Category: News

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STARBASE STUDIOS settlement reached!!! (amen!)

When last we left STARBASE STUDIOS…aw heck, just read the blog, folks!  But long story short, VANCE MAJOR and I had worked tirelessly (and I mean that) for months trying everything we could to get these two parties—GLEN L. WOLFE on one side and SCOTT JOHNSON and KENT “WORDS” EDWARDS on the other—to compromise and reach a place where they could reasonably settle their lawsuit over the ownership of the Starbase Studios sets.

It was like pulling teeth…from a Klingon targ!

Every time we thought we had a settlement ready to sign, another problem seemed to crop up.  But then, by the middle of January, we finally had an agreement that everyone could live with.  Glen was taking it to his lawyer to review, but he was planning to sign it, send it along to Scott and Kent, and finally Starbase Studios could heal and move forward, once again becoming a place where fans could create amateur Star Trek film projects on professional-looking TOS sets.

That agreement was never signed.

So why the headline saying that a settlement has finally been reached?  Well, folks, it’s been an…interesting…three weeks!

Continue reading “STARBASE STUDIOS settlement reached!!! (amen!)”

Is DISCOVERY the “STAR TREK SHOW ABOUT NOTHING”? (editorial review)

Spoilers, there’ll be a few…but then again, too few to mention

I touched on the question last week: What is STAR TREK: DISCOVERY about?  The original Star Trek and Next Generation were about exploring strange, new worlds and stuff.  Deep Space Nine was about healing the spiritual, cultural, and environmental wounds of a decades-long occupation…both of a race of people and also of a space station that were suddenly thrust into a role of prime importance in the Alpha Quadrant.  Voyager was about getting home.  And Enterprise was about exploring the final frontier for the first time.

But what is Star Trek: Discovery about?

If you watched the first episode of Discovery, it initially appeared that the show would be about Michael Burnham getting ready for her first command.  That went out the window quickly when she attacked her captain.  By the end of the second episode, Burnham was in chains and a war had started with the Klingons.

The third episode establishes Burnham as a pariah, brought aboard Discovery because, well, because she’s awesome?  Because she deserves a second chance?  Who knows?  It’s still early.  So okay, now we’ve got a show about an “awesome” officer who’s been flung down into the abyss of life and is slowly clawing her way back up the Starfleet Jeffries Tube to a place of respect.  Fine…except the show abandons the “pariah” part pretty quickly.  Burnham makes a best friend, becomes a useful part of the crew, and even gets a boyfriend.  Heck, by episode 5, she’s even giving Saru Captain Georgiou’s old telescope and having a “moment” with him.

So, no, the show isn’t about Burnham’s redemption, as she’s pretty much redeemed by a third of the way through the season.  Hmmmm, maybe the show is about Burnham’s voyage of internal, um, discovery and learning to forgive and love herself the way others have.

Nope, way too much else going on in the show for that to be it!

Continue reading “Is DISCOVERY the “STAR TREK SHOW ABOUT NOTHING”? (editorial review)”

STAR TREK CONTINUES transfers OWNERSHIP of their TOS sets!

Ever since STAR TREK CONTINUES released its 11th and final episode last November, fans have been asking, “What will happen to those amazing TOS sets???”  They can’t be turned into a Star Trek set tour because there’s already one of those in upstate New York, and James Cawley’s license with CBS is exclusive.  And despite some fans suggesting the sets just be sold/donated to a museum or to CBS itself, there are use too many set pieces to make relocating them anywhere near practical or cost effective.

The challenge for VIC MIGNOGNA, the showrunner for STC, is that the sets are currently housed in a building in Kingsland, GA that costs about $5,000 a month in rent (according to their 501(c)(3) non-profit filing from 2015).  As much as Vic wants to keep the sets open and intact, $60K per year is a LOT to ask any Trekker to pay to keep those sets open.

Enter: RAY TESI.  Ray will be the new owner of the TOS sets that were used by STC.  Ray is the executive producer behind STARSHIP REPUBLIC, which released its first fan film vignette, the 9-minute “Serpent of Yesterday” almost one full year ago.  I interviewed Ray here on Fan Film Factor when he was trying to generate funds through an Indiegogo campaign to complete their first episode.  The plans were to shoot the scenes on the Starbase Studios sets in Arkansas.  But with the current uncertainty regarding those sets, Ray wasn’t certain he’d be able to rely on Starbase to film his fan project.  Now he’ll film in Georgia instead.

Ray has decided to keep the name STAGE 9 STUDIOS, which is what STC decided to call their facility (named after the location of the original TOS sets on the Paramount lot back in the late 1960s).

Obviously, there’s more news to come on this (including plans to restart Starship Republic later this year).  I’ve requested an interview with Ray, but right now, here’s the press release that was just circulated by Star Trek Continues…

Continue reading “STAR TREK CONTINUES transfers OWNERSHIP of their TOS sets!”

JASON ISAACS says fans who said DISCOVERY wasn’t STAR TREK were right! (editorial review)

IT’S SPOILIN’ TIME!!!!

Last week, I wrote a blog that started with a few paragraphs drawing comparisons between CAPTAIN GABRIEL LORCA and DONALD TRUMP.  Let me be perfectly clear: I WAS KIDDING!!!  But apparently, no, I wasn’t…at least as far as the STAR TREK: DISCOVERY writing team was concerned!

In what was probably the most obvious and direct reference to a political issue since Bele and Lokai were each colored half-black and half-white, LORCA/TRUMP says the following things during the most recent 13th episode, “What’s Past Is Prologue”…

I’ve watched for years; you’ve let alien races spill over the borders, flourish in our backyard, then have the gall to incite rebellion.  The Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race.

…we together will make the empire glorious again.

Here’s the full scene:

My wife Wendy, who normally doesn’t watch the show with me but just happened to be in the living when this line was delivered, asked me, “Are the writers always this lazy?”

Now that Lorca is the established bad guy, let’s draw a direct line from him to Donald Trump.  It’s not that Wendy and I like Donald Trump or anything.  But seriously, was this kind of dig really necessary?  Should Star Trek be used to take cheap political shots?

Continue reading “JASON ISAACS says fans who said DISCOVERY wasn’t STAR TREK were right! (editorial review)”

CHANCE ENCOUNTER creators announce NEW Star Trek fan film: THE HOLY CORE!

I love Brits who make Trek fan films!  A year ago, writer / director GARY O’BRIEN and co-writer PETER LAIGHT released their first-ever Star Trek fan film CHANCE ENCOUNTER…and fans were blown away.  Superb acting, touching story, well-directed, fantastic costumes and VFX, perfect music, and even custom-built shuttlepod and turbolift sets—it’s a MUST-SEE fan film well worth 20 minutes of your time to watch if you haven’t already.

This entire magnificent production was funded for just £1,862 (about $2,700) raised through a Kickstarter.  And now, Gary and Peter have just announced a NEW crowd-funding campaign (coming in March) to try to raise £7,000 – £8,000 (about $10,000)…well within the $50K limit set by the fan film guidelines.

Speaking of the guidelines, I asked Gary about film length and crowd-funding perks:

We are structuring the script to split in half at the 15-minute mark, and so we are aiming for an overall run-time of 30 minutes for the story. We have yet to decide whether to make that two separate uploads of 15 minutes or not.  That choice will be made much later in the process I think.

As for perks, we will probably only offer wallpapers, scripts, etc.  Our hope is that anyone who donates does so to see the film get made.  The simpler the perks, the more money we can put on screen!

Like Chance Encounter, the new film, The Holy Core, will be set in a time period about midway through TNG, likely 2368 or thereabouts, with a cast of all new characters.  And while Chance Encounter was basically a love story, Gary says…

This time we will touch on several themes, such as scientific pursuit, the roles of religion, and a little hint of romance, too.

The new campaign will start up around March 1 and run through the end of that month.  Filming will likely happen over the summer (once sets are built and cast members selected), and the finished film(s) will likely debut in late 2018 or early 2019.  Obviously, a lot can happen before then, but Chance Encounter stayed pretty much on schedule all though production.

So start saving your pennies (or pence) for a very exciting crowd-funder coming in just five more weeks.  And here’s something to get you in the donating mood…

Has DISCOVERY gotten TOO dark to still be STAR TREK? (editorial review)

There be SPOILERS here!

And now we know.  Well, lots of us already knew.  I’ve written about it repeatedly here and elsewhere.  I and others have debated with those in the fan base who believed that Captain Lorca was simply a tough-as-nails leader who would always put Starfleet first.  In this time of war with the Klingons, we needed someone like Lorca to make the United Federation of Planets great again!

But now we have all, er, discovered that Lorca has been playing us this whole time.  He’s really from the Mirror Universe, and he’s a bad dude.  For those fans who supported Lorca, stood up to defend his disturbing behavior and his dark methods—guess what!—you’ve placed your loyalty in someone who is just out for personal gain and doesn’t care about the UFP or anyone in our Prime Universe.  In fact, he doesn’t seem to care about people from his Mirror Universe either…certainly not women.  “Her name was Ava, and I liked her,” Lorca tells the brother of a woman he’d killed years before.  “But you know how it is.  Somebody better came along.”

Sure, he can be charming and talk crew members like Stamets into doing almost anything.  But Lorca’s been keeping a lot of secrets from all of us, including from the people he leads.  As far as I’m concerned, Lorca’s lust for power trumps anything that might have made him seem admirable in any way…and he’s fooled at least 37% of us all along.

Okay, enough of the fun double entendres.  Let’s start doin’ some reviewin’!

Continue reading “Has DISCOVERY gotten TOO dark to still be STAR TREK? (editorial review)”

AXANAR DETRACTOR changes his mind about ALEC PETERS!

On Saturday, GABE KOERNER, a well-known detractor of Axanar and ALEC PETERS, sent me the following e-mail out of the blue:

I’ve given up on the Idea that the guy is some kind of willful criminal. He isn’t. He’s just a mix of Massively Egotistical and Massively Incompetent which can LOOK “criminal” but it really isn’t.

Yeah, it’s obvious that Gabe isn’t ready to finally stop trying to disparage Alec (frankly, I doubt that Gabe will ever be able to completely let this go).  But this was a HUGE revelation and step forward for someone who, like many detractors, had been calling Alec all kinds of synonyms for crook, thief, criminal, liar, embezzler…the list goes on and on!

At the heart of the most extreme detractor arguments has been a contention that Alec had willfully taken money from Axanar donors to fund a lavish lifestyle of things like jet-setting around the world, eating sushi, paying for health insurance, and buying new tires for his car.  I’ve seen the full Axanar financials—endless pages of spreadsheets!—and I’ve tried to explain about a million times here and elsewhere how this wasn’t the case at all.  It was like trying to reason with jello!

And even if you’re one of those people who thinks the Axanar books were somehow cooked, the fact remains that the goal of embezzling is to come out with MORE money, NOT less.  And yet, Alec Peters has put in close to a quarter of a million dollars of HIS OWN money (generated from the sale of screen-used props from his extensive collection) to fund this project.  Of course, you can argue whether or not a studio should have been leased/built or simply rented, But even Alec himself now agrees that he should have filmed Axanar on James Cawley’s TOS sets in upstate New York as originally envisioned.  So that’s not the point today.

Now personally, I have no idea if any other of the detractors on their various public and secret Facebook groups are now in agreement with what Gabe has just acknowledged…and frankly, I don’t feel like checking those crass and vitriolic places to confirm.  And I don’t really have to.

The story today is simple.  I received an e-mail on Saturday, unsolicited, from someone who is a good friend of, and has been conversing with, former Axanar director ROBERT MEYER BURNETT.  And in this e-mail, Gabe Koerner finally gives up on a long-standing claim that he has clung to that Alec Peters is some kind of willful criminal.  That’s a BIG step forward.

And if Gabe can finally move past such a deeply-held belief—despite the other digs that he still feels he must make—then maybe there is some hope for other Axanar detractors out there.  Maybe…

Why the 11th episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY did NOT piss me off! (editorial review)

There’s SPOILERS off the starboard bow…
starboard bow…starboard bow!

After publishing my previous editorial review of the 10th episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, a post from someone named Boris commented: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Capt Georgiou made a reappearance – maybe even as an Empress…”

I responded, “Man, if they make Georgiou the Emperor/Empress…that’s gonna be one angry blog!!! Enough with the doppelgängers!!!!” 🙂

Even as I wrote that response, I knew it was gonna happen.  It had to.  The “faceless” emperor?  C’mon!  In a Mirror Universe filled with probably hundreds of billions of sentient beings, we just happen to run into the dozen or so that are all main characters listed in the opening credits of the show: Captain “Killy” Tilly, the slave Saru, bearded Sarek, Voq leads the resistance, Burnham is captain of the USS Shenzhou, even Mirror-Stamets pops in.  Honestly, I was surprised we didn’t see Mirror Landry (the first Discovery security chief) as the Shenzhou‘s head chef or something!

So really, of course Philippa Georgiou was going to be the Empress.  Boris nailed it.  And that really pissed me off, right?

Surprisingly…no, it didn’t.

Neither was I angry about the Mirror-Tellarites mysteriously growing tusks like wild boar…or the Andorian whose voice reverberated for some strange reason.  Nothing seemed sloppily written or beyond believable.  There was even some banter!

Honestly, guys, I really liked this episode.  Let’s take a look at why…

Continue reading “Why the 11th episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY did NOT piss me off! (editorial review)”

Elementary school kids have a blast filming at STARBASE STUDIOS…and all hell breaks loose in fandom! (part 2)

Read Part 1 of this blog entry if you haven’t already.  Did you do it?  Good.

So it was now a few weeks before Christmas, and VANCE MAJOR was ready to tag out and I was ready to tag in to try to get this compromise settlement for STARBASE STUDIOS to the finish line.  Vance was exhausted, but he got the runners 90% of the way there.  Just a few teensy details left to work out…or so I thought.

Keep in mind, neither Vance nor I is a lawyer.  Instead, we were just trying, as friends, to help SCOTT JOHNSON and KENT EDWARDS work out a way where GLEN L. WOLFE would drop his lawsuit against them, and Starbase Studios could continue without fan filmmakers having to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use the Starbase Studios TOS sets.

By the time I tagged in, there was a full legal settlement agreement already written up by Glen’s lawyer, ready for Scott and Kent to sign.  But they still had some issues with it.  One of the biggest was that Scott decided that he didn’t want Glen to own 100% of the Starbase sets.  But he was willing to split them 50/50.  Would Glen agree?  Scott didn’t think so.  And frankly, neither did Vance.

“Look,” I said to Vance, “Maybe he’ll say no, and we’ll be back to square one.  But if Glen says yes, then we’re there!  It’s worth it to at least ask him.”

Vance agreed to make the call.  Five minutes later, I had Glen’s answer…

Continue reading “Elementary school kids have a blast filming at STARBASE STUDIOS…and all hell breaks loose in fandom! (part 2)”

Elementary school kids have a blast filming at STARBASE STUDIOS…and all hell breaks loose in fandom! (part 1)

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes at STARBASE STUDIOS recently, and I’ll get to that in a moment.  But first, you might want to read up on the current situation if you don’t already know about the lawsuit and all of the other drama going on of late.

All right, strap in.  Let’s start with this past weekend when a group of 5th and 6th graders from Parkview Elementary School Music Club got a chance to film a music video project on the amazing TOS sets of Starbase Studios, currently located in Marble Falls, Arkansas.

The field trip was set up by their teacher, KEVIN CROXTON, who had composed the music for THE FEDERATION FILES’ second episode Walking Bear, Running Wolf last summer.  In exchange, Kevin had asked show-runner GLEN L. WOLFE for the opportunity to bring Kevin’s music students (they’re local) to the sets to film a video project.  So this past weekend’s excursion has been planned for nearly 7 months.

And, really, isn’t this what Starbase Studios is all about?  Sets by the fans, for the fans…and even attracting a whole new (next!) generation of young fans.  So what could possibly be wrong with that?

Well…

Continue reading “Elementary school kids have a blast filming at STARBASE STUDIOS…and all hell breaks loose in fandom! (part 1)”