Star Trek New Voyages

Star Trek New Voyages – The Holiest Thing – Premiere of the German dubbed version

Star Trek New Voyages is an American fan-film group that has made a total of 11 full length episodes and 5 vignettes for the forth season of The Original Series (TOS). They used original scripts and even some of the original actors to make serious and exciting new episodes of Star Trek. They have had their own website in Germany for over 11 years for subtitles and downloads at www.stnv.de and their episodes have been regularly shown at FedCon. One question that has been asked many times is: “When will the episodes be dubbed into German?” One of the short videos (“Center Seat”) was dubbed into German in 2006 and released. While that was a good start, the German fans were hungry for more.

The decision was made to dub “The Holiest Thing” into German and a panel was held at the last FedCon asking for people to speak the roles and they were found.

The role of Kirk went to a person that is very well known to visitors of FedCon. He did a fantastic job and asked to be a surprise guest star so we will not tell you who he is.

Jens Dombek is known as “the German Spock.” He looks like Spock, sounds like Spock and is the perfect person to voice Spock in the story. His performance makes the part come to life and is instantly recognisable. 

Dr. McCoy is the opposite of Spock. He is over emotional and not afraid to speak his mind. Kai Buchal is a passionate long-term Star Trek fan and always dreamt of playing a role in an episode of Star Trek. He first got the role of the alien nemesis in the episode and he did that so well, that he also got the role of McCoy as well.

Peter Walker, who runs New Voyages is British and therefore predestined to play Scotty. The original “Scotty” on German television had a very friendly, but also very German accent. Peter wanted to give the character a voice that sounds more Scottish and is closer to how the original actor sounded in English. Considering the fact that Scotty appears in two different ages in this episode, this was a special challenge to get this right.

Doctor DeWitt has a small role at the beginning of the episode, but the voice actor is a well known Star Trek author and podcaster: Björn Sülter. He can also be found at FedCon giving readings of his own books.

One of the most important characters for this episode is Carol Marcus. Star Trek fans know her for being the mother of the Genesis project and Kirk’s son, David! Yet she is first seen in the second Star Trek movie (The Wrath of Khan) so many people have been asking why we never heard of Carol and David before, as he is a grown man when we see him in the movie. “The Holiest Thing” tells the story of how Carol and Kirk first met and how this led to to her being the mother of Kirk’s son. Silke Schuller applied for the role at the last FedCon. Her first job was as an actress who trained in Aschaffenburg and she always dreamt of being a dubbing artist. She gave a very powerful and believable performance as Carol that makes the entire episode all the more believable. She is the mother of two children and the perfect choice to play the role of a terra-former of new planets.

It took many months to compile all the voices together and add them to the timeline so perfectly, that you might think the episode was filmed in German. Hundreds of hours were spent making this episode perfect in German.

You may notice that that the planetary shuttle is named “Cologne” in this episode. Most of the visual effects were made in Cologne by visual effects expert Tobias Richter, who has been providing impressive visual effects for New Voyages since “Enemy Starfleet.” New Voyages, International is also based in Cologne.

“The Holiest Thing” will have its German language premiere (“Das heiligste Wesen”) at FedCon on Friday 7 June at 15:15. It will be shown again on Saturday at 17:00 and released online a week later on 15 June 2019 at 17:01. For those that do not speak German, the film will be shown with English subtitles and can be seen in English on the website www.stnv.de/tht