Thursday, November 30, 2006

Stardate 60914.64 - USS Excalibur

As we approach Stardate 61000.00 (and the start of a new year), it is time for the annual explanation of how this blog got its name and the annual crew roster update.

In 1989, my college roommate, Cheryl Wimer, and I were sitting around watching reruns of Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS), and we started talking about what "our" ship would be like, if we existed in that "alternate reality". :-)

Before long, we were drawing up our crew roster, with our friends as the crew. During our tenure at Virginia Tech, we updated the roster each year. My friend James and I even wrote some "fan fiction" about our ship, which we placed in the time frame of ST:TOS. With my interest in fantasy, we decided to use the name Excalibur, which was actually a starship destroyed in a ST:TOS episode. We decided that we would be the new crew for the rebuilt ship.

Later, we decided to update the time frame to that of The Next Generation (ST:TNG), but we kept the name. Imagine our surprise when the Excalibur appeared in a TNG episode! So we have had to fudge our history a little, but we kept the name.

After graduation I continued to update the crew roster, adding and deleting people as friends and friends' significant others came and went. The core crew has remained on the roster, however. I even attempted to roughly follow the US Navy's time frame on promotions (thanks to Major Denise Donnell, currently of the New York Air National Guard and formerly of the US Navy, for technical assistance). As command staff (line officers) have reached the rank of Captain, they have been given their own command. So now there are several ships on the roster.

So here we are, 18+ years after the first crew roster was created, and I am still updating them (some would say I am still wasting my time, but I have to put that creative writing minor to some use).

So here is where you can find the latest roster - be advised that I do tweak the roster somewhat throughout the year, but the roster found here is the definitive roster.

NYC

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! You are such a geek! :-)

Curt Sawyer said...

Yes...yes I am.

Unknown said...

So if a divorce occurs, does the lawyer say "wait, it's not over until Curt updates the roster?"

Trailing Male said...

Hmm... I had thought that it was all based on one of the "official" fan club things. Scary that someone would put that much work into it on their own... obsessive, even. Geek hardly describes it.

Trailing Male said...

Well, at least Sean's final promotion makes sense: Rear Admiral Lower Half (Equine).

;-)

Curt Sawyer said...

We have had divorces and usually one spouse ends up dropping off the list. I think only my college-ex actually was killed off in the story line (I think we decided she was beamed into a wall).