HOW THE CLUB BEGAN

It all began in the Early spring of 1999. Two friends (Ann & Jaz) had been looking for a Star Trek Club to join for some years and had discovered that there were no clubs in their local area. The two nearest clubs one 50 miles away the other 30 miles did not offer the kind of fun activities that we were hoping to get involved with. So, one day Jaz received a phone call from Ann, "How about starting one of our own?" Jaz said "yes, great idea", but had to confess to having reservations about the whole thing. After all,how do you go about finding out whether anyone is as interested in creating a new club?

Anyway, undaunted, Ann set about finding like minded people. One of the people she found was Ke'reth (aka Robert), now we were three. More people responded to the call for members and we set up a meeting at the Bury St Edmunds Sea Cadet Unit to discuss the club, the name, the premises, activities and most importantly a date to get the whole thing up and running. Those at the meeting agreed that the venue was adequate for our purposes. It was at this meeting that STARBASE 410 was born.

The first Starbase meeting which was also the commissioning of the Starbase was held on 20th June 1999, this was a great success. We would like to express our thanks to all who came and for the great media coverage given to us by Anglia TV, East Anglian Daily Times, The Bury Free Press and Radio Suffolk. Who continue to give us great publicity and support.

The number 410 comes from the number of the Sea Cadet Unit in Bury St Edmunds where we started the Club. After that meeting Ke'reth and Ann kept in close communication and he came up with a background history, scenario and a poster for the Starbase. Ann & Jaz would like to thank Ke'reth for all his hard work.

However, it became apparent, after a few meetings, that the Sea Cadet Unit was no longer suitable for our meetings or some of our members. It was not disabled person or child friendly. And because of the layout, cold in the winter. The Committee decided to look for an alternative venue, which was much more suitable and with better facilities.

Therefore we moved to Kentford Village Hall, near Newmarket, Suffolk in March 2000. We had 5 happy years there, where we held 3 versions of a Klingon Wedding, 1 Starfleet Wedding and were visited numerous times by our friends aboard the USS Lutonia. We had a great atmosphere and became a part of the community raising funds for ourselves and the village hall by running two of the carboot sales each year (in full costume), this raised our profile and as the Joke goes that's where we brought the current 1st officer for £2.50, what a bargain. We remained there until October 2005 when we moved to The Arbury Community Centre in Cambridge. The reason for this was that the village hall failed to meet the new disability regulations and the facilities were no longer what they should have been. Since we were moving it was decided to pick a more central, urban location with the hope of attracting more members in a venue with better traffic links than Kentford, therefore after looking at several venues in and around Cambridge it was decided that The Arbury best suited our needs as an expanding club.

Unfortunately the move to The Arbury was not the success we had hoped for. We started in their small hall which members felt was claustrophobic and so after a few months once renovations on the centre were complete we moved into the large hall. Whilst being much better than the smaller hall most club members felt it lacked atmosphere and so we eventually decided to have another look around the Arbury area. We decided to stay in this part of Cambridge because we had gotten some new members  and the area is well served by public transport.

So in January 2008 Starbase 410 was on the move again. We moved to the Buchan Street Neighbourhood Centre at time of writing we have held 2 meetings there and both have been successes. We have a sense of atmosphere that we have not felt since we were at Kentford. Much of this is due to the venue but also to the members and our visitors from LOTNA. Hopefully we will spend many happy years here.

We've had some fun along the way though in Nov 2007 Ann, Jaz, Robert and Emma went along to the Grafton Centre and ran interference for a dalek, a cyberman and Dr Who. At the end of 2006 we were filmed by the BBC and featured on the BBC4 show 'My Science Fiction Life'. Also in 2006 we were photographed by the Cambridge Evening news to celebrate James Doohan's ashes being launched into space. Further back in 1999, as seen above, a group of us spent the weekend raising money for Children in Need in a sponsored sleep in at a Pub. More recently we have adopted the Children's Acorn Trust as our charity and raise money for them at our cocktail party each year. We've done Carnivals and Fetes, we've even been to a couple of schools. We go to conventions, in 2005 one of our members was voted Ruler of The Universe at Redemption unfortunately our 2007 candidate failed to retain the title but we'll be there again in 2009 with a new candidate and new ways of cheating I mean campaigning. Long may the fun continue.