Amutt Time – Fan Film Factor

HURRY! This is the FINAL WEEKEND to see STALLED TREK: THE DUMBSDAY MACHINE before next October!

MARK LARGENT has a brilliantly warped mind…or is it warpedly brilliant mind? Whichever the case, his hilarious 3D-animated puppet parody Star Trek fan films have been making Trekkers laugh hysterically since 2012 with the release of STALLED TREK: AMUTT TIME. This adorable reimagining of the classic TOS episode “Amok Time” featured Mr Spott, a Vulcanine, going through heat and needing to return to his home planet to, y’know, do da nasty with his betrothed T’Pomeranian. In an ancient ceremony overseen by the Vulcanine high priestess T’Poodle, Spott and Captain Krock must battle to the death…which doesn’t bode well for the one of them who isn’t super-strong and out of his mind with rage. You can watch it here…

Nearly a decade later—after a fun little detour that included the release of a parody of the AXANAR lawsuit, PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE ARE (co-written and co-produced by yours truly) along with the humorous 3-minute Stalled Trek vignette ALL AHEAD FULL—Mark completed his second full-length parody adaptation of a TOS episode, this time “The City on the Edge of Forever” became STALLED TREK: “THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FORECLOSURE. As the Starship Secondprize investigates mysterious time waves, Dr. McGruff accidentally injects himself with a dozen hypos of the most dangerous drug in the galaxy. You know the story, now watch the puppet parody version…

Although completed in 2021, this uproarious fan film was not posted to YouTube until it had finished touring the film festival circuit for the next two years, winning around 47 million awards during that time.

And now Mark has completed his third and final (yes, folks, he’s exhausted) parody adaptation of a fan-favorite TOS episode, STALLED TREK: THE DUMBSDAY MACHINE. You can watch a trailer for it here…

It premiered at a Star Trek convention in Dallas on Friday night. However, like its predecessor, The Dumbsday Machine will NOT be released immediately onto the Internet. The plan is to post it to YouTube on October 20 of next year, which is the 58th anniversary of the first airing of the original “The Doomsday Machine” episode of Star Trek.

But YOU don’t have to wait till October 2025 to see this labor of lunacy. You can view it on your very own Blu-ray (likely shipped sometime in January). But you must act now!

Now, I say!!

NOW!!!

NOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

By “Now!” I mean before the end of this weekend. Mark has created an Indiegogo page for fans to order copies of all three Stalled Trek releases on a single Blu-Ray disc for $55 (parody is fair use, so yes, he can sell them). Or, if you also want cool retro swag, for a mere $105, you can get the Blu-Ray disc PLUS a printed comic book adaptation of The Dumbsday Machine AND an exclusive View Master reel with seven specially-created 3D renderings of iconic moments from the Stalled Trek series.

So don’t wait! Click on the link below to order your copy while you still can…

www.stalledtrek.com

STALLED TREK is crowd-funding its third TOS puppet parody: “THE DUMBSDAY MACHINE”! (interview with MARK LARGENT)

Back in 2012, one of the earliest Kickstarters for a Star Trek fan film set a goal of $600 and raised $2,200 from over a 100 backers. The result, a hilarious animated puppet parody of the TOS episode “Amok Time,” premiered later that same year. Showrunner and animator MARK LARGENT originally intended that STALLED TREK: “AMUTT TIME” would be a one-off fan production…especially considering all of the work and computer rendering hours required to complete it.

But Mark’s CGI puppets weren’t quite finished yet!

In 2016, during the early days of the AXANAR lawsuit, I was interviewing Mark about “Amutt Time,” we got to talking, and we ended up co-writing and co-producing a hysterical puppet parody called PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE-ARE. Although it didn’t feature any of the zany Kirk/Spock/McCoy/etc. characters, it was still branded as Stalled Trek.

Two years later in 2018, Mark decided that it was time to go back to the TOS roots of Stalled Trek and parody a second classic episode. STALLED TREK: “THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FORECLOSURE” launched a Kickstarter with a humble goal of just $600 and blew past it in just 8 hours! By the time that campaign ended, Mark had generated $4,181 from 114 backers. But shortly thereafter, Mark discovered that the 3D application he’d been using to animate Stalled Trek would no longer be supporting or updating the application on the Macintosh platform, and Mark didn’t have the money to switch to a Windows PC. Instead, he switched programs and started from scratch with Blender 3D.

The following year, as a proof of concept, Mark released the short vignette, ALL AHEAD FULL, in June of 2019, which was—as usual—brilliantly funny. And in the meantime, work continued on “City…”

Close to the finish line, Mark held an additional Indiegogo campaign at the end of 2020/beginning of 2021 that raised another $3,785 from 54 backers for “City…” offering DVDs/Blu-rays plus a high-quality 48-page “flip” comic styled after the old Star Trek “fotonovels” from the 1970s—one side adapting “Amutt Time” and the upside down side adapting City…”

And before anyone starts yelling about selling unlicensed Star Trek merchandise, Stalled Trek is unquestionably a PARODY and is—unlike most non-parody fan films—directly protected under the Fair Use doctrine.

“City…” was finally completed and mailed to donors on a blu-ray in June 2021. Since then, this humble fan film has gone on to win a ton of awards…

Indie Short Fest
IndieX Film Fest
Azure Lorica Fan Film Awards
LA Sci-Fi & Horror Festival (2 awards)
New York International Film Awards
Grand Rapids Comic-Con Film Festival
MonsterFlix Awards
Oniros Film Awards
Cult Movies International Film Festival
Independent Shorts Awards
RED Movie Awards
Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest

Plus it was a finalist in The Galactic Imaginarium Film Festival and the Beyond the Curve International Film Festival.

So where can you see this marvel on YouTube? At present, you can’t. But Mark is once again making “City…” available on DVD along with “Amutt Time” and a BRAND NEW puppet parody, STALLED TREK: “THE DUMBSDAY MACHINE.” Here’s a trailer for it…

Check out the NEW TRAILER and Indiegogo for STALLED TREK: THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FORECLOSURE!

Come for the trailer, stay for the crowd-funder!

When it comes to Star Trek puppet parodies, MARK LARGENT is a veritable genius. His first release from 2012, STALLED TREK: AMUTT TIME was a hysterical send-up of the TOS fan-favorite episode “Amok Time.” If you haven’t seen if yet, do yourself a solid and click that link I just provided and watch it. You won’t be sorry.

Four years later in the middle of the AXANAR infringement lawsuit, Mark and I teamed up to write and produce PRELUDE TO AX’D-WE-ARE, an uproarious puppet parody of both PRELUDE TO AXANAR as well as of the lawsuit from CBS and Paramount. And most recently, while trying to test out a new 3D rendering application for his next puppet parody, Mark released yet another hilarious vignette titled ALL AHEAD FULL.

The last of the bunch was intended to help guide Mark learning a new 3D application as he worked on his latest Stalled Trek creation, a parody of the beloved TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” to be titled THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FORECLOSURE. Mark held a crowd-funding campaign for the project back in 2018, and now he’s asking for a wee bit more. And this new Indiegogo is offering a very unique perk: a full-color, flip-cover COMIC BOOK (just like they used to sell in the 1970s for Star Trek) at the $25 level…

This is in addition to a Blu-ray at the $50 level and a limited number of “Super Backer” perks at $100 containing the comic book, Blu-ray plus three Stalled Trek trading cards. (I grabbed one of those!) There are also stretch goal posters if Mark raises $2500, $5000, and $7500 (he just passed the first stretch goal). And if he reaches $10K, he’ll add a third story to the comic: “Balance of Terrier”!

Now, before anyone says anything about the fan film guidelines not allowing for crowd-funders to offer unlicensed physical perks, remember that this is an obvious parody. And while most fan films can’t be considered parodies, ones that are parodies are protected under the Fair Use doctrine. So the guidelines don’t really apply here.

The reason for the new Indiegogo campaign is that Mark managed to find an actual Hollywood composer to do the music: MAX McGUIRE. Along with composing music for a wide variety of projects including shows airing on FOX, ABC, NBC, E!, CBS and TBS and the hit Syfy/Netflix series 12 Monkeys, Max also wrote the score for RENEGADES: THE REQUIEM. So this campaign is raising money for professional sound quality to go with the professional music. The more money that gets raised, the better the sound will be.

Right now, Mark has taken in $2,525 with 46 days to go. If you’d like to donate (or know someone who might like to donate), here is the link…

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stalled-trek-the-city-on-the-edge-of-foreclosure

And here is the first full trailer for Stalled Trek: The City on the Edge of Foreclosure (it looks AWESOME)…