Begin Docking Procedures - at Starbase 24

At the edge of Federation space, one of the key installations stands, acting as a place from which both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire operate a joint fleet...

It's also the name of a UK-based Star Trek club who have a lot to offer.

Originally, Starbase 24 was a Starfleet/Klingon Banquet started as a group of friends, led by husband and wife team James and Charlotte, aka Admiral Mackenzie and Rear Admiral Kehlan. They arranged a sit-down meal after a well-known signing show in Milton Keynes and it was a different way to have some fun, eat good food and raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. Thanks to both Charlotte and Daniel Adams, one of Starbase 24's highly valued Command Staff, we're going to find out even more right now...

"I was at the SF Ball in Bournemouth and a bunch of Klingons were sitting round a table complaining that a Klingon banquet could not be done in this country." recalled Charlotte, "I made the mistake of butting in and saying I thought it could be done and that I would do it. The result was, I went home after the event and started looking into the idea. We quickly came to the conclusion that the whole “medieval banquet in a castle” thing was way overpriced and that there were not enough Klingons in the UK to make it a specialist Klingon event. 

"So we picked a date, found a hotel and planned it out. Then we went and sold tickets. I think there were about 48 people at the first banquet and we raised around £1200 for Macmillan Cancer."

One year, the signing show didn't take place in Milton Keynes but the event continued and since then, the banquet has moved from Milton Keynes to Northampton and to its current home in Peterborough. This eighth event took place on the 24th and 25th October and is a full weekend event, with parties on both the Friday and Saturday night. Notably for the first time they are offering a programme of daytime activities on the Saturday. All profits raised will be divided between Macmillan Cancer Support, and Eastern German Shepherd Dog Rescue. 

Since the First Banquet, the group has raised over £13,300 which includes the aforementioned Banquets, fundraising stands at events, and individual charity projects requiring sponsorship. Away from the fundraising side, the group runs a series of message boards and social network pages that encourage role-play, and offer a helping point for other clubs and groups seeking members or vice versa.

As you may have clocked, the last one of this series took place only a week or so ago "...and with 85 people in attendance we raised £3356 for our charities (3/4 goes to Macmillan and the remaining 1/4 to a local dog charity and a hedgehog hospital)" said Charlotte.

After a day spent transforming the venue into a haunted Federation starbase and a buffet the event was kicked off by Lieutenant Ramsbottom leading a group of “volunteer” Minions in doing the Minion YMCA. Yes - that's not a figment of your imagination, that did say Minions. According to Charlotte it was ..."a theme that led to much hilarity, lots of grown men wandering around in dungarees and yellow t-shirts and random cries of “Bottom”".

Saturday morning saw Fleet Captain Daniel Adams hosting a special training session, designed to teach advanced fleet tactics to the Academy cadets or in more common English they played Attack Wing. This was followed by a dance class for those of us with two left feet, to help us learn the convention dances. Anyone who has ever been to a con has probably noticed that there are set dances to many popular songs like Time Warp, Doctor Who and Joe 90 to name just a few, some of them more complicated than others.

Later in the day, Starfleet Intelligence held a seminar on historic medical techniques involved in interstellar espionage, with a particular focus on the Klingon Empire - or more literally a professional makeup expert held a masterclass on Klingon makeup.

The highlight of the event was the Saturday evening comprising of a formal three course banquet with guests sitting down to themed dishes such as Talaxian Hlaka soup, roasted targ in warnog sauce and the Tears of the Prophets. Special Guest for the evening was occasional Star Wars actor and costumer Alan Flyng who took a turn as both a Stormtrooper and an Imperial Officer for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. 

He gave a short after dinner talk then followed by a charity auction, raffle and finally a disco. "We were caught completely by surprise, when Alan Flyng called us over and presented us with all his takings from signing autographs during the night which, combined with the money from ticket sales, the auction and raffle, meant we reached an unbelievably great sum of £2800." said Charlotte. "This wasn't good enough for our guests however, and a spontaneous collection was held, raising another £300 plus in just under 15 minutes. We later learned the true amount was £3356!"

As a result the group has been able to announce that they will be holding a Ninth Banquet, also to be held at the Park Inn, Peterborough, on 23rd and 24th Oct 2015. Their special guest for that event will be Virginia Hey known for her appearance in Farscape. Alan Flyng will also be returning but this time as a paying guest after enjoying the event that much. Funnily a few weeks ago Charlotte was "vehemently" against the possibility of a ninth go at the event - but with success like this, how can you refuse!

By now you're thinking that that must be the big - and maybe only thing - that this group do. You'd be wrong on that count and while I can imagine that organising the banquet takes a ton of time, they still manage to be active in a whole host of other ways. In fact, a lot of it can be traced back to that original fateful chat at that one convention...

"As all this (the original banquet) was being prepared, we went to a signing event and got chatting to a guy called Lee, exchanged email addresses, phone numbers etc." said Charlotte.  "One of the things I’d said in casual conversation was that I’d love to build a website to feature my Star Trek writing. Two days later, he rang me and said “go to this web address....” It turned out he’d gone home and built me a website. We added a forum to the site and a couple of friends signed up to it. That was the beginnings of Starbase 24."

Currently there are about 40 people registered on the forum and 300 on the Facebook group page. Over the years Starbase 24 has slowly built up relations with other groups, notably the USS Obready in Canada, who they are proud to call their sister club. The group also have a particularly good relationship with the UK branches of Starfleet International.

On the internet you can find them pretty easily with a very packed website containing just about every snippet of info, pictures and more that could want to know about this group. Over the years they're built up quite an archive from the banquets and events as well as a selection of famous people who've taken the seat in their very own Captain's Chair. Well worth a look that one just to see if you can name - or remember - all the faces that they've welcomed.

If you've looking for a chat there's some active rooms as part of the site and further in
there's a fantastically detailed history that chronicles the starbase's past as well as the Federation/Klingon fleet and their ranking system. There are also very detailed deck by deck plans of the base which will enthral series fans for hours and some new classes of ships specific to this group and their station within the franchise universe. The exposition here and the expansion beyond what was seen on the screen is very impressive. Clearly this group focus just as much time on the events of the real world as they do in strange new worlds and new civilisations.

"In all this, huge amounts of credit go to my Command Team, who over the years, made the mistake of getting involved and volunteering and ended up helping to run things. They are a fantastic, dedicated and caring bunch of people and I couldn’t do this without them." enthused founder Charlotte.

Interestingly it was the Some Kind of Star Trek article on the seemingly desolate fan scene in the UK which put Starbase 24 in contact with us. There we discussed just how vibrant the UK scene was for clubs, was there a future in Star Trek organisations on these shores and what could be done to help them survive and thrive. We can see from the banquets, events and fundraising exactly why this group has survived and is thriving but what does Charlotte, aka Rear Admiral Kehlan, get out of all this? What's the buzz in a time when Star Trek is just coming back from the brink thanks (or no thanks) to JJ Abrams.

"...Many things, not least the friendship of some amazing people, an outlet for my creativity (among other things I love making costumes and writing fan fiction), I get the satisfaction of handing over respectable amounts of money to various charities and knowing I’ve done something good. I love seeing people coming together and having fun, coming out of their shell and growing and developing. I have learned that I can do many things I never thought possible.

"The group has grown, developed and changed over the years but the core principles of friendship, fun and no politics, remain intact. The JJ movies, while controversial, did bring new members to the fold, members who have gone on to discover the older, original trek and fall in love with it. One thing that has helped hold us together is that we all share a common attitude - that this hobby we all love is supposed to be fun. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and can laugh at ourselves. Starbase 24 even has a Wraith Ambassador (please note that Stargate technology is banned in the Federation as it interferes with warp drive)."

"This is more of a group and perhaps less of a club. We are a group of friends and new friends are always welcome, regardless of race/sexuality/disability."

In the last two years alone Starbase 24 have gone skydiving for charity, attempted the ice bucket challenge (ever seen a Klingon do the challenge?) and their “choir” sang Star Trekkin' at the front of the Royal Albert Hall after the concerts in May. In April they took part in First Contact Day and also provided crew for a Star Trek movie marathon in Lincoln. Add in to that mix Christmas parties, BBQs, mini get togethers just for fun and you can see that this is a group that has a strong future."

I love that they have this dual position within the fictional Star Trek universe and also in the real world where they are regularly out and about and staying active. Surely Starbase 24 is a perfect example of how a Star Trek club can be run and sustained during these more lean times - and more notably in the UK.

Thanks to Charlotte Kebbell for her update on the recent banquet and its evolution and to Daniel Adams for filling in the history of the group.

All photographs and images by kind permission of Starbase 24

To find out more about Starbase 24, please check out www.starbase24.co.uk!

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Is There Life in the UK Yet?

We've been exploring, reviewing, discussing, analysing, whatever you want to call it, for 16 months now and one thing is becoming even more evident the longer that Some Kind of Star Trek exists.

In order to talk about it, I've brought in +Aaron Darkwood who I've discussed the UK "club" scene with previously to give his opinion/response to my concerns...Let's get talking...

UK Wasteland

It's probably a massive exaggeration but this topic seems absolutely right for now especially with the recent announcement of Destination Star Trek London for October 2014. That in itself proves that the fanbase in the UK is alive and hungry for a massive event in the heart of the capital. However, search the internet, look around and it's really, really hard to find any clubs or associations that are Star Trek-based in the UK or more specifically, around the Stoke area where I am. Hopefully just saying that has made a few people aim their mouse for our email button or the comments box below to prove me wrong but it feels like a ghost town on this side of the pond. I would love to see more groups sprout up or want to be discussed/featured on Some Kind of Star Trek as we want to support fandom not just in on-screen projects. Maybe the internet itself is what has caused a dearth of UK clubs because of the way in which we can now communicate with fans across the planet.

I do have a few friendships that have been formed outside of the SKoST Contingent and while they are excellent contacts, they seem to be the noticable minority. In fact I scanned through the net looking for a fairly local group but the only one I could find is the Manchester/Leeds club that seems to be impossible to contact.

What pains me is that if you do Google Search "star trek clubs staffordshire" or "star trek clubs stoke on trent" it's hard to find anything and what you do find isn't there anymore. It's actually a bit depressing and after the fifth or sixth page your will to live is packing its bags and heading for the transporter.

There was a club based in Stockport but this seems to have gone the way of the dodo about nine years ago. The USS Demeter website seems non-existent and their blog contains just two entries from 2005. Aside from that there's nothing and I'm not including any sci-fi clubs in this - just groups purely focusing on Star Trek. Some of those clubs that started as Star Trek groups have since evolved into groups that encompass all of sci-fi - actually something that happened to the small group I helped set up in my school in the late 1990's.

Has it really come to this? Now I love getting together with the guys from SKoST (reminder that we need to sort our next meeting out +Carl Thomson +Mark Thwaite +Alex Plant +Hayley Atherton +Joe Hardacre) but there have to be more of us out there and certainly in the local area. Checking out a few sites such as Starbase 24 and Starfleet Command there are clubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Northampton, Ireland, Swansea, South Wales, Bristol and Northumberland however most of these sites were on Tiscali or Lycos and ceased to be something like five years ago.

The Social Media

Dropping through Facebook is almost as fruitless however there is the Manchester/Leeds group which is still in existence. Originally two "sister" clubs it now appears to work as a single unit with alternating meetings. The 150+ members of the online face of the club are keeping it going but from my perspective both Leeds and Manchester are not exactly close to pop out to on a Thursday evening after a full day at work. I know you MUST be out there (there's a UK fans page on Facebook which has over 500 followers) so why does it seem so quiet? What is happening with UK fandom because I would love to get beneath it's skin and truly know what we can offer on this fair isle.

What I want to understand is how and why these clubs are either under the radar or why they died out. Was it numbers, meeting places, lack of new Star Trek or that they just fell out of love with the show?  +Aaron Darkwood and I had a chat over Hangouts last year over just this subject and how we could look into building something here in the UK because we could do with something that could bring us all together. 

Chatting on the internet is one thing, sharing your thoughts via a forum is another but there's nothing like a face to face rant over the finer points of the Dominion War or just how many times Voyager landed. Risa, as a social network is a great start from a UK-based fan however we're all too happy to sit (just as I am now) behind the brightly lit laptop screen and shy away from proper good old talking. So why aren't we trying to sort this out? I'm sure just in Staffordshire there will be a ton of Star Trek fans (and even Enterprise fans(!!!!)) who would love to find others with a common interest. But what is it that has driven the interest "underground" so to speak especially now we're in an era where JJ has brought the franchise into the mainstream, even making it a certifiable summer blockbuster in 2009 and 2013?

If you are reading this and thinking that you were in one of those clubs or know of one that is still going strong in the UK (North West preferable) then get in touch. We would love to find out more about you and what makes you tick. What's the secret that's kept you going for however many years? 

Right - there's the challenge and I know it won't be our last. Let's see if we can create a rebirth and a bit of excitement around the UK fan scene, let's take over local cinemas for showings of HD Chain of Command and build our own UK-based replica Original Series bridge!!!

Who's with me?!

And In Response from +Aaron Darkwood 

"The Original Series bridge" hey, Clive? Well that's ambitious, although the Enterprise-A bridge, Star Trek VI era was always my favourite! But it is true what you say, the clubs have vanished. Clubs, now there's a word  I used to shy away from that very tone back in the day, as a Starfleet Command member in (thinks back) 1990 I think, when it was all snail-mail connected, although there were meet ups and it was well run.

You raised a few interesting points, but is it really that Star Trek isn't on our screens anymore? As a fan it is certainly on my screen at least on a monthly basis in some form or another. We were granted the two new Star Trek films, implying at least, that from a cinema point of view the name is being kept alive, but it is just that, just the name? 

I think the Star Trek films of late are not fan films, they are films aimed at the masses in order to capitalise on the franchise and make money. Sci-fi fans everywhere who accept and like Star Trek will argue they are great films, and as films in themselves, they are. But true dedicated Star Trek fans, and any of you mention the term "Trekkies" will encounter Klingon pain sticks rapidly, will tell you that the films were flawed in so many ways, destroying cannon and existing story etc etc etc that they are not films aimed or made for us.

Meet and Greet

As a Star Trek fan myself, I like the technology, the story, the direction and the ambiance of Star Trek. It's moral story telling, it's future vision and all of that. I have never been a person who wants to collect plates and mugs, or queue up for autographs  and ask actors what their favourite episode was. There are some actors who are fans, but not many, and I can see the cringe in their faces and the embarrassment as they attend conventions. I would like to meet Captain Picard, I don't have any urge to meet Patrick Stewart, that sort of thing. Now if they did a convention and all actors arrived and stayed in character, that would be great!

As a Star Trek fan I have dressed in costume, almost a necessity to be involved really, have attend film showings, charity events, live action roleplays on stage, Final Frontiers micro-machine board game events involving starship battles. I've designed LCARS board for such games, and even started building a bridge with friends once, but got stalled due to cost. Of all of it, the live action roleplay was probably the greatest fun. Donning the uniform, assuming your character, and engaging in a mission.  For a while, I did this as a written format, on the internet writing a character. That was fun too, and also something I miss.

So if a new "club" was formed today, what would I like to see?

In traditional ship format, so the club run as a ship, with people assuming roles. I don't want to be just another Trekkie talking about a fixation of a TV program. I want to live a role and immerse myself into it. Both feet in the water.

Actual face to face meet ups. And if this is a national group, that's going to be more difficult for some than others, but if its monthly, annually or something else, I would like people to actually meet every now and then.

A creative base for activity. Which in modern terms is going to be a website where people can interact, upload to, and add content. In the USA some "ships" managed this quite well, although a lot have dropped off, gone dead or quiet etc. But the ship would be designed, built upon, developed and discussed. The ship would have a roleplay story and a fictitious direction of where it was going, what it was doing at any given time. Design stats for engines, and other technology would be modified, tweaked and reviewed as engineering projects. And all departments would have an involvement in this. Everybody can contribute something.

Away missions held locally. As a National based group there are going to be people who live near each other. With the Captains permission, a designated officer could lead an away mission in some part of the country, either by transporter (everybody just turns up) or via shuttlecraft (a group go in a car to some event) and the story continued and written about afterwards and shared with the rest of the crew. It could just be a meet up down the pub, or attending a convention somewhere, a day in a shopping mall doing something for charity or something else.

Crew bonding. The purpose isn't just sharing a hobby, but developing a philosophy. Star Trek fans, ones who immerse themselves into it, tend to have the Star Trek outlook. The ones you share an affinity to are ones you will likely build a close friendship with. You may not be the clean cut UN loving peacekeeper that Starfleet academy churns out, you might be a bad tempered warmonger who will no doubt adapt a Klingon identity/character.

So if this was created, would you help to run it, be a part of it, show an interest or something else?

Are you in one of the UK clubs that DO meet up? Let us know you exist by emailing us or dropping a line in the comments below. Let's spread the word some more and talk about your successes or the difficult path to ensure you've stayed afloat.