About
Overview
About eight years ago, Starfleet discovered a wormhole hidden in orbit above Union III. The Gateway, which had been constructed in ancient times by the extinct Iconians, led to the heart of the Delta Quadrant--remote territory even by galactic standards. Command immediately recognized the strategic and moral importance of exploring this far-flung new frontier, so it created a new task force and assigned it to the region. Their mission was the usual one: explore strange new worlds, boldly go, and come back in one piece. Then do it again.
The U.S.S. Excelsior, fourth starship to bear the name, is the standard-bearer of that task force. These are her stories.
Star Trek: Excelsior is a full-length, full-cast audio drama set in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe. Our stories are long, arc-based, character-driven, and very involved ("involved" is a polite way of saying "complicated"), but we're confident that you'll find the payoff more than satisfying when we finally come full circle at the end of every season. Sprinkle in the occasional standalone show, and I think you'll find that Excelsior is something special. Enjoy.
Listening to Excelsior
Star Trek: Excelsior is recorded in more than two dozen places on three continents, produced in Adobe Audition and Cool Edit Pro in 192kb sound, and finally released to the public in 128k mp3 sound files. The upshot of all this is that you can listen to Excelsior on pretty much any device that plays music. Windows or Macintosh? You're covered. iPod or Zune? We're there. Burned CD? Car stereo? The boombox you keep under your desk at work for you to use during those boring data entry assignments? We can do that, too. If it plays an mp3, it plays Excelsior. If you have any technical problems, don't hesitate to drop us a line at starshipexcelsior@gmail.com.
But getting Excelsior turned on is only half the battle. There is an art to listening to audio theatre, especially in this age when visuals are king. You cannot listen to Excelsior the same way you watch a YouTube video. You cannot sit passively at your computer and watch your monitor and just listen to our glorious audio landscapes fall out of the speakers. It won't work. You live in a visual age; you will attempt to engage your visual senses. You might listen to the show for a minute, but then you'll wonder if there's anything new on CNN and you'll open up a new browser window and you think it'll be fine because you can still listen while you're reading CNN but you can't because that's not how brains work and soon enough you've missed three minutes of the episode and have no idea what's going on. Trust me: we've all been there.
No, if you want to enjoy Excelsior -- if you want to open yourself to the rich, wide world of audio theater, from Excelsior to our friends at Darker Projects and the BrokenSea hooligans, from the NPR rendition of Star Wars to the BBC's original Hitchhiker's Guide productions, to the whole vast history of audio theatre -- then you have to learn to listen to it. I won't lie: it's a skill. It will take some practice, especially if you're young. But you can start in six easy steps: (1) Put on some headphones. Turn them up. (2) Turn off your computer monitor. (3) Turn out the lights. (4) Turn on an episode of Excelsior. (5) Close your eyes. (6) Imagine.
Keep imagining until the end credits roll. You won't regret it.
With kindest regards,
James Heaney, Executive Producer
February 2010
Episode Guide for New Listeners
We have been asked hundreds of times, "What episode do I listen to first?" The infamous question is finally answered, once and for all, and at considerable length, in our Episode Guide for New Listeners.
Characters
Star Trek: Excelsior has been noted for its unusually large cast, particularly for an audio show. To that end, we've recently killed quite a few people, but we also thought it might help if you got to know the main characters a little better. If you read them, the surviving expendables thank you for saving their fictional lives. (Note that these files contain art -- and spoilers.)
Commander Alcar Dovan, Commanding Officer
Lieutenant J.G. Alecz Lorhrok, First Mate and Chief of Engineering
Lieutenant Asuka Yubari, Chief of Security
Lieutenant J.G. Alex Rol, Special Operations
Captain Rachel Cortez, (Former) Commanding Officer
Lieutenant Commander Neeva, Chief of Operations [in progress]
Doctor Melissa Sharp, Chief of Medicine [in progress]
Synopsis
I was listening to one of the other popular Trek audio dramas the other day when I realized that had, since the last episode, completely forgotten much of what was going on. When they went back and started referencing events from five or six episodes ago, I found myself digging back several months into the archives just to figure out what the characters were talking about. I give you Star Trek: Excelsior's answer to the dilemma:
Excelsior Recap: Everything You Need To Know To Start Listening To The Latest Episode
If you've lost track of recent events -- or you're completely new to the show and want to jump in at the latest episode -- take a peek!
Contest
Back in 2009, we held a script-writing contest, which ultimately resulted in one of our most popular episodes, "No One Gets Out Alive". But there was a lot more to that contest, including four other complete submitted scripts entered by the contest finalists. Check out those scripts here: