A new performance by Voyagers EMH recalling this history of the the Cassini mission at Saturn:
Le Cassini Opera, sung by Robert Picardo
- Thread starter Philip Guyott
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Brings up the question: did Picardo sing opera because the EMH sings opera (i.e. is it a eyewink to that), or is it the other way around? (i.e. Picardo loves singing and they found a way to integrate that in the EMH he plays)
I read that Garrett Wang actually plays the clarinet and that Jonathan Frakes actually plays the trombone.
Now that's high-class filking! 
Filking.. new word for meNow that's high-class filking!
Was watching an old Frasier episode last night. Cute. He'd upset the guy he works with who was a Star Trek fan by not getting Scott Bakula's autograph, so when Frasier spoke at his son's Bar Mitzvah he's thinking he's speaking hebrew and it's Klingon. (Nice sentiment either language).
Filk is a music genre. The word itself originated as a typo in a fanzine (fan magazine, also abbreviated "'zine"). The original word was "folksong", was mistyped as "filksong", somebody said, "Hey, that's a neat word" and it stuck.Filking.. new word for me
Basically a filksong is a science fiction, fantasy, or science-themed folksong, which is often a parody of RL traditional songs (may or not be copyrighted), but may also be an original composition.
IOW, that neat stuff that Weird Al Yankovic does is filk music. So is the Cassini opera in the video above.
So people who are into this are filkers or filksingers, who write/sing filks or filksongs, and gather at conventions for an activity called filking.
Filkers can be strictly amateur (like me; I've written or co-written a couple of dozen filks and am working on a few more, but the only time any of it was publicly performed was at BanffCon in the late '80s), or they can be professionals who write and compose their own music (ie. Leslie Fish; her "Hope Eyrie" is one of the best-known filks, and it's about the Apollo program).
Julia Ecklar, who wrote or co-wrote some of the Star Trek novels way back when, is also an incredibly talented filksinger.
Bob Picardo was a singer long before Star Trek. Several years back I got to see him on stage in a musical where he played the father of the character that he played as a young man himself.
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