Trek & Writing Inspiration
Excalibur has been a long time coming, and I've collected many sources of inspiration from around the old internet and the new. Below you'll find a non-exhaustive list of works that inspired me over the years to get into this little nerdproject. Unfortunately, some of them are no longer online, so I've included Internet Archive links whereever I can. If you happen to be the originators of any of these works, PLEASE reach out, I'd love to hear from you again!
Star Trek: The Final Frontier
The Final Frontier was a massive inspiration from the very beginning. Back when it was still a current series in the early 2000's, Chris Adamek and his high-quality (for fanfic at the time) writing, fantastic polish and presentation, and overall dedication to his characters and his writing hobby were something that I aspired to at the time. Chris and I used to chat occasionally via a 3D art forum we were both members of (Millennium CGI) and unfortunately lost contact over the years. Unfortunately it seems like the website is suffering a little from internet attrition, though most of the content is still accessible (most importantly: all five seasons of the actual episodes, each of which are a mini-novella in length). The overall story takes place twenty-ish years after the Dominion War and details an invasion by an enigmatic, ancient civilization known as the Elorg. If you check out just one of the fanfic links on this page, make it this one.
Star Trek: Dragon
Dragon was, similar to TFF, the project of another poster on the Millennium CGI forums named Jon Wasik. Since its start in 1999 to around 2006, the series tells the story of a Federation starship in the post-DS9 timeframe exploring a distant galaxy... a similar concept to Star Trek: Voyager, just dialed up to 11. While the Internet Archive does have quite a lot of backups of the site, a spot-check of the episodes (there are 60 in total) shows some gaps, unfortunately.
Ex Astris Scientia
Ex Astris Scientia has been an institution in Star Trek fan circles on the internet since the late 90's, and is a mammoth resource for in-depth analysis and nerding out. You can easily fall down a rabbit hole on EAS and Bernd seems to really preserve a lot of the feeling of Trek online fandom in the late 90's while keeping the site modern and up-to-date. And a team member of two of his even consulted in some capacity on Star Trek: Picard season 3, I believe.
Daystrom Institute Technical Library
DITL, like Ex Astris Scientia, is an ancient avatar of late 90s/early 00's Star Trek fandom on the internet, and an invaluable resource for people that want to dive deep into fun technobabble minutiae. Unfortunately its original creator and primary curator passed away too young several years ago, but his brother has been keeping the lights on. Unfortunately the design of the site doesn't cooperate perfectly with modern browsers, but the content itself is all still online and being actively maintained/added to.
Legalese
Disclaimer: Star Trek (R), in all its various forms, and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective holders. No infringement on their copyrights is intended. As a form of Star Trek fan site this project does not (and never will) have the intention to make financial gainor any other kind of profit.
