Huston Huddleston, the man who gained some nerd cred in August 2012 after he " saved the bridge " of a discarded Enterprise-D touring set, has been arrested in Southern California on child pornography and other related felony charges

In total, Huddleston now faces four charges, including one under California Penal Code 311.11(c)(1), for possessing "more than 600 images." If convicted, Huddleston would face a minimum sentence of a year in county jail or at least 16 months in state prison. (It is not immediately clear why the criminal complaint, which Ars obtained at the Los Angeles courthouse, has four charges when online court records only show three.)

Huddleston is currently being held by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on $750,000 bail. He is being represented by David Moore, of the Los Angeles Public Defender's Office. Moore did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment. On May 22, BleedingCool.com reported that Huddleston has pleaded not guilty.

The April 2018 arrest, which only became publicly known last week, has seemingly all but ended Huddleston's years-long and as yet very incomplete restoration efforts.

Previous notoriety

To be clear, the Next Generation-era bridge Huddleston found some publicity around is not the one that was used in the filming of the famed television show.

As Ars previously reported, Huddleston saved what was left of the touring bridge before its pending trip to the junkyard in December 2011. He paid nothing for the props—just $7,000 to have the bridge shipped from Long Beach to his home in Sherman Oaks, 40 miles north. As a fan, Huddleston previously collected various Star Trek items, notably paying $500 each for bridge pieces like the Riker and Troi chairs from Star Trek: The Experience before other items were auctioned in 2010, two years after the venue closed down.

In 2014, Huddleston expanded his aims and announced fundraising for an ambitious museum that aimed to house not only the famed Star Trek bridge, but to also host other iconic science fiction and horror film sets and props. More recently, in 2017, Huddleston took possession of a donated wax version of the entire Original Series-era crew.

However, the overall museum efforts do not appear to have substantially advanced in the intervening four years since the initiative was announced. Huddleston's mother, Nancy, is a board member of the non-profit group, known as the New Starship Foundation, that worked toward a museum. She declined to respond to Ars' questions on Tuesday.

As recently as February 2018, Huddleston said on Twitter that the museums were "almost there."

The reason I've been silent about the museums is because we're almost there, but I can't talk about it till I can Love and stuff pic.twitter.com/rUdjNTDeAR

— Huston Huddleston (@HustonH) February 13, 2018

Now, New Starship's board appears to have largely, if not entirely, quit en masse in the wake of the criminal charges.

Since 2012, Huddleston has regularly made appearances at various science fiction and horror-related conventions (often exhibiting portions of the restored bridge) nationwide in an effort to recruit volunteers and gather donations. (Ars spent a weekend with Huddleston at a convention in New Orleans in December 2012.)

As Ars later reported in 2014, an initial collective of volunteers that had worked closely with Huddleston for years resigned in protest. They slammed Huddleston's inability to make good on his grand promises, and they protested what they believed was financial mismanagement.

Now, a separate group of volunteers is parting ways with Huddleston in light of the new charges.

A volunteer named Loretta Lightningbolt publicly posted on Facebook on May 21 that she and other "former volunteers of the planned Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum and Hollywood Horror Museum" had "discovered through our own research" that Huddleston was not "on a long vacation, as we had been told back in April." Rather, the would-be museum founder had been charged with felonies.

"We were sickened to discover he has been charged with three counts of sexual crimes against a minor, something none of us want any association with and therefore we have resigned from our respective positions," she wrote. "We thank you for your understanding."

Awaiting court-martial

A former volunteer who wished to remain anonymous so as not to impede any ongoing investigation told Ars that she had seen a quantity of "explicit" materials involving underage girls that she said was delivered to the FBI in September 2013. Los Angeles County Superior Court records show that Huddleston's alleged "violation date" is September 1, 2013.

This source, an adult woman, also said Huddleston had behaved inappropriately toward her years ago. She said that Huddleston once even attempted to get into bed with her—uninvited—in a two-bed hotel room that they were sharing to save money at a convention to exhibit the Enterprise-D bridge.

Another former acquaintance of Huddleston's who was unsuccessfully recruited to the New Starship and museum projects told Ars that he was "made aware of the existence of nude photos of minors in sexual acts on [Huddleston's] email account and disturbing lewd email correspondences with a minor."

This person, an adult man, also asked to remain anonymous out of concern for the investigative process. Neither of the two sources provided Ars with the direct evidence they claimed to have seen.



To the escape pods

In the wake of the recent criminal allegations, the website of Huddleston's proposed Hollywood Science Fiction Museum has removed the list of its entire board of directors. That group included numerous Star Trek luminaries, including Ronald D. Moore and Doug Drexler.

Another board member, Andrew Probert, worked as an illustrator for The Next Generation and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He told Ars on Tuesday that "a lot" of the board members had resigned in the wake of the revelations.

"I didn't 'consult or meet' with any of the board members, as I felt an immediate pullout was the best way for me to protect me and my family from any backlash," Probert emailed. "Besides, during the time I was on the committee, nothing I submitted, in the way of Design or Exhibit Layout proposals, was ever accepted. So my participation was minimal, to say the least."

Probert added that Huddleston had "complained" to the board "years ago." The would-be founder noted that "some girl, one of his staff, apparently, had made accusations against him for some sort of inappropriate behavior… but nothing seemed to come of that," according to Probert.

"[Huddleston] did post a lot of photos with, at times, some surprisingly good looking young women—but I just attributed that to the 'celebrity' status, derived from his traveling 'Enterprise Bridge' exhibit, using parts of the actual set, seen at various [science fiction] conventions," Probert continued. "There was nothing, however, to suggest his alleged interest in the 'younger set,' and I generally regarded him as an OK kind of guy."

Tim Rheault​—COO of Rhetroactive, a company that has built numerous museums and talked with Huddleston about this project back in 2014—told Ars that Huddleston's arrest was "disturbing to say the least."

"Rhetroactive had initial discussions to be involved in the project as a design firm, but never entered into any formal agreement with Mr. Huddleston or the New Starship Project beyond those early conversations," Rheault​ emailed. He noted that the company did not correspond with Huddleston beyond April 2014.

Larry Nemecek, Star Trek's unofficial franchise-wide historian, separately left the New Starship Foundation board in January 2015. In light of these latest happenings, he told Ars that Huddleston's arrest and pending criminal accusations likely meant that the museum's efforts were essentially over.

"It's likely too tainted," he texted Ars. "Unless someone is well-funded and determined to shrug this off. I don't know who that'd be, at this stage."

Huddleston is scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles on June 12.