Zeke's Excelsior episode: "Listen"

[Zeke]

This is another unusual update, but a very important one.

Several years ago, Wowbagger invited me to write an episode of his Star Trek audio series, Starship Excelsior. (You may remember me mentioning this in a newspost.) I had to get caught up on the series first, which took a while. Then I had to think of a story, which proved much easier because I collected interesting bits to follow up on as I listened -- and eventually realized how I could use this setting to tell a Trek story that's been on my back burner for decades.

I sent him my pitch in September 2017. If that sounds like three years ago, yeah, tell me about it. We worked on, struggled with, even fought over this episode for so long that I hardly remember the time before my brain was full of it. It was finally finished this March, and he and his crew spent another six months bringing it to life.

I really hope you'll listen to it, even if you aren't familiar with the show. (But NOTE: if you aren't, you should start at the 2-minute mark. The biggest spoiler is before that point; the rest are of a kind which, if you decide to check out the show afterwards, you'll likely have forgotten by the time you get to them.) While this story lives deeply in Excelsior's continuity, the basics of it should work even if you have to fill in some blanks as you go.

The name, for several reasons, is "Listen", and I hope you will.

(PS: Wowbagger let me pick the production code for this episode. He should have known better. I chose 5M.)

(PPS: I hope to squeeze in an actual this-site update before the election, so watch this space.)