News – Fan Film Factor

“WELCOME ABOARD” to the USS CASANDRA, the newest fan series from The Netherlands! (interview with THOMAS ARGANTE)

The people of the Netherlands in Europe have a saying, “They say God created the earth but the Dutch built Holland!” This in because, about 500 years ago, water covered a quarter of what is currently known as The Netherlands (“Holland” is an outdated term because North and South Holland are only two of their twelve provinces and contain only about a third of the population). What kept the water out and allowed the 26% of the country that is below sea level to exist as land was Dutch ingenuity—dikes, dams, storm surge barriers, and lots and lots of pumps. And water constantly threatens to overwhelm the country from both sides: the fresh water rivers that flow from Germany as well as the sea water from the North sea. That fact that the Netherlands continues to survive and even thrive is a testament to the “can do” attitude and commitment of its citizens.

All of this is to say that the Netherlands now has a SECOND Star Trek fan film series! The first fan series, the a 24th century era DARK ARMADA which ran from 2005-2016, is starting up again, being renamed BATAVIA but still under the stewardship of ROBIN HIERT. And one would think, with the relatively small size of the country (about half the size of the U.S. state of West Virginia and ranking 31st in area among all European counties), that one Star Trek fan series would be enough. But not so fast, says THOMAS ARGANTE!

Thomas has just started up USS CASANDRA, a TOS-era fan series that will feature physical/practical sets and a decent-sized cast. Casandra just debuted in April with its pilot episode “Welcome Aboard.” Take a look…

Welcome aboard, indeed! I’d like to be among the first to welcome the cast and crew of USS Casandra to the Star Trek fan film community—although you are about to learn that Thomas Argante has already been with us for quite a while. Let’s start our interview…

Only a month and a half remains to submit your ULTRA-SHORT fan film to this year’s TREKS IN 90 SECS contest!

Just a quick update and reminder that submissions for this year’s TREKS IN 90 SECS contest are due on or before July 31, 2025 if you want your ultra-short fan film in the running. That’s just a month and a half away!

Right now, we have three submissions and a fourth on the way…which is certainly a good start. And just to encourage some more submissions, if you didn’t place in the top three Treks in 90 Secs films last year, FEEL FREE TO SUBMIT YOUR ULTRA-SHORT AGAIN.

As a reminder, here are the very simple rules:

The fan film doesn’t need to be “exactly” 90 seconds. It can be less or even a little more. But if you run over two minutes, it’s not gettin’ entered.
The fan film needs to be Star Trek related in some way.
The fan film must be a complete “story” (however you want to define that term). It can be funny, dramatic, sad, exciting, all dialogue, no dialogue, whatever you’d like. But what it can’t be is a segment from an existing fan film. It needs to be 100% new.
A maximum of three fan film submissions per entrant.
Deadline to enter is midnight Pacific Time, July 31, 2025.

To submit your entry, post it to YouTube and send me the link either via e-mail at jonathan (at) fanfilmfactor (dot) com or message me on Facebook with the link.

The three top winners get to brag, so send me those links!

My 14-year-old son JAYDEN is leading an international FAN GAME development team! (video interview with JAYDEN LANE)

I know, I know…this is a blog site about fan films, not fan games. But did you even know there is such a thing as a fan game? I didn’t until a few years ago when my now-14-year-old son Jayden got very interested in something called UNDERTALE.

Released originally back in 2015, Undertale was created by an independent game developer named TOBY FOX following a 2013 Kickstarter campaign with a $5K goal. A month later, the crowd-funder finished with ten times that amount! Initially launched for Windows and Max OS, in the ensuing years, Undertale was later released for Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and ultimately xBox. According to this rather extensive Wikipedia article…

The game was acclaimed for its thematic material, intuitive combat system, musical score, originality, story, dialogue, and characters; however, the reaction to its art style was mixed. The game has sold at least five million copies and was nominated for multiple accolades and awards. Several gaming publications and conventions listed Undertale as game of the year, and others have since listed it as one of the greatest video games ever made.

The music for the game (composed by Toby Fox himself) was released on an official soundtrack along with the game and became wildly popular, spawning two official Undertale cover albums—one electronic/metal and the other jazz. Not bad for a guy who had never written a full video game before and crowd-funded its development for a tiny fraction of what the big gaming corporations were spending!

Rather than try to explain the game to you, I’ll just show you this video (surprisingly recent, as the game is still immensely popular) that shows the gameplay…

Hard to believe that such a simple-looking, 2D artwork role-playing game could catch fire like Undertale did, but it seemed to hit some kind of magical sweet-spot for players of all ages…including Jayden when he was only 10 or 11. Within a few months, Jayden was designing his own Undertale “fan games” using a programming engine called Scratch that—surprisingly—was never intended for such advanced gameplay coding. But that didn’t stop my son!

To give you an idea of what Jayden was capable of while still only 12 years old, here’s a video of an Undertale-based fan game he created in 2023. I can’t show the actual game itself, only a video of the full game that he posted to his YouTube channel…

Jayden created all of the graphics and animations himself (the individual visual elements are known as “sprites”) and did all of the coding. The only thing that Jayden wasn’t responsible for was the music, which he downloaded from other Undertale fans who would write royalty-free music for fun. (While Jayden can draw and animate and code—and do really amazing voice-overs—he’s not a musician.)

So how does the original creator, Toby Fox, feel about these fan games?

The 2025 SHOWRUNNER AWARDS now have their final 24 entries!

Submissions for the 2025 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS are now complete. The window of eligibility to enter this year was any Trek fan film released between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024—although the majority of our submissions were released last year. This was our first time limiting submissions to only a three-year window instead of our previous 5-year window. We seldom if ever got submissions from that far in the past, so three years feels like a better number…still allowing a “second chance” and even a third one.

This year, we have 24 entries combining for a total of just under 9 hours of viewing for our 12 showrunner judges. For comparison, last year we had 27 entries with a combined runtime of just under 9 hours, so things seem to be holding fairly steady in the number of Star Trek fan films and relative length of those entered into our show.

As we’ve done for the previous two years, the winners will be announced on Star Trek‘s anniversary of September 8, 2025. There are 22 categories this year, with three winners in each category: Admiral, Captain, and Commander level. I salute all of our 24 entrants for 2025, and I wish each of them the best of luck. (Honestly, I wish they ALL could win!)

I realize that I say this every year, but once again, we have some really amazing Star Trek fan films this time—of all different runtimes—that cover the gamut from comedic to dramatic to suspenseful to thoughtful to parody/farce and even a music video! Some are episodes of ongoing fan or fanthology series, others are stand-alone releases. There are fan films shot on sets, on location, on green screens, some with heavy VFX, some light on VFX, a few with elaborate make-up and costuming, cool props, and several really standout acting performances and even original music. We truly have some of the best of the best that the world of Star Trek fan films has to offer this year!

So I strongly encourage you to watch as many of these marvelous productions as you can. Here are all of our entries for 2025 alphabetically by title (with the fan series indicated where applicable)…

FARRAGUT 2024 blasts past its $15K Indiegogo finish line at the last moment!

It wasn’t looking good there for a while! I mean, it wasn’t looking awful either. With 26 hours left until their crowd-funding deadline, I went to sleep on Tuesday night noticing that the Indiegogo campaign for the upcoming FARRAGUT 2024 fan film had only just barely crossed the one-third mark with $5,180 from 44 backers. When I woke up the next morning, the total was over $15K from 45 backers!

Yep, a $10K donation had come in overnight, shooting the Indiegogo over the top and making it eligible—at the last moment!—for “InDemand” status, where the campaign can continue collecting contributions indefinitely. My congratulations to show-runner JOHN BROUGHTON and the entire Farragut 2024 team!

This current campaign was actually billed as “Take 2” due to the fact that the initial attempt to raise funding back in late 2024 struggled as it competed with the holiday season and money spent on presents and travel. So a second Indiegogo kicked off two months ago endeavoring to raise the remaining $15K.

Despite the Indiegogo for last year’s FARRAGUT FORWARD easily clearing its $30K goal and ultimately being retired as it reached the $50K level (the maximum crowd-funding limit specified in the fan film guidelines), the sequel campaign definitely hit some headwinds.

And Farragut wasn’t the only recent crowd-funder to struggle. The Indiegogo for Tales from the Neutral Zone this past month came up significantly short of its $11.5K goal, raising only $4.2K (about 36%). However, it should be noted that this campaign wasn’t two months long like Farragut‘s and, in fact, lasted less than a month. Personally, I don’t think crowd-funders for Star Trek fan films can get to a five-figure goal in under two months anymore unless they are truly well-known with an existing donor base from previous projects. And indeed, Neutral Zone‘s RAY TESI acknowledged that “there were many familiar names” among their 25 backers.

Also, the Neutral Zone Indiegogo launched DURING the Farragut Indiegogo, and that probably impacted both campaigns in a negative way, as Star Trek fan films tend to draw from the same well of donors. I strongly recommend that if there’s another crowd-funder already going on that you wait until it’s complete before launching yours—for the benefit of both projects.

And remember: no matter how exciting your project is or how enthusiastic your existing fan base, crowd-funding campaigns require a LOT of work! You can’t just post one, sit back, and wait for the money to roll in. You need to get the word out on Facebook, via e-mails, and with YouTube videos, photos, and interviews, trailers…whatever you can do to attract eyeballs and open wallets.

I’ll conclude by reiterating that the Farragut 2024 Indegogo is now in “InDemand” mode, so you can still contribute to help make the final fan film even better and potentially to help start the funding for their next project FARRAGUT FINALE. Here’s the link and the video…

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/farragut-2024-take-2#

R.I.P. – PETER DAVID (1956 – 2025)

“Dammit, Peter, you write faster than I can read!!!” I wasn’t exaggerating back in 1992 when I said that to PETER DAVID, sitting across from him at a table in Goldberg’s Pizza on 2nd Avenue and 53rd street in New York City.

Peter was one of those famous people that I “almost” knew well. Back in those days before I moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles, I used to occasionally hang out with a couple Star Trek novel and comic book authors whom I’d met thanks to knowing DC Comics editor BOB GREENBERGER. Peter was one of the writers of the Star Trek comic book series (an excellent run!), and he, Bob, and Trek novelist MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN were a triumvirate of sorts in the early 1990s and collaborated on multiple Star Trek novels. Peter himself wrote nearly FIFTY Trek novels…including 3 TOS-era, 11 TNG novels, two DS9s, three TNG: Starfleet Academy novels, 2 Mirror Universe, and a whopping 27 of the popular New Frontier series of novels.

And that was just Star Trek! Peter also wrote five Babylon 5 novels and adaptations, a Battlestar Galactica novel, an Alienation novel, a ridiculous number of comic books for Marvel and DC (including my personal favorite “Mr. Fix-It” run in The Incredible Hulk), TV scripts, video games, and—oh, heck—just read the whole frickin’ list on Wikipedia! And that doesn’t even include the countless brilliantly insightful editorials and essays he penned in his regular But I Digress column in the Comic Buyers Guide. Indeed, if you want to hear about Peter’s life in his own words, read his memoir of amazingly true and truly amazing stories: Mr. Sulu Grabbed My Ass, and Other Highlights from a Life in Comics, Novels, Television, Films and Video Games.

Because this is a tribute blog, I want to share a few of Peter David’s stories that may or may not have made it into the public consciousness but were shared with me personally. (They actually might be in one of his memoirs, but I will sheepishly admit that I haven’t read them yet.) And since this is a Star Trek-themed blog, I’ll leave out the superhero-based stories…although there’s a hilarious one where Peter was sitting briefly at BILL SIENKIEWICZ’s table at a comic book convention, pretended to be Bill when a fan came over to ask for his autograph, and then proceeded to convince the fan that the named of the character of Moon Knight was properly pronounced “moon ken-NIG-it.”

Are you ready for some other Peter David stories?

TREKS IN 90 SECS returns for a second year!

Last summer, we held a fun little challenge for Star Trek fan filmmakers called TREKS IN 90 SECS. With the guidelines limiting the run-time of a Trek fan film to no more than 15 minutes (30 minutes if you make it two parts), it was suggested to me that we take that limit WAY DOWN to just a minute and a half! Could a Star Trek fan film tell a decent story in just 90 seconds???

A number of fan filmmakers eagerly and proudly picked up the gauntlet and did exactly that! They created ultra-short fan film vignettes and posted them to YouTube, and fans voted for their favorites here on Fan Film Factor. These were last year’s results.

The contest was popular enough that we’re bringing it back for a second year! Fan filmmakers have until July 31, 2025 to post an ultra-short Star Trek fan film onto YouTube and either email the link to news (at) fanfilmfactor (dot) com or, if you’ve already friended me (or want to) on Facebook, IM me the link there. (If I don’t confirm receiving the link, you ain’t entered. So please double check with me that I’ve received it.)

I will then post all entries to a fresh blog page during the first week of August and let folks vote for their favorite video. Readers will be able to vote for up to three videos. Polls will be open until August 25, and then I will announce the top three winners the following week. After that, they can brag.

These are the official rules:

The fan film doesn’t need to be “exactly” 90 seconds. It can be less or even a little more. But if you run over two minutes, it’s not gettin’ entered.
The fan film needs to be Star Trek related in some way.
The fan film must be a complete “story” (however you want to define that term). It can be funny, dramatic, sad, exciting, all dialogue, no dialogue, whatever you’d like. But what it can’t be is a segment from an existing fan film. It needs to be 100% new.
A maximum of three fan film submissions per entrant.
Deadline to enter is midnight Pacific Time, July 31, 2025.

And there ya go! Good luck, everyone. Let’s have FUN!

WARBIRD VALDORE continues the 3-part fan film CROSSOVER from DOMINION MEDIA with “SMOKE AND MIRRORS” (interview with GARY DAVIS)

Crossovers are quite challenging to pull off! Indeed, in the long history of Star Trek, despite multiple opportunities when more than one series was running concurrently (e.g. DS9 and YOYAGER, DISCOVERY / PICARD / LOWER DECKS / STRANGE NEW WORLDS / PRODIGY), there was never a true crossover where a storyline that began in one series concluded in a different series.

Oh, there were certainly cameos, as when DS9‘s Dr. Bashir appeared in TNG‘s “Birthright, Part 1” or when Mariner and Boimler traveled back in time to Pike’s era in SNW‘s “Those Old Scientists.” But storylines themselves never crossed over to start with one series and end in another.

This hasn’t been the case with other network franchises like Chicago Med/Fire/PD, Law & Order, and of course, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis/Universe, which all featured crossover events.

Obviously, crossovers are challenging to make. Often, different writing teams on separate series have to come together, and schedules have to be carefully adjusted to allow for certain actors and sets to be used for shows in which they don’t usually appear. Production resources often need to be shared, and script continuity coordinators have to be extra vigilant. It can can messy pretty fast if not handled right.

So what about Star Trek fan films?

Like the various studio-produced Star Trek, the vast majority of “crossovers” between different fan series have gone no farther than special guest cameo appearances of certain characters in fan series that weren’t their own. Individuals like VANCE MAJOR’s Erick Minard, GEORGE KAYAIAN’s Captain Allen, NICK COOK’s Captain Hunter, or JOSE CEPEDA’s Captain Ramsey have certainly made the rounds. But seldom if ever has a plot line that began in one fan series ended in another.

Until now, that is.

Last summer, the folks at DOMINION MEDIA released the first of a 3-part trilogy crossing over into a trio of different fan series. Admittedly, all three are made under the Dominion Media umbrella, but they are shot in two entirely different locations 900 miles apart. The first part of the trilogy debuted as part of the fan series PROJECT: RUNABOUT, filmed mainly in the basement of co-showrunner GARY DAVIS, whose home in Ohio features a full TOS-era Starfleet runabout set. “IT’S ALL DONE WITH MIRRORS” was the third installment of that fan series, which began during the COVID lockdown in 2021.

The second installment premiered on March 12 of this year as the second full-length episode of WARBIRD VALDORE. Their first full-length episode, “THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE FEDERATION” debuted during the summer of 2023 and focused entirely on missions of the commander and crew of a Romulan warship. “SMOKE AND MIRRORS” then continued the trilogy storyline begun during Project: Runabout. Take a look…

FARRAGUT releases BLOOPER REEL as their INDIEGOGO moves fast forward toward FARRAGUT 2024! (interview with JOHN BROUGHTON and JOSH IRWIN)

I love bloopers. And it’s not just because they’re (usually) funny. No, what a blooper reel often shows is the side of filmmaking that fans don’t often see: how much fun the people making the project actually have on set!

In the case of FARRAGUT FILMS and their recent FARRAGUT FORWARD hit fan film (currently topping 150K views on YouTube), their just-released blooper reels shows what a wonderful group of people they are, including director JOHNNY K. who assembled and posted the reel a couple of weeks ago…

The blooper reel release comes during a two-month Iniegogo campaign attempting to raise the remaining $15K needed to finance their next project, FARRAGUT 2024. The previous campaign feel short of its goal, in part because of the Christmas season (launching crowd-funders during the last two months of the calendar year often runs into holiday headwinds as people put their money into gifts and travel). But this current campaign is nearly a quarter of the way to its goal with just under three weeks left.

Back during the TOS movie-era (which is when the new Farragut releases take place), there was a generally-accepted paradigm that the even-numbered Star Trek feature films were the best ones. As such, Farragut Forward felt much like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, offering a villain from Captain Jack Carter’s past obsessed with having his revenge. In a similar vein, their next project, FARRAGUT 2024, features a time-travel story back to modern-day Earth with a noticeable comedic undertone—although this time it’s the 21st century and the city is Washington, DC (where John Broughton lives) and not San Francisco of the 20th century.

Their crowd-funding video features a good amount of completed footage to give fans a flavor of the feel and production quality of this project, and it is definitely worth taking a look at…

And of course, donations are always welcome at this URL:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/farragut-2024-take-2

I had a chance to chat with both John and his director for Farragut 2024, JOSHUA IRWIN, whose AVALON UNIVERSE Star Trek fan films are among the best out there….

Meet this year’s JUDGES for the 2025 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS…

The submission window for the 2025 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS is now open and will remain so until midnight Pacific Time on May 31, 2025. Any Star Trek fan film released publicly between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024 is eligible for entry regardless of the person or team producing it. Note that this time we are trimming our eligibility window from our previous 5 years down to just 3 years. Few if any entries were typically submitted from fan films over 3-years old, so the reduction seemed like a reasonable decision.

The online entry form is located here…

https://www.cognitoforms.com/JonathanLane1/_2025StarTrekFanFilmSHOWRUNNERAWARDS

As usual, our judging panel remains at twelve, made up of people who have, themselves, served as showrunners on one or more fan films or series. This provides each judge a unique and personal perspective on what goes into making a fan production in our nearly two-dozen categories. In other words, our judges are knowledgeable and experienced in filmmaking which, I truly believe, brings a high level of expertise to our competition—along with our sister contest, the DIRECTORS CHOICE AWARDS, which just wrapped up earlier this month.

And it is for this reason that, each year, I publish a blog spotlighting our judging panel and what they have accomplished in the world of Star Trek fan films specifically. Ten of our twelve judges are returning from last year, so their write-ups (see below) will probably look familiar to you. The two judges who decided to leave the panel this year both departed on good terms. GREG LOCK, who began working on STAR TREK: AMBUSH back in 2014 and finally released it in 2022, felt that he should have a more recent fan film project under his belt before returning as a showrunner judge. The other judge to leave us is more of a “swap.” GLEN L. WOLFE and DAN REYNOLDS are the co-owners of WARP 66 STUDIOS in northern Arkansas and the co-showrunners of THE FEDERATION FILES fanthology series. Each year, one of the two of them “tags out” to give the other a turn. So in 2025, Dan will be taking over Glen’s spot, who in turn took over Dan’s spot in last year’s competition.

Our one brand new judge this year brings an international perspective, joining SAMUEL COCKINGS as one of two non-U.S.-based judges. I am referring to German wunderkind BENJAMIN SCHULZ of the fan series LORELEY. More on Benjamin (and everybody else) below…