The Trekker
The Trekker was online for only a few years, from 1999 to 2002, but its simple, elegant design made such an impression on me I still remember it fifteen years later.
The site’s owner, Michael Chandler, told me earlier this month he was involved in various fan projects at the time, including the Advanced Starship Design Bureau.
I created my own site mostly as a personal reference tool for all the various starships in the Trek universe.
Bernd Schneider of Ex Astris Scientia helped out by creating some of the graphics.
The website’s main feature was the Officer’s Bible, an encyclopedic and pictorial overview of the Federation Starfleet in 2376. Based on Starfleet Dynamics, a fan publication by David J. Schmidt, it included starships from both canon and the video game Star Trek: Armada.
The bible had three parts:
- Federation Starships: A review of all Federation starship classes, canon and fan-created, in operation by the end of the Dominion War in 2376.
- Threat Forces: Many of the enemy ships in this section were taken from the game.
- Related Articles: Starfleet command structure and organization, a basic overview of the Federation and twenty-fourth-century medicine.
The Trekker also hosted Michael’s own “Cold War Universe”. Non-Star Trek and set in a year 3003, it was about a future Earth struggling to keep its rebellious colonies in line.
The most recent version of the website in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is from September 2002. The site went dark the following year.
Michael explained real life got in the way:
I got married, worked two jobs, was going to school, my career was just starting to take off and I simply didn’t have the time to keep the hobby up.
Besides, he felt there were plenty of Star Trek websites around that featured similar material — at least back then.