Season 4, Episode 1: Nowhere Near Utopia
Captain Field’s Log, stardate January 7, 2015.

By all accounts: performing, watching, hanging out, it was another fun evening at Holodeck Follies, as echoed by this lovely tweet by Elizabeth Morriss:

On the variety front, Susannah Kiernan kicked off the show in song by soulfully, woefully imploring us to Come Bring Your Cart To Me – a parody of Madonna’s “Open Your Heart”.

Susannah’s character may be prescient in that our impending doom under the robot overlords will begin with self-checkout lanes in the grocery store. You can check out more of Susannah’s work with L’il RasGals – with us in March, or if you are impatient, sooner around town.

The Gutter Snakes were a flurry of funny. We were honoured with some sci-fi sketches built specifically for our show: the Betazoid distraction sketch was reminiscent of a scene that would occur on the USS Albatross and the
Beam Me Up Scotty sketch tugged at our Trekkie hearts. They also had a stripper, ghost story, and reunion sketches that had funny premises.

Calwyn Shurgold rounded out the funny variety segment of our show with some great stand-up. He has a great Doc Brown and Matthew McCaughnahey impression and used both in a topical (yet Star Trek) manner. His Crispin Glover impression was top notch but it didn’t seem to work with the audience. Calwyn’s Transformer bit and Star Wars character or Rapper quiz recaptured their interest. He ended his set with his signature Whyte Whyne rap.

The Dandies had a lot to live up to, entertainment wise, and they met the challenge with their improvised episode.

This episode saw the conclusion to the harrowing misadventure with the Romulan adversaries from the end of last year.

Guyson (Alan Leightizer) and T’pai (Andie Wells) came up with a two-pronged approach to defeating the Romulans – creating a trojan shuttle to deliver dilithi-wrong into the Romulan warp core, and using Ensign Space MacCounaghey (Calwyn Shurgold) and Captain Tachyon Field (Dale Wells) as sacrifice diversions. Meanwhile, the Romulan crew (Gutter Snakes) had sexy boarding plans of their own.

Both plans worked: the Romulans were captured, the dilithi-wrong was exchanged for dilithium, and no one died.

To celebrate, The USS Albatross arrived at the Starbucks planet and ordered coffee for everyone from the disgruntled diplomat-server (Susannah Kiernan).

The audience were also helpful throughout, with their laughs fueling the action, and assisting with excellent sound effects.

A post-show shot of the cast and variety performers:

Maegan, our wonderful Front of House manager, captured this video snippet:

You missed this one but you can always join us for the next silly Star Trek story.

End Transmission.

On February 3rd, Holodeck Follies is back at The Social Capital Theatre for another silly Star Trek story and some of our favourite variety acts.

“[T]his improvisational comedy show will delight Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike.” – John K. Kirk

Laugh Long and Prosper