lines every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m.
