David Zappone – Fan Film Factor

Back in early 2021, 455 Films, the folks who brought fans FOR THE LOVE OF SPOCK and DEEP SPACE NINE: WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND, held a new crowd-funding campaign for their third Star Trek-themed documentary film, TO THE JOURNEY – LOOKING BACK AT STAR TREK: VOYAGER. The previous two productions each took in about $650K from donors. But the Voyager documentary blasted past those numbers, doubling total contributions with more than $1.3 million from 12.4K backers—plus an additional $50K from a second Indiegogo in 2022 funding a series of special theatrical premieres when the film was completed.

Three premieres are happening this month, the first of which took place on Thursday night at the Paramount Theater at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The second will be next Tuesday in New York City on the upper West Side (in the same space that houses The Leonard Nimoy Theater), and the final one will take place in London at the Princess Anne Theatre on November 21.

If you don’t have tickets for these premieres yet, you likely won’t be able to get them (at least, not cheaply!), as they were offered exclusively to donors and were gone pretty quickly! Indeed, I missed my opportunity a few months ago by waiting too long. However, my good friend (and fan film donor-tuned-producer-turned-actor) RAY MYERS had an extra ticket and offered it to me. In exchange, I offered Ray our guest bedroom to save on hotel costs while he’s in Los Angeles (Ray lives near Dallas, TX). And thanks to a series of severe tornadic storms rolling through the central Texas on Friday, all return flights into Dallas were canceled, and I get to host my friend a whole extra day!

Behind us in the distance is Stage 4, one of four soundstages that housed the Deep Space Nine sets. Stage 4 included Ops, corridors, and quarters.

No sooner had Ray and I arrived at Paramount at 6pm Thursday—me in my Picard season 3 jacket and Fan Film Factor shirt; Ray dressed much more casually and debonaire—than I noticed L.A.-based fan filmmaker DAVID CHENG, also wearing a Picard season 3 jacket…

So yeah, we matched. And quite a few attendees came in uniform to the premiere, ranging from TNG to Voyager to First Contact to Picard-era—along with some creative variants. Ray was put to work almost immediately checking in people by a friend of his who was one of the event organizers….

If the interior of the Paramount Theater looks familiar, you probably remember it as the Coalition of Planets’ meeting chamber from the penultimate episode of ST: Enterprise, “Terra Prime.”

That gave David and me a chance to hang out in the lobby, chat, and take a few photos…

Has the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND been left behind? Hardly!

Just over a year ago, IRA STEVEN BEHR, DAVID ZAPPONE, and ADAM NIMOY unexpectedly blasted though all expectations (an initial $150,000 goal) and ever-higher stretch goals to reach a staggering $647,891 in donations for their ambitious full-length documentary about the beloved Star Trek TV series Deep Space Nine.

Fans were excited about nearly every aspect of this planned project. Clips, behind-the-scenes stories and footage, and round-table interviews with nearly all of the major cast members and many of the production team were, of course, a given. But there would also be a special 20-minute “what if” segment in which the original writers would brainstorm a theoretical 8th season of the show. There would be licensed footage, customized graphics, and an original score…all directed by Adam Nimoy, who has already given fans the excellent For the Love of Spock documentary.

But most exciting, though, was a promised HD remastering of certain scenes from the original DS9 series along with new CGI animations produced and overseen by veteran Trek VFX alum DOUG DREXLER. And since Paramount and CBS have stated that they have no intention of remastering DS9 like they did TOS and TNG (yeah, sacrilege!) this will probably be our only chance to have at least at a small taste of what could have been. Most of us “Niner” fans couldn’t wait!

And we thought we wouldn’t have to wait for too long. Although the original estimates were February of 2018, that was before the campaign took in nearly 325% over its original goal. So an update from last November said that February wasn’t gonna happen, and “[W]hile we still are aiming to have the film done in early 2018, it is likely these release timeframes will shift back (slightly) to accommodate.”

So now “early 2018” is rapidly turning into “mid 2018,” and fans are beginning to wonder where’s that darn DS9 documentary?!?

Two weeks ago, we got our answer when the team issued a new update with more information, a bunch of optimism, and a fair amount of good-natured humor. Here’s a look at what they had to say…

Continue reading “So where’s that darn DEEP SPACE NINE documentary??? (update)”

Tag: David Zappone

TO THE JOURNEY – LOOKING BACK AT STAR TREK: VOYAGER premiered Thursday night at PARAMOUNT in Hollywood! (report and review)

So where’s that darn DEEP SPACE NINE documentary??? (update)