02/11/07 - New Player - We welcome A'Chala to our litter.
012/15/06 - New Webspace We were unable to update for a while due to running out of webspace. It's ben taken care of.
07/26/06 - New Introductory Joke - For years, we had the following words to introduce our sim to readers:
"Do you like Star Trek? Do you like to laugh? Do you like meeting new friends and having adventures? Do you like being tackled by over-friendly Romulans and fed cookies and milk? Er...never mind about that last question"
Well, it was pointed out there was a problem. Our Rommie is gone.
The joke no longer made sense.
So, I made a slight change. As we have one other girl noted for her tackles, only a small one was needed.
Still, it seems like the end of an era. ;.;
07/24/06 - New Characters - A few changes in the crew roster. "Thor" was officially added, and more recently Ensign Falken. Also, exit Dr. Ennin, enter Dvorak.
On a sadder note, following a decline in activity, Lera stopped showing up, then officially quit. Her antics (and Leracookies) will be missed.
03/16/06 - New Forum - We finally have a new forum up and running. Many thanks to the FKA staff.
03/03/06 - Another Fantasy comic from "Sailor Poison" is up: Project Redman. Like the other, it rates PG-13.
A little bad news about the forums. Some wise-guy hacker decided to have some fun at our expense, and so the board is down until further notice.
Webmaster's note: To those who read both this website and my own, the Writer's Block, a little bad news. Following a recent attempt to make a minor update to my website, contacting the server owners resulted in me being told my alloted space was not at maximum, and cannot be updated any more without upgrading to a more expensive level.
Not sure how this will be resolved. For now, the "Writer's Block" is in hiatus.
02/06/06 - "Sailor Poison," the player behind Lott, has another comic up: FF7 Aftermath, based on the characters from the "Final Fantasy 7" game. It's rated PG-13 (yes, girls draw riskee stuff too).
01/09/06 - Happy New Year We're finally on our way again with the sim again. And a couple odds and ends to report. Another nickname for Lera was added to her bio page. And Vivian, the player behind Vak-Surik, has been scripting a webcomic (with someone else being the artist). Sorry to say "Sailor Poison," the player behind Lott, had her comic taken offline when the server crashed.
11/28/05 - Comic With the FKA's newsletter held up due to computer trouble, the comic due to be on it is now in the gallery ahead of it.
11/14/05 - "Gimme an F" And now officially we have another vessel. The USS Freedom 1979-F. Our "year without a ship" will end with us in one, albeit barely keeping her spaceworthy.
11/07/05 - More New Art - Another pic from Murray Lee, this time of Hafpipe and Melvin Orlan. This art puts the "cling" in Klingon.
And some long-overdue promotions are taken care of in the Crew Roster.
10/25/05 - New Art - Murray Lee is back in the art business and has a new peice in the gallery. Lott's new form is not necessarily viewed as cuddly and huggable, or rather felt.
10/24/05 - Update - "Planet Survivor," the setting of the recent plotline, now has it's entry in the Universe page. Special thanks to Saia.
09/24/05 - New Art - "Gypsy," a friend of the player behind Vak-Surik did a pciture of her. It's now in the gallery.
09/19/05 - New Player - We welcome Vak-Surik to our "illogical" sim.
8/08/05 - Made some changes in the Crew Roster, reflecting Ironbottom's new status, as well as entries for Ben Dover, and Admiral S'Cowl.
7/25/05 - RIP Scotty It was only months ago that he announced he was attending his last sci-fi convention, due to Alzheimers. James Doohan, best known for his role as "Scotty" in Star Trek finally passed away - news item.
Rest in Peace.
On a happier note, Lera has another picture for us in the gallery.
4/4/05 - Online Comic Cameo - Mark Stanley of Freefall gave a certain character a mention. Check it out in the gallery.
3/23/05 - Made some slight changes to the Dominion page to improve the humor, after some suggestions from Saia. I had asked him about the matter a few weeks before, but he's been going through some tough times lately.
3/5/05 - Update The Dominion now face their own parodying page on the Universe section.
2/20/05 - Update A page for Trek Culture of the "Next Generation/DS9" era is up on the Universe page. Compare it to the Trek Culture of the Clasical era, and you'll notice a few big changes.
2/07/05 - Enterprise headed to scrapyard Well, it was made official. After the current season ends, no more episodes of "Enterprise".
18 years after it got a second life on television, Star Trek is headed back into mothballs.
As the head of a Trek sim, this news certainly got my attention and my thinking. I had stopped watching the show after that one season closer showed an attack on Earth by some strange unknown entity. After a start that was interesting despite the plotholes, after a while things just seemed to go downhill. I heard from a few the show was starting to do better. But obviously it was too little too late. For some time, I kept hearing fellow sci-fi fans that the show ought to be plugged and Trek given a break for a while, a viewpoint that I leaned to as well, given my disapointment with the show.
Well, we got our wish, for better or worse.
It certainly isn't the end of Trek as there are still reruns as well as CDs of all those episodes in the store. And of course the books in the bookstore, the fanfiction and websites online, the games, and of course the RPGs such as this sim. For many fans, this is preferable to what they saw as a rotten show. Others have mixed feelings, feeling the writers were starting to come up with something halfway decent.
In any event, it won't quite be the same with only reruns on TV.
There will be a new series, eventually. Even if the major networks decide there's not enough ratinings in it for them, there's always the Sci-fi channel or some other cable outlet. Also, technology is continuing to change broatcasting, with broadband allowing files to be downloaded fairly fast. There's already a group making fanfilms based on the Original Series, USS Exter. http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/exeterstudio/
Even if the networks wont pick it up, the fans won't let it stayed burried forever.
At a time when the best in sci-fi was "Lost in Space," Roddenberry came up with quite a concept. A "wagon train to the stars" as he called it. If there was a reoccuring message to the show, it was that despite everything humanity was facing from polution to war to nuclear weapons, it would survive them all and go on to it's destiny in space. Even as the concern about nukes from Russia has changed to nukes from Islamo-facists, it's still a message that people still take heart in - although we would prefer it if the writers who replaced it's creator didn't have most humans living under an economic system that doesn't work.
So we Trekkies/Trekkers can take heart - it'll be back.
Now, about Lucas and what he's been doing to Star Wars lately ...
12/19/04 - Goodbye Freedom-E Well, the ship took us through many years and adventures. But some kept saying it was "overdue" for an explosion. It certainly had lasted much longer than it's predecessors, which usually lasted only months.
So Payne joins the ranks of Freedom captains who've had their ships blow up on their watch. On the other hand, since Ironbottom had technicaly removed him from command, maybe some would say he hasn't.
11/29/04 - New Bios Lt. Halfpipe and NPC Lt. Droolin have their bios up.
11/22/04 - New Art Murray Lee did a late Halloween pic. Or would some consider it an odd sort of Thanksgiving?
11/13/04 - RE-CONSTRUCTION Our old webserver gave out on us. So we had to get a new one. So the site has to rebuild.
It may take a while, and pardon us if we miss a page or image.
Oh, speaking of images, we went around and edited the Diagram of the Freedom with an image more of you should see without trouble (thanks Halfpipe).
Oh, and there's some more artwork in the gallery, from "Sailor Poison," both Lera related. Sorry I forgot to mention the first and the second I stumbled across when going over the images in site reconstruction.
10/19/04 - Update Planet Megas-Tu gets a mention in the Universe page .
10/18/04 - Junked Roster? The crew roster has gotten some minor changes due to Junk water effects a couple of the crew wanted to keep.
10/12/04 - Ode to Lera Been a while since anything out of the ordinary was updated. We have an Ode to Lera, better known as the Meeeeeean to Meeeeee Lera parody song by Murray Lee.
He says his artistic muse must be getting tweaky. Comments welcome in the buliten board.
7/5/04 - New Art by Murray Lee in the in the gallery. A take on the Lera-Lynx "catfights."
Also, a few bad links there have been corrected.
2/11/04 - Small Update in the Universe page as a recently visited planet gets a mention.
1/19/04 - New Art in the gallery courtesy of Lera herself. Someone's been playing "The Sims" for a while.
1/12/04 - New Board We now have a new forum , thanks to "Stormy." Hopefully this will mean less problems than on the previous one.
10/20/03 - Ch-Ch-Ch-CHanges - Slight corections have been made in the Freedom Information Packet, the Syntax Guide, weblinks , and the crew roster to reflect some recent changes in the sim.
9/7/03 - New Rule now listed in the Freedom Information Packet, after some discussion concerning input from some players.
7/5/03 - New Art by Murray Lee in the in the gallery. A comment about Lera's participation in the sim.
8/3/03 - New Player in the sim. We can count on "Kura" to put his best foot forward.
7/17/03 - New Art from "Skylioness" in the gallery. Three pictures, this girl is on a roll.
Also, the Universe page gets another entry, probably the last without being involved with the Freedom in some fashion, such as a stopover at a planet.
7/13/03 - Finally, a full page report of New Calfornia in the Universe page.
7/12/03 - New Art in the gallery from "Skylioness," this time a little ribbing of Lera.
7/9/03 - New Art , courtesy of "Skylioness," in the gallery
On a more somber note, it was one year ago that our friend Virginia, the player behind Azzura Brinks , suddenly passed away at the age of 29. A year later, she is still missed by all.
7/5/03 - New Art in the gallery from Murray Lee. Call it the long and the short of the Freedom.
6/30/03 - New Player in the sim. Welcome T'kee, to our "nest."
6/12/03 - New Art from Murray Lee in the sim gallery. One of Demian Tempress during a hilarious point during the adventures at New California.
6/2/03 - New Player in the sim. We welcome "Melvin" to the craziness.
5/30/03 - More Art in the gallery from that rascal Alqua Kalina , some recent, some that was forgotten in the rush to get the site up and runing.
5/29/03 - Welcome to the new website for the USS Freedom Star Trek sim. For the veterans, hope you like the popup-free place. For the newcomers, thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoy yourseleves here (shows the plate of Leracookies).