Sam Hain: All Hallows' Eve

I've written a short story for Halloween, Sam Hain: All Hallows' Eve.

It's the first in a series of contemporary fantasy short stories which will follow the adventures and exploits of the eponymous occult detective, Sam Hain, as he and his companion, Alice Carroll, investigate the paranormal and supernatural cases across London.

All Hallows' Eve is completely free to download from the website. I'd appreciate any comments and feedback on this pilot story, and if you enjoyed reading it, please consider leaving a donation; it'd be greatly appreciated, and every penny donated will help support me to make more stuff up and write it down.

Click here to read Sam Hain: All Hallows' Eve.

www.SamHainsCasebook.co.uk

Winter London Film and Comic Con: An Interview with Garrett Wang

This interview can also be found on Media Gateway.

Garrett Wang is probably best known for his role in Star Trek Voyager as Harry Kim, having also reprised the character for the independent film Star Trek: Renegades which has just recently gone into production, as well as playing Commander Garan in the independent miniseries Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. Wang has been a science fiction fan from childhood, in particular Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, and although he saw all the Star Trek films that came out in the cinema, he never really got into The Next Generation series prior to his work on Voyager (largely due to him only ever seeing the same episode whenever he attempted to watch it!).

It was fantastic to meet Garrett Wang at Winter London Film and Comic Con, and an absolute pleasure to chat with him about Star Trek and his work on Voyager.

Hello sir!

Hello! How are you?

I’m very well, and how are you?

Very good, thank you.

How’s your weekend been?

It’s been good, yeah.

Obviously you’re well known for playing Harry Kim on Star Trek Voyager. How was it working on that series?

It was like a dream come true for me, being a sci-fi fan. If you look at the sci-fi shows out there, very few members of the casts of any sci-fi show were sci-fi fans to begin with - I mean, they’re actors, not sci-fi fans! I find myself in the minority, that small club of people who were sci-fi fans before they got on their shows! So it was great to work on Voyager.

Had you been a fan of previous Star Trek series, like the original series and Next Generation, that had come beforehand?

I was a fan of the movies. I never really got into the original series because, for me my first sci-fi ever was 1977 Star Wars, and 1977 Star Wars visual effects is a thousand times better than 1966 Star Trek visual effects right? It was kind of hokey, kind of cheesy. Next Gen came on when I was in college, and the episode that came on was Code of Honor. That episode is agreed upon by all writers of Star Trek to be the worst episode ever. So that episode comes on and I’m thinking, “this is horrible,” so I turn the TV off. Six months later, I turn it on again to watch Star Trek The Next Generation, and it’s a repeat of Code of Honor. I turn the TV off. A year and a half later, I try to watch Next Gen, and again it is Code of Honor. Three times in a row I tried to watch Next Gen, and it was the same shitty episode! So I said, “you know what, this is a sign from God. God is trying to tell me something. Do not watch The Next Generation.”

Which is a good thing, because if I became a Next Generation fan, it would have adversely affected my audition for Voyager. I would’ve been so nervous that I think I wouldn’t have gotten the role. So I think it worked out fine. But since I’ve been on the show, I’ve gone back to see Next Gen, Deep Space, and I am a fan of those shows now. But I didn’t get into it beforehand because Code of Honor kept playing over and over again!

It’s like the Universe really didn’t want you to enjoy Next Gen!

Nope, the Universe certainly did not!

So how did you feel about the character of Harry Kim?

I think they should have let him do a little bit more than he did. I felt like any time the other actors got to go down and do like cool things, like the episode where we went to Earth and they got to wear normal Earth clothes, Kim was left on the ship. The episode where the Hirogen take over the ship and use it as a training tool for all their hunters, everyone gets to do a holodeck simulation where they’re wearing World War Two clothing, Neelix got to be a Klingon, Ensign Kim is wearing his regular Starfleet uniform maintaining all the sensor arrays, you know. I really wish I had a chance to be included in some of these episodes where they got to wear other clothes other than the Starfleet uniform.

And he was never promoted above the rank of Ensign!

No! It’s ridiculous.

He’s such an integral member of the crew! Why not?!

I have no clue. If you’re talking about who deserves to be promoted more than anyone else, it’s Kim! All the crap he went through, all the things he did… It’s Kim! Not Paris. Not Tuvok. Kim! It was quite annoying, not being promoted.

Seven years!

Seven years!

I think Starfleet ensigns are promoted in that time even if they’re not exemplary officers!

Kim should’ve just walked in and phasered everybody. “Take that! Take that! I’ve gone postal! AHA!” Kim should’ve gone mad in the last episode and just shot everybody, that would’ve been the way to go!

Haha! Psychotic Kim, would’ve been brilliant!
Speaking of which, is there anything you wished you could have done with the character?

Yes, shoot everybody on the ship! Psychotic Kim.

I wish they would’ve taken advantage of more comedy, more humour out of the human characters. They shouldn’t leave it up to just the Doctor to be funny, which is what it ended up being. They didn’t really let the human characters engage in comedic moments. And if there were comedic moments, they were horrible! I remember at the end of one episode, Paris looks at Tuvok and says “Tuvok, you’re a real freakasaurus,” and I thought, wow, that’s really not funny at all!

There was certainly room for more humour from the human characters.
Are there any particular moments that were your most - and least, for that matter - favourite moments throughout the series?

Least and most favourite moments…

Least Favourite Moment: Filming the shoot when I got bronchitis...

Bloody hell, that must’ve been horrible.

Yeah, that was not good.

And favourite moment would be being told by the producers that I would be the integral character in the 100th episode, Timeless, which was supposed to be, in their estimations, the best stand-alone episode of all Voyager episodes. So I felt somewhat valued that they chose me to be the main character for that episode.

Would you say Timeless was your favourite episode then?

It is. It is. In my estimation, it is probably one of the best, if not the best episode of Voyager.

Fantastic. And what other projects have you been working on recently? Anything in the works at the moment?

I’m working on a film called Unbelievable, it’s an independent film, sort of a comedy mixed with sci-fi, so… It’ll either totally flop, or it’ll be a cult classic for the rest of time, so we’ll see what happens!

Can you share anything about the film (non-disclosure agreements permitting!)?

There’s a problem with the Lunar Base, and astronauts have to go up there to fix it. There is a marionette puppet of Captain Kirk in it… It’s an interesting film.

Well I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it! Thank you for your time, sir. It’s been a pleasure!

Thank you sir, and you.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

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Garrett Wang's current projects, Star Trek: Renegades and Unbelievable are currently in production. You can find out more about Renegades here, and check out the Unbelievable Facebook page here.

Winter London Film & Comic Con: An Interview with Nicole de Boer

This interview can also be found on Media Gateway.

Nicole de Boer is probably best known for her roles as Ezri Dax on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Sarah Bracknell Bannerman in The Dead Zone, and Joan Leaven in the cult film Cube. I was fortunate enough to be able to quickly interview de Boer whilst at Winter London Film and Comic Con, and it was an absolute pleasure to meet and chat with her.

Hello, Nicole de Boer! How’s it going?

Good, thank you.

How’ve you been enjoying this weekend?

It’s been great! It’s a really nice one. I always love coming to London actually.

Ah right, do you come to London often?

Yeah, over the years I have, for things like this.

Well, glad to hear you’re having a great weekend. Now obviously you’re known in Star Trek circles for playing Ezri Dax on Deep Space Nine. Had you been a fan of the show before you took on the role?

I hadn’t really watched Deep Space Nine, but I did watch The Next Generation pretty faithfully - I loved that show - so I was pretty excited to get the part. Getting to work with Worf and O’Brien…

And how did you feel about taking on the role of Dax? Did you consider how to approach the part to make her still recognisably Dax, yet also your own take on the character?

Well it all happened pretty quickly, and they gave me some episodes to watch since I hadn’t seen much of the show, but they did say “you’re a whole new person; you’re Ezri Dax, and Jadzia will be one of many, like all the rest of them. Part of you, but we don’t want you to act like Jadzia, we want you to act like Ezri.” And on top of it, Ezri wasn’t trained to be Joined, so really you see mostly her personality. But I did notice that Terry [Farrell] walked with her hands clasped behind her back, so I decided I would do that as well, just to see Jadzia coming through a little bit. But other than that, I really had to go with what the producers wanted me to make it.

How did you feel about the character of Ezri as a whole?

I loved it. I loved that she had these challenges to deal with; it gives me something to work with as an actor, and I also did love that she had different personalities going on inside of her that we got to explore in certain episodes, like Joran the murder inside of her… That stuff was fun too.

Had DS9 gone on to film any further series, what would you have liked to see happen with Ezri?

I think it’d be really fun to come back now and see Ezri years later, more mature and definitely with a handle on the whole symbiont situation, and much more confident. And I would be a captain, of course!

Oh naturally!

That’d be great.

Although Ezri took a while to adapt, obviously not being trained to be Joined, it must have been fun as an actor to bring a new approach to the existing relationships between characters. A mix of being familiar with everyone, but only just meeting as well.

It was, yeah! It definitely was. The nice thing for me coming onto the show - as the show was already established - was that everyone else was supposed to know my character, but yet not know her, so the writers had me slowly meet everyone and I had scenes with everyone, so that helped me - as Nicole - get welcomed into the group as well. I had a nice, little lovely scene with almost everybody on the show introducing Ezri, which helped me a lot.

I particularly liked the relationship she has with Sisko, and with Quark, that was always fun. That was actually what I auditioned with, a scene between Ezri and Quark.

Ah fantastic. Did you have to audition opposite Armin Shimmerman, or was it just a cold read?

No, I didn’t actually. Just with a reader and the producers.

Out of your time on the show, what would you say was a real highlight for you?

Just the whole. I’ve worked a lot, but nothing of that magnitude. I’ve worked a lot on American shows, filming in Canada, but nothing like working on the Paramount lot, and the sets were absolutely incredible on that show. Mostly just to be in the same atmosphere as those actors; wonderful veteran character actors that I got to work with. It was a real learning experience for me, and I was very proud of it.

What was your favourite thing about DS9? Any favourite episodes to work on?

I enjoyed all of it. It was fun, but it was also a more serious set. We didn’t really joke around like on The Next Generation, it just wasn’t like that on our show, so when we did get an opportunity to have fun, that was nice, like the Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang episode where we’re all at Vic’s club; I just adore James Darren. That was really fun for me, just because it did get a little serious and tense and hard work, so that was a nice break just to have a good time.

I imagine it must’ve been a very serious production to work on, as out of all the Star Trek series DS9 had some of the darker storylines, which often spanned over many episodes. Which is something it did particularly well, also balancing that with the humour that we associate with the Trek franchise.

And there were so many lovely relationships, too. The father-son relationship with Sisko and Jake. I really liked Kira and Odo’s relationship, really beautiful. There was just so much interwoven depth, and that it was a series and not a string of stand-alone episodes, which made it different. It wasn’t really big at that time. Since then, that’s what all show’s have become; it used to be that producers would shy away from doing serials because they wanted viewers to be able to pop in and out at any time and not have to worry about the storyline and if they knew where they were, but now that’s what everybody does now, like with Abrams’s Lost and all that. You have to tell the whole story. But not a lot of people were doing that when Deep Space Nine was doing it, and that’s something I really liked about it.

And what other projects have you worked on recently? Any productions currently in the pipeline?

Well obviously I did The Dead Zone, it’s been six years since then, and Stargate Atlantis. Lately, I’ve done more like TV movies, like Lifetime TV movies, and then some bad SciFi movies which are totally to pay the bills!

Worst experience on one of those?!

Well, I try to make light of everything, but… They’re never bad, because I love the crews and we have fun. It’s just bad when they actually air. That’s the part that’s bad. I had fun enough while doing it, it was challenging to make some of these works not horrible, that’s a challenge.

But I was back on Haven again recently, which I think is a really good show, and I reprise my character on that.

I haven’t actually started watching Haven yet. I do keep meaning to get around to it!

It’s a good one.

How’s your experience been working on it?

Well I was in their very first episode, because that’s Shawn Piller - Michael Piller’s son (Michael Piller worked on Star Trek as one of the producers and writers, and then went on to do The Dead Zone with his son). Michael sadly passed away, and Shawn continued on with that company and with The Dead Zone, and after The Dead Zone ended, he started Haven. So they asked me to be on the first episode of Haven, which was really great, really fun, lovely people. And then three years later, they ask me back, so I was just back on it again this year, which was great. And I’m not dead, so who knows, I might be back again!

Fantastic, I guess we'll see! Well, thank you for your time, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Thank you, and you.