2017 Star Trek fan film YEAR IN REVIEW!

15 thoughts on “2017 Star Trek fan film YEAR IN REVIEW!”

1. I was amazed and impressed by the amount of activity this past year. I guess the sky did indeed not fall.

   1. No, it did not. 🙂

2. I only think the Naysayers we’re talking about Axanar. It will never be made…nothing will come out of the Georgia studios ever.

   1. Ah, I’m definitely going to save this one! 🙂

      1. Please do =)

3. Come on Jonathan! You are mixing things here (aren’t we all these days?). People meant the death of those great semi-professional big budget fan films, the only ones worth watching in the eyes of many. Amateur fan films on a shoestring budget have survived through the ages and they will continue, no doubt. But the whole phenomenon of the past decade will revert back to being a niche thing, viewed by a handful of hardcore fans rather than the hundreds of thousands that were interested in the better quality productions of recent years. That was the point made by many. And it was spot on.

   1. Actually, folks like Blue Thunder (one of my readers) haven’t been specific about sdoom to only the high-budget Trek fan films. He’s been predicting the death of all Trek fan films…and of Star Trek itself. It’s kinda extreme. As for fan films, it wasn’t like there was a huge percentage of big-budget fan films to begin with. The biggies were New Voyages, Continues, Axanar, and Renegades…and possibly Tommy Kraft’s new project if Federation Rising hadn’t gotten intercepted. The rest of Trek fan films that were produced were quite amateur–which doesn’t mean bad–but they represented the vast majority of Trek fan films that were being made. The semi-professional ones were always a small but very visible minority.

      And let’s face it, we still got four of six episodes of Star Trek Continues, and Axanar will still be made (albeit shorter). Also, Renegades did ultimately get made…albeit with the surgical removal of all Trek references. And next year, we expect First Frontier and Pacific 201. So even the semi-professional fan films will continue into 2018. So “spot on” is, as far as I’m concerned, not accurate…at least not yet.

      And to be honest, the six- and seven-figure Trek fan films were living on borrowed time anyway. Had it not been Axanar that got shut down, it would have been Star Trek: Renegades. As it happened, many of the guidelines were written specifically with Renegades in mind (like the “no ongoing series” rule…which was never intended to apply to the one-and-done Axanar). And remember, the semi-professional quality Trek fan films aren’t extinct. As “Chance Encounter” and “The Derelict” proved, you can follow the guidelines and still produce an awesome Trek fan film. Both of those fan producers are planning new releases as I type this. And next year, we’ll likely see “Deception II” from Leo Tierney. That one looks amazing. So don’t count Trek fan films out just yet. Sure, you’ll never see a $5 million or $10 million fan film, but that was probably a pipe dream by fans anyway. 🙂

4. Thanks for the mention.

   Nevertheless, the turmoil DID NOT help Star Trek fandom much. As a friend of mine pointed out on New Year’s Eve, Alec’s actions and those of Axanar DID hurt the box office of Star Trek Beyond in 2016. While Paramount may have dropped an atomic bomb on a molehill(my friend’s description – not mine)so to speak concerning Axanar’s violations and the enforcement of the guidelines, Paramount was still justifiable in their actions.

   Sooner or later, one of the fan films was going to commit those violations. It was inevitable. And it turned out that Alec and Axanar would be the sole party to confirm what the late Leonard Nimoy stated back in 2009. If not Alec, then it would have been Vic, the Star Trek Excalibur production, or Starship Farragut.

   Speaking of the later, there has been a rumor that Farragut’s final episode will be released this year. I don’t know how that will happen, concerning the new guidelines, but I can honestly say I WON’T MISS Farragut. If the Farragut Films staff had not already ruined their credibility and reputations after what happened seven years past, maybe some would be sympathetic towards their staff and production.

   1. Well, aren’t you the equal-opportunity destroyer! 🙂

      Obviously,Blue, your friend was wrong about Alec and Axanar hurting the box office of Star Trek Beyond, as posts like this one from Alec actually encouraged Axanar fans to go see it. Whether anyone was so angry about the lawsuit that they didn’t go is another matter. But speaking for myself and all of my friends who were angry about the lawsuit (and I do have a lot of them!), they pretty much all went to see Star Trek Beyond in the theaters. I personally saw it twice–both times with my son because it was the first time he’d ever asked to see a movie a second time. So I certainly supported the box office on my end…and so did Alec and many, many Axanerds.

      I have no idea what you’re talking about regarding Starship Farragut and something that happened way back in 2011. Would you care to elaborate? Personally, I don’t believe that their credibility and reputations were “ruined” if the guy who writes Fan Film Factor and researched a 3-part blog on the history of the Starship Farragut fan series has no idea what you’re referring to.

      As for Farragut’s final episode, “Homecoming,” getting released…yes, that’s supposedly happening soon. As for the guidelines, if CBS didn’t bother with Star Trek Continues releasing four full-length episodes on TOS sets using paid professional production crew and Star Trek actors and containing the words “Star Trek” in the title, then I doubt they’ll have a problem with the final episode of a fan series that’s shutting down and will not be featuring Trek actors, paid professionals, or has the words “Star Trek” in the title.

5. Equal-opportunity destroyer? I’ll take that as a compliment.

   I’ve known my friend A LOT longer than you have and I can assure you that his information was correct. I did see Star Trek Beyond three times in the cinema, despite five problems I had with the film. While Alec may have contributed to the box office, he also harmed it with his immoral and unethical actions.

   As to the incident regarding Starship Farragut in late 2011, I did mention this before. If you don’t remember it, that is your problem. But to give you an idea, it had something to do with another Star Trek fan film production in the southwest. I’ll let you put the pieces of the puzzle together.

   Maybe it is just as well that Starship Farragut – well, Star Trek – Farragut as it should have been titled – is ceasing production. If John Broughton, Michael Bednar, Dennis Bailey, and some other Farragut Films production staff exercised more common courtesy and respect toward others, then maybe they would not have lost some of their staff(i.e. Amy and Robert McDonough, Allen Sepan, and to some extent Paul Sieber)and being mixed up in that event that was reported by Robert Daman Mauro at Phase II and later made public on the Trek BBS and other sites, later.

   https://trekfanfiction.net/miscellaneous/francis7/star-trek-farragut-dogs-war/

   1. “While Alec may have contributed to the box office, he also harmed it with his immoral and unethical actions.”

      I just don’t see that statement making any sense. The ST Beyond box office came up at least $100 million short of where Paramount was hoping/expecting. That’s about 10 million people. In total, there’s only 80,000 people following the Axanar Facebook page. At best, I get a few thousand visitors a day here at FFF. I suspect that, across the world, at most 100,000 people were even aware of the Axanar lawsuit and only a small percentage of those people really cared about it enough to not see ST Beyond. At most, you’re talking 10K or maybe 20K people. As I said, Paramount undershot by 10 million people. They don’t really care about one or two tenths of 1%. That’s barely a rounding error, Blue.

      ST Beyond disappointed at the box office because:
      1) the franchise is actually getting kinda old and tired,
      2) the previous two movies didn’t really do enough to build up a new, stronger, younger fan base,
      3) there were three years between Into Darkness and Beyond, and before that, four years between the first JJ film and the second (tent pole franchises are best served with a 2-3 year gap between releases, not 3-4),
      4) Paramount and CBS really dropped the ball on celebrating the 50th anniversary and typing it into ST Beyond
      5) the “Beastie Boys” trailer during “The Force Awakens” did a LOT of damage,
      6) minimal licensed merchandise for the rebooted franchise,
      7) the movie just wasn’t that good (it wasn’t awful, but it didn’t give people a lot of reasons to see it other than the visual FX).

      Compared to all of those tidal forces lowering the water level, Blue, Axanar was like dipping a small roll of paper towels into the ocean.

      – – – – –

      Oh, and I’ve spoken with Scott Johnson, who was there in the Oklahoma airplane hangar when Vic paid John Hughes for the sets that Vic had helped to build. Scott confirms that there was nothing nefarious going on there. If that’s the “incident” you’re talking about, you might want to double check your facts with people who were actually eye-witnesses. I did. 🙂

      – – – – –

      And finally, why did you send that link? It was to a fan fiction story for Farragut, but I don’t see the relevance.

6. By the way….

   http://1701news.com/node/1083/cawley-says-some-people-shouldnt-do-fan-films.html

   Alec Peters, David Gerrold, Vic Mignogna, and the Farragut Films production SHOULD have heeded Cawley’s advice.

   Paramount – the RIGHTFUL OWNERS of the Star Trek franchise – WOULD NOT have had to justifiably enforce the new guidelines if the aforementioned people above had just followed the rules and not misused Kickstarter and the other fund-raising tools.

   1. What rules are you talking about, Blue? Paramount and CBS had no rules published or even publicly acknowledged in any way until six month AFTER they filed a lawsuit against Axanar.

      The next comment you make that tries to lie or rewrite history gets trashed, dude. Nothing personal…I just don’t have time to constantly correct your flights of imagination.

7. Well, if you don’t know what rules I’m referring to, then you don’t deserve an answer. You claim to be a journalist, you should figure it out.

   Flights of imagination, huh? I’m afraid that is what journalism has become these days. Ever try a different profession?

   1. From the school of “I know you are but what am I?”—might I suggest that you, my friend, might need to “figure it out.” Paramount and CBS published no official rules or guidelines prior to the release of their fan film guidelines in June of 2016…six months AFTER they sued Axanar. That’s one of the reasons the judge was leaning toward a non-willful infringement argument from the defense even after he disallowed the fair use argument. That meant that, even if CBS and Paramount had won, the highest monetary award they could have hoped for would have been about $11,000…not the several million dollars they were hoping for. Although I can’t be certain, I suspect that’s one of the reasons they settled (along with the major reason: the likelihood of a long, drawn-out appeal of the judge’s bench-ruling on fair use). And all of that because CBS and Paramount had never issued rules or guidelines. Feel free to read over my blogs on the subject, Blue. I cited specific passages in the judge’s rulings, so you don’t even have to read through hundreds and hundreds of pages of legalese like I did!

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