Starship Locations History
Starship Locations began as Silly Trek in 1986 as a role
playing game, build your adventure high school based fan fiction series. Forty
years ago, this was before The Next Generation even aired. It was classified as
a Star Trek parody but really was more of a shipping fiction story where the
players in it, junior high and high school children from Pine Hill, participated
directly in the movie adventures of the refit Enterprise A from Star Trek, circa
Star Trek IV and beyond.
Note that Pine Hill was a San Jose based school for children
with learning difficulties.
Silly Trek was associated with two other role playing games
based on other shows or cartoons, Robo Silly and Trans. Robo Silly was played
as a playground adventure where the junior higher included some children from the
primary grade side from the school. Nothing strange happened. Robotech was the
then popular show to which this parodied, but was more role play, with some of
the children playing the characters from said show.
Trans was short for Transformers, a then current TV cartoon
similar to Robotech, so they were combined. The parody involved the first
filming of any fan film of its kind, noted to date, during the run of the
series and just prior to, and following Transformers the Movie, March 1986. Trans
was not meant as some sort of message concerning trans people. Robots were
played mostly by the high school boys from Robo Silly.
Commentaries of the full series and spin offs were posted
decades later on YouTube under the idea that the main person, Adam Browne, had
been the first ever to make these films. Most were very cheesy and innocent,
but due to using music from copyrighted sources, all audio had to be removed.
Adam Browne or Kal Kat, and Jon Yeager or Marx Cards, launched
fan film versions of their material starting as high school students in the
1980s. Trans also launched The Carda, the carboard robots. The name became
confusing over the years, and Karda became the new name. Commentary versions of
those fan films were also posted on YouTube in the 2020s.
The Next Generation began in 1987, this beginning 18 years
of new Star Trek, coincidentally paralleling the college years of Browne and
Yeager. But it worked both ways. They would continue the fan films, role
playing, and stories as Starship Locations, and Star Crackers, and Distant
Cousins, and other stories, fan fiction, and films in the 1990s, often having a
weird connection with TNG that included some uncanny moments.
Star Crackers was one of their attempts to be less Star
Trek, but in doing so it was more, and Planet Com, Final Frontier, Distant
Destinies and the like were similar, all of them closer to Trek than they
admitted. Even the short stories that later were Space Time Eye too.
It appears they thought of the Borg one year before TNG even
was born, did multiple shipping stories similar to real episodes, had bizarre
instances of characters speaking lines on the show a week after they did their
VHS versions, and went to conventions, and even had their infamous apple toss
scene end up in two movies right on up to the 2009 film, and again in 2025 in a
new show entirely, Starfleet Academy.
Browne with Yeager created a series of dozens of books and
made the ebooks online from 2019 to 2023. The ebooks included those from series
Space Vanguards, formerly Star Crackers, Cohnirri Space, formerly Distant
Destinies, and Space Time Eye, On Location, and Starship Locations and Sillian
Realms.
Star Crackers took 13 years to finish, from around 1992
with an hour shot and on VHS, to 2005, the roughly complete DVD, and then a
boost for YouTube in 2011, to appear in 2014.
Trans, 1986 to 1991, began Trans 2 in 1992 to 1995, the
Blair Witch meets Beasties in 1999, the Transformers meet Robotech or Trans
Tech in 2005 to 2009, (later on DVD), and in 2014, on YouTube.
They are all sort of interconnected really. Versions of them
have appeared everywhere.
Star Crackers had been a live action movie, but new ones
would use Playmates action figures, a bit like how Trans Tech used Transformers
and GI Joes as Robotech people as figures. Young nephew Dan Browne was featured
in the film in a deleted scene.
In 2019, Starship Locations channel lauched Starship
Chimera, the miniseries event, and their flagship YouTube channel, continuing
the adventures of TNG and DS9 and VGR in 2388. The story involved Q being
tested by the Overlords, another race of omnipotent beings they had created in
1988 when they met the children at Pine Hill and made for them Silly Trek,
tying in the realm and lore.
The new grown children, as it was 2011 in the story to them,
were adults and had gone to Starfleet and even had served on ships. In their
timeline, Nick Locarno was redeemed and married Ezri, and they had a ship
called the Chimera. The story boasted that you would not only have a send off
to Picard, but also Q would show the real Q continuum to him! The action
figures used were Playmates.
Post Group affiliates gave advice to the production on how
to create go motion, essentially puppet moving the figures.
Three of the Star Crackers cast returned to be voice actors
in the film. It took from 2006 to 2019 to finish. One newcomer was bit actor
Brian Storey from the church. It only went back to 2006 because his lines were
done first in 2006.
Actual filming took place from 2012 to 2018, and in 2019
there were some reshoots. Adam’s niece Sarah Lamdin acted as a prop coordinator
on the Q continuum scene.
The launch of the books at the same time as the film, as
seen on Amazon Kindle, did not do much to market the movies at all. They have
since as of 2026 not made a profit. The
parodies cannot. The YouTube films are fan films, and by example are using
someone else’s characters and stories, Star Trek or Transformers or the like.
The 2007 relaunch of Transformers carried it to today, and
is a very highly respected cartoon legend.
Star Trek rebranded in 2009 and then in 2017 with new shows,
although over the past 8 years it has been met with some skepticism, most of it
unfounded.
Also in 2019 and 2020, before the Pandemic, production was
underway on the Alt Transformers MUSH series and on the Starship Locations
Strange Worlds series. The Transformers one would use script screenplays and
stories from fans of the show, from their role playing MUSH decades earlier, to
tell new Generation, Beast Wars, and comics inspired new stories in the Trans
universe. The voice cast of the Starship Chimera returned to do the voices
there too, and the Trans Tech voices would all return to lend guest voices.
A spin off series, Transformers Lexicons, based on the newer
fan based archive, would appear a year or so later.
Strange Worlds was not a parody of Strange New Worlds. It
was also not the Disney film. It was inspired by a David Gerrold teleplay he
gave permission for Browne and Yeager to use, as from a convention appearance.
He would later confirm the script story and had seen the trailer by 2023 at
another, and approved it again.
The series would go to planets from Classic Trek and
elsewhere, and the captain was Ezri Locarno of the Chimera A, and her missions
often included the Emmett Till A and Nog, the heroic Ferengi. Set in the 2400s,
the stories ran alongside Picard, the new show, and also had so many parallels
and uncanny events that this bled to another show, Lower Decks, but not so much
Prodigy, but both were included as ‘older characters’, as the Lower Decks and
Prodigy were set in the 2380s and the new Strange Worlds was set in 2401-2402.
The production team on the Picard show even started using STO
ships, and they reframed the stardate of season 3 to match the fan films, and
end their series in 2401, just before Strange Worlds. They had to have known.
The Transformers episodes and Strange Worlds shows were
included on the YouTube channels hosting them, with no ad sense. The main
reviews channel hosted the Transformers ones since 2014 and the Chimera one
hosted that since previews in 2016.
The new episodes appeared on the YouTube channel as of 2020.
The second season of the Trek fan series was a full
adaptation of the Planet of the Fallen Ones miniseries inspired by the works
of Ancient Aliens Reviews author Jason Colavito. The guy did not want his
trolls harassing ‘Chimera’, so he advised only crediting him in the story, but
he didn’t need to include him, so a parody of him called Vitocola was created.
Destinations became the third season of Strange Worlds, in
about 2022, running into the 2023 writer’s strike but the finale was a direct
retelling of Distant Destinies but with the Trek people, done without SAG AFTRA
writers. Silly Trek is independent of Hollywood anyway.
Then in 2024, the Starship Locations cast decided to tackle
directly the Vanguards, but had to change the name to Advanced Guard, and Cohnirri
stories, and later the Space Time Eye, which they changed to Warp Corps.
In April 2024, executive producer Victoria Browne died, but
already executive producer Daniel Browne had stepped in. The Transformers
Legacy and Starship Legacy series would both be started in that year.
They tried to force the Trek people to make Star Trek Legacy
a thing, not just the title of an old video game. It didn’t work.
The cast produced three spin off miniseries, one of each.
Advanced Guard made three movies, Cohnirri made four, and Warped Corps made 3
movies.
During this time also, Starship Locations Legacy did a
number of new episodes. Amanda Rumsey became creative consultant on them, and so
she did all sorts of shipping ideas about reality TV type Q parties and stuff.
In 2025, when Warp Corps was being done as the continuation,
also there were Starship Locations Legacy episodes.
Strange New Worlds appeared for another season, Lower Decks
and Prodigy ended, and Academy would come old later on. The fan films had
nothing to do with them, but the uncanny times did not end.
The Legacy episodes though were more Brian Storey and Marx
Cards as consultants, so they had zombies and reality TV as a few themes, and
the Brady Bunch, and Academy, but not the new Trek show, their own version.
They even brought back Karda and made three films, finishing
the trilogy that had been planned decades ago, but completely redid it so it
made sense.
Starship meets the Transformers, which began with one story
in 2023, got two sequels in 2026 as the series ended. The original had used
MUSH scripts but the sequels used original ideas.
The zombie season of 2025-2026 was definitely influenced by
Storey and Cards, but also Tim Cantrell, who returned for consulting on Advanced
Guard and inspired the story too.
Reportedly in April 2026, as Kal Kat moved, he reconciled
with Amanda Rumsey concerning her consulting on the series. She was not all
that taken aback by her Q like double, and thought it fun.
Also around the same time, consultant Jessica Woodworth and
other, Renee Dunn, realized they too had consulted on the fan films, but only
commented that they only worked on the PG ones. Yes, only those.
Allegedly, YouTuber Jessie Gender, another indirect
consultant, allowed for a spoof of her character on the series, and even gave
Kat suggestions, such as during the ‘not so PG ones’ where her character should
make out more with her girlfriend. Done. Ha. But also, Bashir should make out
with Garak, and Odo and Quark. Done.
It was Council of Geeks fan of the show, Vera who suggested
once that a good Trek shipping story should ‘do the Grey Tal character justice’,
of which the finale in 2026 of Starship meets the Transformers does, by making
Grey and Adira Travelers. They visit the heroes in the 2400s.
Disclaimer. Much of this assumes that the now middle aged guys somehow know of the current Star Trek shows, and they do not. It is just coincidence. Also they know just using the shipping of characters doesn't make the shows have to do the same. Sometimes it ends up similar, that's all.
