Online voyeurs feeling the ennui of looking at the same old naked humans again and again might consider sneaking a peak at some Klingons in the buff. Warriors of the Empire, created by Seattle-based office administrator John V. Schmidt, offers an intimate look at the private lives of Klingondom's sexier women and men.
See also: Trekkies: Get a Life
The aspiring graphics expert started the site to sharpen his Adobe Photoshop skills by transforming friends and online visitors who submitted photos into Klingons, complete with forehead markings, armor, and weapons.
When a friend emailed him a shot of a buxom, bikini-clad model, he rose to the challenge, transforming her into a war-mongering alien. "But I also removed the bikini," Schmidt added mischievously. "I did a few more and opened the warrior women site."
Schmidt quickly found out that Trekkies swing both ways when it comes to sexual preference. Although he initially ignored the onslaught of requests for images of Klingon men showing off their, um, weaponry, he eventually submitted. "I wasn't very interested," he confessed. "But then someone gave me a huge stack of nude bodybuilder magazines and said, 'Here, now you have no excuse!'"
The site now has three sections, the Gallery of Klingon Warriors, featuring his alterations, as well as the two nude sections, Warrior Women of the Empire and Warrior Men of the Empire. The images, which Schmidt has been creating for three years now, can take anywhere from an hour to several days to create.
What he started "just as a joke" -- but a time-consuming one -- has become a cult phenomenon for online xenophiles. He claims this support motivates him to continue boldly going where no digital photo retoucher has gone before. He did, however, taper off changing Web surfers into Klingons when alien wannabes started sending in over 20 photos a week.
"It adds up," said Schmidt, who, surprisingly, claims not to be a Trekkie, although he has been to "a convention or two."
"His site is one of my most requested links," said John Tackett, alias K'Mel, of K'Mels Guide to Klingon Cyberspace.
"His is very tasteful, considered by me to be of the 'soft porn' nature. In fact, my wife, Brenda, visits his site on a regular basis, because he has artwork for both males and females, something that is usually missed on other Star Trek sexual sites."
Paramount Pictures, keepers of the Star Trek copyright, do not seem to share the swingin' Klingon's passion for the site. Blaise Noto, an executive vice president at Paramount, was quick to point out that this is not an official Star Trek site.
"It's nothing that we endorse," he said, with Vulcanesque apathy, "and we are looking further into it."
Although they were unable to comment specifically on Schmidt's site, the Online Freedom Federation, an organization committed to fight Viacom's attempts to shut down Star Trek Web sites, points out that that the Paramount parent company has in the past forced the closure of sites such as Nudetrek.com.
Schmidt knows that eventually his handiwork could fall under fire from the true Warriors of the Empire -- Viacom's lawyers.
"It's their copyright, so they have a legitimate claim," he admitted. "I have no problem with that, but I hope they let me keep the [G-rated] Gallery of Klingon Warriors."
In the meantime, Schmidt has other battles to fight, including the never-ending mission to find good, copyright-free cheesecake shots on which to operate.
"It's very difficult to find pictures of women in aggressive-type poses," the artist mused. "There are a million pictures of women looking very feminine and frail. Yeah, it's sexy in one way, but it just doesn't say 'Klingon Warrior.'"
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