Star Trek: New Voyages creator James Cawley said last week that upcoming episodes of his fan film series will raise the quality so much NV will be "indistinguishable from modern network television."

"We listened to a lot of criticisms from fans and we love it, we want to get better," Cawley told the Trek Movie Report. "For this one we really upped the ante visually and performance wise it is going to astound people what we have been able to accomplish this time."

In addition to featuring high-profile guest actors such as George Takei (Hikaru Sulu) and using professional-grade filming equipment, New Voyages will now also benefit from visual effects that will match the look of the rest of the series. "The problem was that the effects were done by guys with their own vision, but they were donating it on the terms that they could do it their own way," Cawley said. Thanks to a new effects team supervised by Daren Dochterman, future NV episodes should "look like the 4th season had the show continued," according to Cawley. Dochterman previously worked on Paramount's re-release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and has now created a new opening sequence for future New Voyages episodes. "There is no one who captures the original series the way Daren Dochterman does," Cawley said.

The first episode to feature the improved New Voyages look will be "World Enough and Time," scheduled to be released on the internet in April. Following that will come the episode "Blood and Fire," based on a discarded script from Star Trek: The Next Generation and featuring two gay characters. Discussing Paramount's decision twenty years ago to scrap the episode, Cawley said, "As great as TNG was, when that decision was made it forever altered Star Trek… Star Trek was no longer the first." Even now, the episode will probably prove controversial, but Cawley added that "the best episodes of Star Trek dealt with relevant issues, the issues of the day thrown into the future was the heart and soul of the show."

For more from Cawley, head over to the full interview at the Trek Movie Report.

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