Road Trek: Joyrager

I had such a good time making Calculus Ninjas in high school, that I wanted to recapture that experience and make a new movie in college.

Meanwhile, I was watching Star Trek: Voyager through Netflix from start to finish, back when they had discs you got in the mail. So, naturally, I thought: “Why not make a zero budget Star Trek: Voyager parody film?”

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With my 320×240 resolution camera that filmed at 10 fps with no audio.

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I’m going to go ahead and tell you right now that this is one of the worst projects I have ever done. Probably the worst. And as with Calculus Ninjas, I’m not going to share the actual video because it’s too embarrassing, but you won’t want to see it after reading my description and seeing the screenshots!

The Premise

I took the general premise of Voyager but set it in the modern day. Instead of starships, there were cars, and instead of Starfleet, it was called Roadfleet.

I gave all the characters parody names.

• Voyager – Joyrager
• Kathryn Janeway – Catshin Thatway
• Chakotay – Jugokay
• Tom Paris – Tong Champagne
• B’Elanna Torres – Banana Chorus
• Neelix – Toelix
• Kazon – Glazon
• Cullah – Bullay
• Maquis – Mocky
• Cardassians – Badassians
• Caretaker – Pear Taker
• The Badlands – The Bad Place

I asked/begged my roommates and friends to be in it, but because there weren’t a lot of volunteers, I had to remove half of the Voyager characters from the story; Thatway and Chorus both became male and a teddy bear portrayed Toelix.

I played Jugokay, and drew a super simplified Chakotay-esque tattoo on my forehead in Sharpie. I have to admit, it made me feel cool.

Filming Locations

I didn’t want to go far from our apartment, so all the filming locations were our bedrooms, the balcony, the area in and around the apartment building itself, and inside a parked car belonging to a roommate.

Yeah, starships were cars in this movie but the Mocky car was parked during filming, even when it was supposed to be moving. For exterior shots, I got really close to the front of the car and moved the camera to make it look like it was in motion.

I also decided to make the Joyrager car like the TARDIS in Doctor Who, where it was bigger on the inside. That way I could use a bedroom as the filming location and the actors/my roommates wouldn’t have to go outside. The easier I made it for them, the more willing they would be to participate in this project, right?

Summary

The story is a kinda-sorta stripped down version of the first episode of Voyager, Caretaker. In the opening scene, a Mocky car containing Jugokay and Chorus retreats from a fight with the Badassians into the Bad Place, where they’re hit by “an energy thing.”

Cut to Champagne’s prison/bedroom at Deep Road Nine, where he’s recruited by Captain Thatway to search for Jugokay and Chorus.

They head over to Joyrager and also encounter “an energy thing” in the Bad Place, which zaps them 70,000 miles away to the Pear Taker’s House (filmed on our balcony).

There, the Pear Taker has left a trap: two cups of water and a sign that says “free juice.” Thatway and Champagne drink the water and fall unconscious.

Moments later, they awaken in a hospital where straws are pressed on their stomachs by a doctor.

This doctor is an associate of the Pear Taker, and is looking to see if they have pears in their bodies. We didn’t have any medical masks or anything for the doctor to wear, so I had him tape a tissue to his face.

Thatway and Champagne awaken and beat up the doctor, then exit the front door of the apartment/hospital without difficulty.

Cast Changes

At this point, the guy playing Thatway didn’t want to be in the movie anymore, so I had a sentient trash bag (Armus) show up in the hallway to kill him off.

Champagne’s actor bailed out too at around this time, so I recast him with his girlfriend. I did my best to disguise this change: she wore his shirt and a KFC bucket on her head to hide her face, then I added a dish towel on top of the bucket to conceal the KFC logo. A perfect plan.

Sure, she was like 5′ 3″ and he was 6′ but it’s okay. It didn’t matter.

A neighbor caught us filming in the hallway and just silently stared at the KFC bucket hat before closing her door.

Bullay and the Glazon

Alone after Thatway’s death, Champagne walks by a volleyball court and encounters the villainous Bullay, a member of the Glazon biker gang, who holds a “donut” in his hand that he strokes lovingly. I say “donut” in quotes because I didn’t have access to a donut at the time of filming, so I got a piece of bread and cut it in the shape of a donut. Genius, right?

Bullay pulls out a plastic knife and threatens Champagne, until Jugokay and Chorus arrive to shoot lasers at him from a block of wood. Bullay escapes and Jugokay randomly finds Toelix on the ground, when Champagne suddenly disappears…

Meeting the Pear Taker

Champagne now reappears on the balcony and meets the Pear Taker, who delivers a bunch of exposition about how he was searching for pears, but now he’s dying and his Guitar Hero guitar – the source of his power – must be destroyed so it doesn’t fall in the hands of the Glazon.

Champagne pulls out a block of wood and shoots a laser at the guitar, destroying it.

Meanwhile, Bullay unleashes his Glazon army to go after Jugokay and Chorus. Now, the script called for an “army” riding on bikes. I had access to neither, so how could I show this? How could I assemble an army?

Easy. I drew faces on my fingers and filmed a close up of my hand.

In the end, Jugokay and Chorus abandon their car and somehow show up inside Joyrager with Toelix and Champagne, who presses keys on a laptop to signal the start of their 70,000-mile journey home.

The End

Conclusion

Because my camera didn’t pick up audio, I filmed with the intention of adding voiceover in post (like with Calculus Ninjas). But the project was such an ordeal, that I didn’t bother with that. So if you were to watch it now, it would be like watching a silent film without intertitles, and you would have no idea what was going on.

I should also add that half the outdoor shots were filmed in the afternoon, and the other half were filmed in the evening. Sometimes for consecutive shots in the same scene!

The final video ended up being about 19 minutes long. A complete and total mess, but at least I got to spend time with friends and learn how to problem solve, so I don’t regret it at all.

Scripts for Future Episodes

Yes, you read that right. I had plans for future episodes and even wrote scripts. But, obviously, after the experience of filming the pilot and its many issues, I scrapped the entire project.

Future episode titles included:

• Pair ‘O Slacks
• The Mound
• Manure
• Favorite Bun
• Non Squirter
• Complex
• Turtle
• Week of Heck
• Palsters

Animated Version

A year later, I tried salvaging Joyrager by doing an animated remake back when I was making stuff with The Movies. If you’re not familiar, it was a business simulation game where you manage a movie studio, build sets, hire actors, etc. – but within the game, you had the option to make your own movies using the engine.

It was incredibly limited. You could create characters from a pool of of faces/hair/outfits and drop them into pre-scripted animated scenes on a certain number of environments. You couldn’t edit these environments or do your own animations, and you had no control over the model’s textures (so I couldn’t, for example, give Jugokay a tattoo).

Anyway, I made an animated version of Joyrager with The Movies and this time I was able to make the characters look closer to their Voyager counterparts. Thatway and Chorus became women again but Toelix was removed because only four characters could fit in the car set.

It still wasn’t that great, but it was lightyears–or, I suppose, miles better than the live action Joyrager attempt. Still, The Movies was too restrictive and it was best to move on from fan films and parodies to something more original.

The project was once again scrapped. This time for good.