SpaceStationK7

Station Log, Stardate… 0000.0

Toonloon bought Star Trek Voyager: Eliteforce shortly after its release in 2001. An absolute newbie to online matches and internet communities, he joined the Ravensoft BBS boards and found a thriving community of gamers, Trek enthusiasts and eccentrics. Logging onto the internet once dreary morning in Peckham, he was stunned to find user made content, in particular a “Scotty” skin by a community member called The Prophet. He was then doubly amazed to see TOS crew members being developed by Kirk1701 (Laz Rojas) and tried his hand at creating his own TOS Kirk. A heavy addiction was started and once AFADoomer’s TOS WEAPONS models were released to replace the TNG ones in game, Toonloon’s fate was sealed.

TOONLOON: I asked AFADoomer if I could develop his weapons pk3 into something a bit more substantial and with the help of some very talented people, a full blown mod was started.

HORCKDUDE: It was Toonloon who came up with the name for the site (Spacestation K7) and all the content and I became the builder of the website. It was a perfect teamwork, and we shared a vision on what the website should look like: the entire site should capture the feeling of The Original Series.

Space Station K7 was launched in December 2001, and from that point on the site and its community kept growing. More and more people joined the forums, and soon many talented people in the community came in. First, FishDS9, with his unlimited enthusiasm joined us and become an amazing help in, well, everything! Later, K7 was reinforced by the addition of Andorian, who took over a great deal of responsibilities with maintaining the php forums and adding his own “Andorian’s Office” to the station.

As for TOS modding, Toonloon and Horckdude were soon joined by talented mappers like Synchromesh and Majortork, modellers AFADoomer and Ambassador Petri, skinner Laz Rojas, and C++ coder Skinner. With all those incredibly skilled people it didn’t take long for a combined modding project to be set up. And in the fall of 2002, a year after K7’s initial release, “The Argas Effect” as the first TOS single player modification for Elite Force was proudly announced, with the release of it's teaser a year later, in December 2003.

HORCKDUDE: It was an amazing experience to work on The Argas Effect, because everybody was so committed to it, and the bar was constantly high. I think working in such a team can only be described as inspirational, because you constantly bring out the best in each other. That's true teamwork!

TOONLOON: Running a mod is a huge task and a difficult, yet rewarding one. The only human resources you have are the kindness and talents of others, and they are often impacted by outside factors such as real life (if there is such a thing!). Lots of mods fell by the wayside, but I doggedly persevered until we got out a release of “The Argas Effect – Act I” which I firmly believe is the finest TOS game created since Star Trek: 25th Anniversary games on the PC.

The release of “The Argas Effect” Act I was a huge success, even garnering some wonderful praise from one of the creators of the original game at Ravensoft. Hundreds of people downloaded it and eagerly awaited its next instalment.

Work trundled on slowly, coming to halts at times, but never forgotten. Until as recently as 2008, a skeleton team of modders came very close to releasing Act II but were held back by influences beyond their control.

Spacestation K7 also thrived, adding new sections for skins and maps, even adding some highly imaginative and creative mods by Laz Rojas. Dave Tilotta (Alchemist) was invited to showcase his work and with some creative contributions from Toonloon, Altar_Egos created a flash interface to display Alchemist’s personal collection of unseen restored images from TOS.

HORCKDUDE: In 2005 I retired from K7 because I did not have the time anymore, but I was proud of what I would leave behind. What started as a small project between Toonloon and me, had outgrown us and become a big community filled with enthusiastic and amazingly talented people, all devoted to TOS. Say what you will about Trekkies, but you don’t come across people who are that dedicated very often.

Andorian took over Horckdude's responsibilities as webmaster of K7, and would lead many overhauls of the website including being the main architect of the new look K7. New moderators also joined, including the Dutch duo V’Ger and Simmer Alpha to help create data entries for CBS’s remastering project for TOS.

And as for Toonloon… he still hangs around the station, wanting to keep the heart of the station alive, hoping that some day Act II of “The Argas Effect” will finally be released.

TOONLOON: We came so close to making a full episode of TOS on the PC. Even if Act II is the final word from us, I will see its completion. “Even if I have to get out and push.”

Yay brother!

Toonloon & Horckdude, January 2009