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Some of the regular crew
do turns as extras on the Farragut bridge
including Tasha Yar, Ensign Ro, Dr Pulaski, Lt
Barclay and even Dr Bashir who appears in his
own right later. |
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Harry Kim from Voyager
also appears as a Defiant engineer, with his
back conveniently to the camera. |
The mail away figure of
Captain Calhoun (from the New Frontier books)
appears as the Admiral. In the script he’s name
checked as Admiral Donnolly. |
For the Founder/Borg, I
photoshopped Odo’s face onto Locutus. |
The only regular TNG or
DS9 crew member who doesn’t appear in any
capacity is Lt Commander Worf. See
continuity below. |
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In order
of appearance |
Romulan (shown
twice) |
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Captain
Sisko |
Doctor
Crusher |
Quark |
Lt
Commander Data |
Nausican |
Ensign Ro |
Morn |
Tasha Yar |
Andorian |
Ambassador
Spock |
Lursa (unseen) |
Mordeck (Mordok) |
Leeta (unseen) |
M’Rel
(Data in Romulan disguise) |
Vogan (unseen) |
Rikos
(Picard in Romulan disguise) |
Rom |
Borg x2 |
Captain
Picard |
Lt Kira |
Doctor
Bashir |
Odo |
Doctor
Pulaski |
Admiral
(Captain Calhoun) |
Deanna Troi |
Lt Dax |
Commander
Riker |
Chief
O’Brien |
Lt Barclay |
Harry Kim |
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By 1991 it was obvious that
Doctor Who would not be back for a new series so I
needed something else to fill the void. Star Trek filled
the gap admirably. I’d grown up knowing the original
series, seen all the movies and loved the Next
Generation with its rumours from across the pond of a
deadly new race called the Borg. (Back then we had no
internet!) |
I collected the (by then)
defunct Galoob figures and in 1993 stumbled by chance on
the new line of Playmates Next Generation figures
complete with Borg! I promised myself I’d only buy the
Borg and Deanna Troi (absent from the Galoob line). I
lied. I bought all ten of the first wave and went on to
get many, many more including the Deep Space Nine and
Voyager figures too. |
It was probably around 1997 that
I hit upon the idea of making a Star Trek action figure
film. A movie that would encompass as many of the
figures I’d accrued and crossover The Next Generation
with Deep Space Nine. I wrote most of the script for the
hour long/ four part adventure before it hit the
buffers. A lack of time and probably a loss of interest
in Star Trek (especially with the return of Doctor Who
via the TV Movie and renewed Dapol figures) scuppered
it. |
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But the story still remained. |
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Fast forward to 2013. With the
JJ Abrams Star Trek sequel on the horizon and the toy
licence in the hands of Hasbro I began to hope that we
might get some 3.75” figures. And that the line would be
so successful it would go back and cover Next Generation
as well (which I was more interested in than the
rebooted Kirk and Spock.) Total pipedream, no such
figures were even on the cards. But it did serve to
remind me that I already had a wealth of great action
figures. Totally inspired, I turned to the Star Trek:
Legacy storyline to see if it could be done as a comic.
The original plan had been to make it four episodes of
four pages but I really wanted a weekly presence on the
AFT site. |
Fortunately (with maybe one or
two exceptions) the sixteen individual pages seemed
exciting and meaty enough to carry the story week by
week. |
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The movie script was written up
to the final part where the Borg ship lifts off from the
planet Kalrok and while it needed some editing and
rejigging to get it into the AFT comic format the
barebones remain very much in tact. |
Even after that, I further
edited the script as I storyboarded the seventeen pages.
Some of the action towards the end has been split across
several pages to avoid a rushed ending. A scene from
page 14 where Sisko suggests the quantum singularity
plan to O’Brien was cut, as I felt it wasn’t needed and
gave away the solution too early. |
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One of the stumbling blocks that
prevented Legacy being made before is the wealth
of accurate looking sets required. I fudged some of
details by taking a few things from online. As such I
won’t be able to put the sets up for download, sorry. |
I did some corner cutting by realising
that actual show reused sets. The Nebula class starship
bridge computers are identical in shape to their Romulan
counterparts. |
The bulk of the shoot was conducted on
6th March 2013 with the scenes in the USS Discovery bridge,
lab and ready rooms, the Kalrok facility control room
and lab, the Romulan bridge and shuttle and the Borg
ship interiors. |
On 7th March I shot the scenes in
Quark's on Deep Space Nine. This gave me enough footage
to get the story underway for a few weeks. The remaining
scenes were shot as they were next needed starting with
the bulk of the 'green screen' model shots. Most of
these used ships made by Galoob in the 90s. The only one
I didn't have was the Jem'Hadar ship so I used and
adapted pictures from online. The USS Grissom (Wrath of
Khan) stands in for the Discovery. |
On 1st May I shot the Farragut ready
room scene and all the screen shots of the Admiral plus
the Discovery corridor/ airlock scenes that I'd
forgotten to do when I had the Discovery sets up in
March. |
The final shooting block was on 15th
June for the Kalrok exteriors (using the same planet as
Doctor Who: An Unfair Advantage) and continued
on 16th June with the Defiant interiors. |
The Defiant had been another stumbling
block. With the other ships I could get away with some
details but the Defiant had to be right but was only
needed for a few panels. I solved the problem by using a
backdrop rather than a full set. |
The final bit of shooting was
done on 20th August for the two panels in the Jem'Hadar
ship and the Klingon ships that appear in the final
panel. |
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A good handful of the pages were
edited and ready to go ahead of transmission of page 1.
Others just needed to be lettered week by week but as
time went by I found myself editing pages in the week
they were to be posted online. I’m pleased to say that
no episode was late however. |
Editing on the final pages completed on
21 Aug. |
Once scene cut from page 15 is
an exchange with Odo and Quark about the appearance of
the Romulan fleet. I felt it would be better to show the
Romulans so their dialogue is said ‘off camera’ by Kira. |
The end of the story after the
destruction of the Borg ship was totally missing from
the script and put together on 21st August. I
always knew what it was intended to say though. |
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Issue one was posted online on Friday
17th May and continued weekly until Friday 30th August. |
The final issue contains two pages,
partly to give less of a rushed conclusion and partly to
wrap up Legacy a week early ahead of an 11 week run up
to the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary. |
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One of the things that drew me
to Star Trek initially was its in-universe continuity,
both in terms of technology and in terms of timeline. As
such, this story is steeped in continuity so I’ll try
and take it a bit at a time. |
The Enterprise and Romulans
almost come to blows (in the Next Generation season 1
finale The Neutral Zone) over colonies apparently
‘scooped up’ from The Neutral Zone. We later learn that
this is due to the Borg but this incursion was never
really addressed in the series. It is now as Legacy
suggests the Romulans brought the Borg ship down, as
shown in the opening scene. |
The stardate 48975.2 puts us
squarely between seasons 3 and 4 of Deep Space Nine and
after the movie Generations. The Enterprise D has been
destroyed so I’ve assigned Picard and his crew to The
Farragut- the ship that picks them all up after the
Enterprise has been destroyed. (The main reason for this
when the script was first written was because I didn't
have a model of the Enterprise E but given all the
continuity, I decided to keep it that way.) |
In Deep Space Nine, season 3
ends with the revelation that the shape shifting
Founders have already infiltrated the Alpha Quadrant.
This is why Picard doesn’t readily accept Sisko until he
shows some blood- a way of proving identity that they
use in the series. |
The end of the story ties in
with the DS9 season 4 opener The Way of the Warrior
which sees Worf join the DS9 crew after a leave of
absence at the Klingon monastery on Boreth- hence he is
unable to appear in Legacy. Those are Klingon ships
heading to Deep Space 9 determined to take on the
Dominion. |
Legacy also uses one of my
favourite characters, the half human/ half Romulan
villain Sela last seen in TNG’s season 5 Unification
attempting to invade Vulcan. That story also sees
Ambassador Spock defect to Romulus where we see him at
the start of Legacy. |
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