Watch Star Trek Continues: The Critically-Acclaimed, Fan-Made Sequel to the Original TV Series

Despite its lega­cy and influ­ence, the orig­i­nal Star Trek ran three sea­sons (or 79 episodes in total) before NBC can­celed the show in June, 1969. Only in syn­di­ca­tion did Star Trek achieve cult sta­tus, and did its grow­ing num­ber of fans start to won­der: What if Star Trek had con­tin­ued? How would the sto­ry have played out? Enter Star Trek Con­tin­ues, a crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed, fan-pro­duced web­series cre­at­ed by direc­tor and actor Vic Mignogna.

If you ask the son of Gene Rod­den­ber­ry, the cre­ator of the orig­i­nal TV series, Star Trek Con­tin­ues has man­aged to cre­ate a bona fide sequel. “I do have to say … I’m pret­ty damn sure my dad would con­sid­er this canon. The fact that you do sto­ries that mean some­thing, that have depth, that make us all think a lit­tle bit… I real­ly think he would applaud you guys.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal adds to this:

[Star Trek Con­tin­ues] comes fright­en­ing­ly close to repli­cat­ing the orig­i­nal series, in the sets, make-up and hair­styles, cos­tumes and music… The art direc­tion pre­cise­ly cap­tures the Day-Glo visu­als of ear­ly col­or TV. Most remark­able is Mr. Mignogna; no actor play­ing, for instance, James Bond has imi­tat­ed Sean Con­nery out­right, but Mr. Mignogna comes so scar­i­ly close to the dynam­ic, stac­ca­to ener­gy of William Shat­ner that we keep for­get­ting we’re look­ing at anoth­er actor.

Thanks to fund­ing raised by two Kick­starter cam­paigns, you can now watch 5 episodes. Click play and watch the episodes on a Youtube playlist above, from start to fin­ish. Or watch them on the offi­cial Star Trek Con­tin­ues web­site, where, among oth­er things, you can take a 360 vir­tu­al tour of the set. You can also make a dona­tion, which will help sup­port the 6th episode due out in May, and anoth­er 7 episodes beyond that.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Isaac Asi­mov Went from Star Trek Crit­ic to Star Trek­Fan & Advi­sor

Nichelle Nichols Explains How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film