I’ve gotta hand it to the folks at STAR TREK: DISCOVERY…this episode took chutzpah!
We’re going into the mid-season hiatus—six weeks without new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery—and one might have expected a “big” episode with lots of action sequences and suspense and drama building to a huge cliffhanger ending that would leave the viewers shouting for “more!” And while we did get that aforementioned cliffhanger, the rest of episode—I’d estimate 90% or more—was just people literally standing around and talking. Just…talking. Okay, a few were sitting. But just talking, talking, and talking some more.
Heck, they didn’t even leave the room! Nearly the whole episode took place entirely on just two sets…and neither was even the bridge! If last week’s “Stormy Weather” was a bottle episode, then this week’s “…But To Connect” was a thimble episode.
And yet, as God is my witness…
It somehow worked!
It would have been easy to simply dismiss this episode as a misfire. After all, “all talk, no action” is a valid criticism for most shows. And don’t even get me started on the amount of heavy exposition in this episode! At times, the dialogue bordered on science lecture—or maybe law lecture…or both—and at other times felt a little like watching CSPAN. (For those readers outside of the U.S., we have TV channels that air nothing other than proceedings in our Senate and House of Representatives. Most times, watching CSPAN and CSPAN2 is orders of magnitude LESS interesting than watching paint dry.)
So why did this quiet, no-action, potentially even “boring” episode work for me? What left me wanting to write a positive review rather than tearing it apart? Let’s dive in…
It was late 2017 when the IndieBOOM! Film Festival debuted with a category exclusively for “FAN FILMS”—one of the first major film competitions to do so. Created by the team at the award-winning Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, IndieBOOM! offers categories for filmmakers, musicians, and screenwriters working in all short-form formats and genres. In addition to Fan Films, their other categories include Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Horror/Sci-Fi, Experimental, Eusic Videos and Musicals, Animation, Series, Commercials, Dance, and Songs.
In 2019, the winner in the Fan Film category (and also the Sci-Fi category) was “Walking Bear, Running Wolf” from THE FEDERATION FILES. In 2020, the winning fan film was BATMAN: THE SCHEME IS SOUND, which (even though it wasn’t Star Trek) was written, directed, and produced by the man who composed the music for my fan film INTERLUDE: KEVIN CROXTON. And at the beginning of 2021, the announced winner in the category was a Star Wars fan film from Mexico titled JUNDLAND: NO MAN’S LAND.
Now, that we’re in 2022, I think it might be time for a Star Trek fan film to win again. What do you think?
This year’s official selections in the IndieBOOM! Fan Film category include two live-action Star Wars films (one from Australia and one from the USA), an animated Ghostbusters short from the USA, a live-action Jurassic Park fan film from the UK, a James Bond fan film from the USA with kids playing all the role, and two live-action Star Trek fan films from the USA. One of those is my fan film Interlude, and the other is an amalgamation of two fan films from The Federation Files (USA) released over the past two years.
Obviously, I’d like you to please vote for Interlude, although the choice is certainly up to you!
Voting is done by watching on Vimeo, and every view counts as one vote. So watch early, watch often! (Actually, if Vimeo works like YouTube, then each computer browser can log only one vote…so no cheating, I guess!)
Voting runs continuously from today through January 16. Here is the link to view and vote for Interlude…
And maybe give it a like while you’re there, just so I know there’s someone out there watching Interlude.
The first prize for the most viewed film over all of the various categories wins $500. If Interlude wins (fingers crossed!), I intend to donate the prize money to the AVALON UNIVERSE GoFundMe so my DP and Film Editor on Interlude, JOSHUA IRWIN, can produce even more awesome Star Trek fan films. I fully expect to see him winning IndieBOOM! next year!
I encourage you all to check out each of the wonderful films selected as finalists. And if you do choose to vote for Interlude, I thank you.
Well, it’s been another year, and the CBS guidelines still haven’t killed Star Trek fan films! In fact, even focusing on just the highlights, this is still gonna be a loooooong blog. But that’s a GOOD thing…unless you’re the guy who has to write it up. But I don’t mind. In fact, I’ve actually written 108 blogs this year…94 of them about Star Trek fan films and the others a mix of editorials, reviews of new CBS Star Trek episodes and series, tracking the now-settled Star Trek/Dr. Seuss mash-up lawsuit, and sadly a few eulogies).
It’s always a challenge how to organize these year in review blogs, but this time, I think I’ll just go chronologically, highlighting the biggest releases for each month. However, before I do that, I’d like to acknowledge a few key people who go beyond simply making fan films and actually give of themselves to the greater fan film community in significant ways…
VANCE MAJOR – The creator of the fan-favorite character of Erick Minard, Vance has produced nearly 150 Star Trek fan films in total…including 30 this year alone covering both the CONSTAR series as well as other fan films released under the NO BUDGET PRODUCTIONS banner. (Because he’s released so many, I’ll be leaving most of Vance’s films off of this year’s highlight list…lest this blog becomes longer than War and Peace!) Vance has also been helping some of his actors make the transition to producers. In previous years, this included GREG TEFT and GREG MITCHELL. This year, PAUL JACQUES and SEAN REIMER joined that expanding group. And in addition to providing these wonderful opportunities, Vance is also spotlighting fan filmmakers regularly on his PIZZA ROLL DIARIES and CRITICAL, NOT CYNICAL video podcasts.
DAN REYNOLDS and GLEN WOLF – In addition to producing the Star Trek anthology series THE FEDERATION FILES, Glen and Dan also maintain TOS set replicas in their WARP 66 STUDIOS facilities, allowing those sets in northern Arkansas to be used by other fan filmmakers, as well.
RAY TESI – Another fan who owns TOS set replicas, Ray bought the STAR TREK CONTINUES/STARSHIP FARRAGUT sets from VIC MIGNOGNA and now allows them to be used by fan filmmakers at NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS in Kingsland,GA.
SAMUEL COCKINGS – If you see amazing CGI visual effects in a Star Trek fan film, there’s a good chance that the British “Royal of Rendering” created them. Indeed, at this point, it’s almost shorter to list the fan films that Sam Cockings hasn’t done the VFX for! While top-level CGI isn’t a requirement for a good fan film, it can add a professionally polished look. Sam spends an unbelievable amount of his time doing this for his fellow fan filmmakers, and it makes such a big difference for so many.
On Halloween, JOSHUA IRWIN, showrunner of the the AVALON UNIVERSE fan series, released the team’s latest full-length fan film, AGENTT OF NEW WORLDS. It marked the beginning of a new era for their fan series, introducing multiple new characters and jumping the story forward in time to the next captain and crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur, following the departure of former stars VICTORIA FOX and CHUCK MERÉ from the series earlier this past year.
The new release was a labor of love for all involved…in more ways than one. For some on Team Avalon, it meant dozens of hours of round-trip driving to remote outdoor filling locations…along with trips to the TOS sets at WARP 66 STUDIOS in Avalon‘s home state of Arkansas. For Josh himself, the total distance driven surpassed 5,500 miles!!! For an explanation of how that happened, along with a description of one of their most dangerous shoots, take a read through this blog from back in August.
Fast forward to Christmas Day (because, apparently, Josh really likes holiday releases), and Josh surprised the fan film community with a NEW cut of Agent of New Worlds. Apparently, “really good” wasn’t good enough for Josh, as he made about a dozen tweaks and improvements to the film. Take a look at version 2.0…
Amusingly, this wasn’t Josh’s only update of a previously-released fan film. A couple of weeks earlier, after working with me and composer KEVIN CROXTON for about four months, Josh released a third version of INTERLUDE. You can read all about that new edit, what was changed and why, and watch the new version on this blog page.
After watching the new version of Interlude, one of my readers commented that it might be fun to post the previous version and the newest version side-by-side so that fans could compare the two. Perhaps someday. But when it comes to Agent of New Worlds, I can do you one better right now!
Josh and I just finished a special interview that’s a bit different than my usual fare. This video chat focuses on each of the changes that Josh made—showing the “before” and “after” of each shot—followed by Josh explaining how and why he made the adjustment(s).
It’s a really fun and informative interview, especially if you’re interested in film editing. Josh is great at explaining both the philosophical side as well as the technical side without making your eyes glaze over. Also, there’s just a lot of enjoyable banter back and forth between us. I think you’ll really like watching this one…
Oh, and remember that the Avalon GoFundMe campaign is still active, and donations go directly into making really awesome fan films…
I literally have zero complaints about this episode! Well, that’s not entirely true…I found Book’s dad to be a very annoying hallucination. On the other hand, so did Book, and I think he was supposed to be grating. So can I really complain about something I’m meant to complain about? Interesting question!
But what’s not up for questioning is how much I absolutely LOVED this episode. And that’s saying something because “Stormy Weather,” STAR TREK: DISCOVERY‘s sixth episode of season 4, was forced to do more with less. Budget-wise, this episode was about as inexpensive as they come. First of all, it was a “bottle” episode…which means it took place entirely on the ship and/or on existing sets. No new sets had to be built, no one had to create virtual backgrounds for the AR Wall, few extras were used (the bridge almost felt kinda empty, and the ship’s bar definitely was), outside of the ship was just blackness (saving on VFX shots), and even make-up costs were minimized by having the alien Linus off-screen all episode in his quarters “under a heat lamp.”
Low budget episodes like this often happen mid-season (we’re just about halfway through season four now), allowing money to be reserved for the BIG final episodes with all of the action and huge VFX sequences…which is a fact of life for nearly every show on TV these days. With low budgets and limited sets, “bottle” episodes can be hit and miss. But some have been quite excellent—TNG‘s “Ship in a Bottle” (the ultimate “bottle” episode where holodeck Moriarty returns) and “Disaster” are two that come to mind.
And speaking of TNG, perhaps the main reason this particular episode came out so well is because it was directed by a person who is no stranger to TNG-style “bottle” episodes: JONATHAN “Commander William T. Riker” FRAKES.
Frakes knows what makes Star Trek “feel” like Star Trek, and he brought that knowledge to this episode. When done properly, a ship-gets-trapped-and-crew-needs-to-find-a-way-out story is really just a tool for spotlighting the abilities of characters whom we care about. On TNG, we cared about all of them—Picard, Riker, Data, Beverly, Deanna, Worf, Geordi, even Wesley when he wasn’t saving the ship in some annoying way. Do we care as much about the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery as we did about the crew of the Enterprise-D? Well, if anyone can make us care, it’s Jonathan Frakes.
Believe it or not, this was Frakes’ SEVENTH(!) time directing Discovery. He’s also directed 17 additional episodes of other Star Trek series along with two of the feature films. So…y’know…wow! The guy’s about as “veteran” as it gets behind a Star Trek camera.
MATTHEW BLACKBURN isn’t as well known as many fan filmmakers. He doesn’t hang out on the various fan film Facebook groups, he doesn’t release dozens of fan films each year, he doesn’t do crowd-funders or shoot his films on elaborate sets or feature jaw-dropping VFX. He doesn’t cross over with other productions or do a lot of interviews (except with me). And he only ever posts something to Facebook when he’s completed a new fan film.
That said, Matthew has just released his fourth full-length (15-minute) Star Trek fan film in five years and his fifth overall. Matthews’s first fan film, STAR TREK: SURVIVOR, came out back in 2010 and featured the story of a marooned Starfleet officer (played by Matthew) who is nearly dead before being found by a marooned Vulcan agent on a secret mission for the Vulcan High Command. The film was produced by a total of four people, one of them being Matthew’s wife.
Matthew’s second fan film, SURVIVORS, came out seven years later (after the guidelines) and again featured a human and a Vulcan—played by the same actors—but this time they were the captain and his first officer. The production team had grown to six people for this 15-minute film, and I did a 2-part audio interview with Matthew, which you can listen to here if you’d like.
At the very end of 2018, Matthew released a third fan film titled LAST SURVIVOR, again made by just six people but this time featuring an initial landing party of four. The villain in this film was truly terrifying, and this final installment of the Survivor “trilogy” was unquestionably Matthew’s strongest effort yet. I did a two-part text interview with him that you can read here.
Late last year, Matthew released the first of his fan films NOT to have the word “Survivor” in the title. LEFT BEHIND was an action-packed fan film with fights and stunts amid an almost tongue-in-cheek plotline—a very unique offering! That one got a two-part text interview, too.
Although each film stands alone, they can also be watched as a longer storyline. Interestingly, each release is a different TYPE of film: pscho-thriller, buddy adventure, terrifying physical and mental struggle against a more powerful being, and comedic action/adventure survival story.
Matthew’s latest offering once again stands out—both alone and together with the others—as a truly unique genre film. This time, the theme is “mind trip” in a big way, as you never really know which way is up or down, who is who, and what exactly is going on until the very end. Although some fans weren’t crazy about such an odd format, it’s actually a very challenging story structure to edit together and make work. Personally, I think it’s a very strong effort, very ambitious, and definitely worth checking out…
Like Matthew, I decided to switch things up a bit, since we’ve already done text and audio interviews. So this time, we went for a video interview…
If you strip away the opening and closing credits, the 18th fan film from the STARSHIP DEIMOSCreative Group has a runtime of barely more than three minutes. But really, if you think about it, how long does it take to say “Merry Christmas”?
Interestingly, Christmas is rarely seen in Star Trek fan films, despite having been established in Star Trek Generations as still a part of 24th century culture, at least on Earth. So why not do a Christmas-themed fan film? Oh, they’re not unheard of, to be sure. In fact, one year ago, the cosplayers over at STAR TREK FAN PRODUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL released their holiday-themed “fandemic” film (recorded by each actor remotely) titled PEACE AND GOODWILL.
This year, it was Starship Deimos‘ turn. Let’s take a look at their Christmas card…
I reached out to showrunner RANDY LANDERS with some questions. He, in turn, reached out to episode writer and lead actress VICTORIA AVALON as well as producer LEE DREW. So let’s dive into a good ol’ fashioned yuletide fan film fireside chat (on the Internet)…
JONATHAN – What inspired you folks to create a Christmas-themed episode for Deimos?
VICTORIA – Deimos’ viewership is fairly small, and most seem to be very traditional Trek fans. I write largely from TOS and TNG inspiration, and that appeals to them. I’ve had feedback very positive for spiritual references in other stories. Similar to my character of Siân Gabriel, I’m Episcopalian in upbringing, and I often draw on Anglican Christian mythology in writing. My husband and I co-wrote and self-published a high fantasy novel in 2009 that explicitly drew on those themes.
I originally intended an old fashioned Christmas message that would have included shots from all the crews in our various productions. During the holiday season, you see those sorts of things all over local television; I suppose it comes with having grown up in the southern U.S. It’s traditional in the Southern culture I grew up in.
RANDY – I saw it as a chance to send a Christmas card out to the POTEMKIN PICTURES fans. But not all the casts and crews wanted to do it. We respected that, so I made the decision that this would be Deimos‘ Christmas card. And I think it works, especially in the light of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).
JONATHAN – It looks like “Together in the Night” was pretty quick to shoot. In a recent interview for DREADNOUGHT DOMINION (another fan series that Victoria appears in), she mentioned that she drives 15 hours from central Florida to Kentucky for Deimos shoots. I’m assuming Victoria didn’t drive all that way just to record 3 minutes of dialog. Did “Together in the Night” piggyback on any other shoots?
VICTORIA – The vignette was shot at the same time we shot “Leviathan,” and it also was motivated by our desire to do more with RENDA CARR’s character of Maura Drake, who didn’t have a significant part in “Leviathan.” It also brought in more character backstory both for Gabriel and Drake, and our viewership have suggested repeatedly in comments I’ve seen that they enjoy those personal references and building characters.
RANDY – I had just finished directing and running camera for “Leviathan.” It was a six-hour shoot, and my blood sugar was all out of whack. I excused myself, went upstairs, took my 4pm shot of Victoza, and sat down for an hour. I left the directing and camera in Victoria and Lee’s capable hands. I think they did a good job with it.
JONATHAN – That they did! Now, I know you were searching for somebody new to help out with your CGI. The last two episodes have VFX credited to DAN REYNOLDS of THE FEDERATION FILES. Is he your new ongoing VFX guy?
RANDY – We have three VFX folks. Dan stepped up to the plate with “Leviathan,” and we’re delighted with his work. He also did the VFX work for “Together in the Night,” and I intend to ask him to do the VFX work for our upcoming fan film “Prime Directive.”
JONATHAN – Well, that’s a perfect segue to my final question: what’s coming next from Deimos and from Potemkin Pictures?
LEE – As Randy just mentioned, Deimos has another new script from Victoria called “Prime Directive.” We have already shot principal scenes with the Deimos crew, and now we are waiting for additional scenes to be shot with our Klingon crew to finish the shoot. I think that this will be our best production ever thanks to a wonderful story from Victoria.
RANDY – As to what’s in the works for Potemkin Pictures, we’ve got “Opportunity” in late post-production (music from TONY LUNN and sound from RICK FOXX) from STARSHIP WEBSTER coming soon. We also worked a lot with pickup shots and edits for PROJECT: POTEMKIN‘s “Castaway.” I’m also continuing to work on Webster‘s “Snowbound” with special effects from RICHARD SVENNSSON.
Beyond that, we’re filming with a new creative group, STARSHIP CALIBORN, coming up in January. It will be unlike anything we’ve done before, and BILLY SWANSON is its showrunner.
We also will have a number of KLINGON SCOUT SHIP QAB’ELTH (created by Victoria Avalon) films coming in 2022. We have scheduled a Klingon shoot in February with LAWRENCE “Larry” FLEMING reprising his role from “The Solomon Gambit” as Klingon captain Le-Kat, in fact. It won’t take long to edit, and we should have it out sometime in the Spring of 2022.
JONATHAN – As always, lots of exciting things on the horizon from Potemkin Pictures! Thanks, everybody, and have a very Merry Christmas.
It’s been a week since we debuted the newest release of INTERLUDE, our third version, and the response has been phenomenal. Already, there are more than 25K views on YouTube, 1.7K likes, and more than 200 comments. Here’s a small sample:
Real Star Trek again! Love it!
This is how you make a pre-Kirk Prequel. I rest my case.
So amazing. Great music too
this is incredible
MORE, MORE, MORE!!!
Outstanding!
This is real STAR TREK , Bless You All !
Ok, that rocked!! Nice appetizer as we await the main course.
Awsome! Your deflector shields are better than the TV shows.
I think Roddenberry would be proud!
This is terrible
Oops, that last one just kinda snuck in there. Actually, I included it because, for the first six days, it was literally the ONLY negative comment out of the hundreds we’ve received so far. We’re now up to two negative comments.
What JOSHUA IRWIN and I have found most shocking is how quickly the views have gone up considering that the previous versions already have over 200K views between the releases to the AVALON UNIVERSE YouTube Channel plus the releases to the AXANAR YouTube Channel. Obviously, 25K views in the first week would be understandable on the Axanar channel, as they have 108K subscribers. But version 3.0 is only up on the Avalon channel at the moment…and that one has only 13.7K subscribers.
So right now, Interlude v3.0 has TWICE as many views as Avalon has subscribers!
One of those views came from an Interlude donor who posted the following comment: “I just watched Interlude for the first time. Terrific work all around! It’ll definitely be something that I come back for repeat viewing.”
Wait, for the FIRST time??? But he donated! I asked why he hadn’t watched Interlude when it first came out back in April. Turns out he just never got around to it, and when I sent an e-mail update to my donors about the release of v3.0, he decided to watch it on his lunch break right then and there.
Anyway, I just wanted to share a few bits of news with you all. The first is that I’ve finally started entering Interlude into film festivals. I just made the cut-off deadline for the annual IndieBOOM! festival, which was one of the first and only competitions to include a category exclusively for Fan Films. And as of yesterday, Interlude is an OFFICIAL SELECTION for IndieBOOM! (More on that news in January!) And then I decided to take a crack at the L.A. Sci-Fi and Horror Festival because they also have a Fan Film category.
The folks at DREADNOUGHT DOMINION are still going strong after more than eight years making fan films. They’ve given us long episodes, short vignettes, whimsical stories, serious plots, action, adventure, emotional drama…all delivered with that most important of ingredients: a deep love of Star Trek.
The last time I covered this fan series was over the summer when they were successfully crowd-funding an Indiegogo campaign that raised $6,250 by offering—among other exciting perks—personalized Star Trek action figures in the likenesses of donors. Seriously, you can read about it here!
That campaign funded a number of things, including the CGI for their next release, which came out on November 6 and was titled “The More Things Change.” I always get excited when a new Dominion episode comes out, not just because I love that starship design and they use the gorgeous TOS sets at NEUTRAL ZONE STUDIOS in Kingsland, GA, but because they have fun, interesting characters, great stories, and honestly, you never know what you’re going to get with these guys!
That was particularly true with their eleventh episode, which gave us a really engaging story with good acting along with great VFX and a solid selection of TOS background music that made it feel very much like a classic Star Trek episode. Yeah, Dominion is still noticeably a fan production, but at its heart, it’s Star Trek to me. And honestly, I thought this was their best episode yet! Take a look and see if you agree…
One of the things that I find to be most enjoyable about this series is that actors who aren’t the captain or first officer get their chances to shine in episodes that feature their character. This was one such episode, as VICTORIA AVALON, who plays Dr. Farrell, was given many dramatic scenes with generous amounts of dialog allowing her to really perform and stand out.
And speaking of Victoria, I’ve long admired her efforts in a number of different Star Trek fan series, including STARSHIP FARRAGUT (where she started her fan film career) and STARSHIP DEIMOS from POTEMKIN PICTURES (where she writes many of the episodes and stars as Captain Gabriel). Indeed, I’d been wanting to interview her for quite a while…and with this release from Dominion featuring Dr. Farrell is such a prominent role, I had the perfect opportunity.
I also invited sh0w-runners GARY DAVIS and RANDY WRENN to join in on the Zoom chat, as they are both also essential to the series. So sit back and enjoy as we get to know these three prominent fan filmmakers a bit better…
I remember one of my biggest pet peeve scenes from Star Trek TOS happened during the episode “Tomorrow Is Yesterday.” The Enterprise had just done a slingshot around Earth’s sun and is traveling back to the future. They’ve beamed Captain Christopher and the Air Force MP back into themselves (whatever the heck that was), restoring the past, and just as they cross the orbit of Pluto, Spock says, “Braking should begin…now.”
Growing up on nearly constant nightly reruns of Star Trek, I had always thought of “now” as meaning “this very moment.” Spock’s a pretty precise guy! He wouldn’t say “now”—especially with that slight pause before saying it—unless the Vulcan meant, “You should start braking the exact moment you hear me saying this.”
Instead, Captain Kirk slowly turns in his captain’s chair, nonchalantly pushes one of the buttons on his armrest, and says, “Bridge to engineering…begin full braking power.” Now, why Sulu couldn’t do it from the helm as soon as Spock said “now” or Kirk said “do it” or something, I never quite understood. Years later, I realized that the writers wanted one more opportunity for Scotty to remind Kirk of the danger. And indeed, we cut to Scotty in Engineering saying, “Pulling away from the sun weakened ’em, sir. They may blow apart if I reverse…”
Um, what part of “now” are they having a problem with? Scotty knows the situation: they’re in a time warp flying at ludicrous speed through decades, even centuries. You either start braking “now” or else you’re gonna overshoot the 23rd century and wind up in the 32nd…and that century already has another time-displaced starship from your era!
But rather than saying, “WTF, Scotty, cut the damn engines NOW!!!” Kirk responds casually, “No choice, Mr. Scott…” at which point Scotty takes a leisurely stroll over to the back of engineering and nods to two crewmen who start—nearly 18 full seconds AFTER Spock said “now”—to finally begin stopping the ship.
It was one of the few times in Star Trek that I would yell at my TV screen.
I still really like that TOS episode, and of course, I understand that the writer, the director, and the film editor simply wanted to wring as much tension and suspense out of the scene as possible. But even years and decades later, it still bothers me enough that I’ve just spent 400 frickin’ words of a STAR TREK: DISCOVERY review kvetching about it!
But that’s my lead-in to discussing the fifth episode of Discovery‘s fourth season, “The Examples.” Like “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” it’s a decent enough episode…not my favorite, not awful. But also like “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” it left me yelling at the screen—although in this case, it was multiple times!
