If you’re looking for Klingons in a Star Trek fan film, you can certainly find them…but it’ll take some work! And usually the Klingons are just there to be the bad guys (at least in TOS and movie-era Trek fan productions).
But there is one production which guarantees a Klingon in every episode…and they’re not there just to be the bad guys. Well, yeah, they are the bad guys, but not to their way of thinking!
BATTLECRUISER KUPOK (pronounced “kuh-POOK”) debuted in September of 2015 as the eighth episode (“The Battle Of Alawanir“) of the third season of the long-running fan series PROJECT: POTEMKIN. It was a unique episode, self-contained and presented with its own opening monologue:
Space…it is ours for the taking. These are the missions of the Imperial Klingon Cruiser Kupok. Its never-ending quest: to seize unclaimed worlds, to seek new cultures and species to serve us, and to further expand the Klingon Empire!
The idea was to create a fan series completely from the point of view of the Klingons, to show them in their “natural element” without any influence from or even interaction with Starfleet.
Their low-budget fan series was later given an independent run of its own the following March with the release of their second episode, “Sanctuary.” A few months later, the fan film guidelines were released, and all of the Potemkin Pictures projects were forced to drop their series titles (like Starship Deimos, Starship Tristan, and of course, Battlecruiser Kupok) and instead treat every subsequent release as a new fan film with a completely new title.
Since then, the Deimos and Tristan production teams have released a combined total of nine new fan films (plus two that completed the run of Project: Potemkin), but nothing from the Kupok team…until now!
Based in Pelham, Alabama, Kupok‘s latest episode “A Gathering Storm” was written and directed by Potemkin show-runner RANDY LANDERS. It asks the question: what happens when the Klingons try to conquer a planet full of Renaissance Faire attendees? No, I’m just kidding! Well, I’m KINDA kidding.
Oh, just see for yourself…
That was cute! We think alike, as I was thinking that “Klingons invade planet Ren Faire” was a succinct description of this episode. I would think that real Klingons would have tried to vaporize them from orbit….
“I would think that real Klingons would have tried to vaporize them from orbit…”
That would have made for a much shorter fan film!