Exploring the world of Star Trek fan films.
Yesterday, we began looking back at many of the major (and not-so-major) Star Trek fan films released in 2025—and there were a LOT! So many, if fact, that I felt I needed to divide this Year in Review blog into two parts. Part 1 covered January through June. Now, let’s finish out the final six months and see what Trekkie fan filmmakers had to offer us. There’s some really great stuff on this list…
Continue reading “2025 Star Trek Fan Film YEAR IN REVIEW (part 2)”
It’s the end of another year, and I’m still here, you’re still here, and so are Star Trek fan films! Admittedly, I’ve been less prolific in 2025 than I have in past years because I’ve gotten involved with mentoring my sons Jayden’s high school robotics team, The Bagel Bytes (named after their first sponsor back in 2001, Noah’s Bagels). And I’ve kinda gone all-in, assisting the team with marketing materials and e-mail communication, finding sponsors (including RODDENBERRY ENTERTAINMENT!), filming and editing team videos, helping them set up a Patreon campaign, and a whole lot more. I’m with the team 2-3 times a week, helping out the coach, and just marveling at these amazingly talented teens! But putting in all of those free volunteer hours is leaving me with much less time and energy for this blog.
That being said, I’m still organizing the annual SHOWRUNNER AWARDS, interviewing many Star Trek fan filmmakers, and even assisting some of them with their fan films (as I did twice this past year!). And of course, my regular YEAR IN REVIEW blogs have been an annual tradition since my first one back in 2017. And each year, I remind my readers who predicted back in 2016 that CBS/Paramount’s fan film guidelines would utterly destroy Star Trek fan films that our little sub-sub-sub-genre is still very much alive and kicking.
And indeed, even nearly a decade later, Trek fan films continue to be produced and posted to YouTube—quite a lot of them! Buy, hey, don’t just take my word for it. Check it out for yourself below. In fact, there were so many to cover that I’ve split this year’s compilation blog into TWO parts!
Many of the following fan films were ones that I had intended to cover here on Fan Film Factor, but life and robotics got in the way. So instead, I’ll be spotlighting them here with short blurbs for each one. There’s probably at least a few you haven’t seen, and I strongly recommend that you check out any that intrigue you—and possibly some that don’t, as you might be pleasantly surprised. Let’s dive in…
Continue reading “2025 Star Trek Fan Film YEAR IN REVIEW (part 1)”
The whole idea behind TREKS IN 90 SECS was to challenge the assumption that it was impossible to make a decent Star Trek fan film that was 15 minutes or less in length (a limit set by CBS and Paramount’s fan film guidelines). Not only did fans quickly prove that it was possible, fan films have thrived these past nine years despite this limit. So if fans were clever enough to cut things down to 15 minutes, could they be even more clever enough to cut things down to just 90 seconds???
Last year, nine groups of fan filmmakers took up the gauntlet to submit ultra-short films to our inaugural contest. This year, we had ten submissions (although one was previously submitted from last year…which is allowed for a short film that wasn’t in the top three previously). This year’s submissions were due at the end of July, and voting was open on Fan Film Factor from August 3rd through 24th.
Awards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place have now been given to the top three vote-getting fan films who now get to brag and copy-paste their “certificate” graphics onto their YouTube, Facebook, and social media pages. Amusingly, this year we had a tie for second place, with the same fan filmmaker getting the same number of votes for both of his submissions.
But all of the submissions are winners in my book—for taking up the challenge in the first place and finishing their super-mini-fan films! And that’s why I’m including all ten submissions on this page, along with their final vote totals (as everyone got at least some votes), so fans can see each of the submitted films…
1st Place – THRONE OF ZEUS (28 votes)
2nd Place – THE BIGGEST FLAW IN STARSHIP DESIGN (23 votes)
2nd Place – WHEN YOU’RE NOT A MAIN CHARACTER ON A STARSHIP (23 votes)
3rd Place – TOUGH TO KILL (20 votes)
TASK FORCE-78: BREAKAWAY! – A 90 SECOND MUSIC VIDEO (13 votes)
TASK FORCE-78: MISSION POSSIBLE – A MUSIC VIDEO MASH-UP (13 votes)
SHIPS OF THE NIGHT – SALISBURY COLONIAL DEFENSE FORCES (8 votes)
WRATH REDUX (7 votes)
COMING HOME (2 votes)
GIFT OF THE MANTICORE (1 vote)
We have a total of TEN entries for our second annual TREKS IN 90 SECS contest—one is a returning entry from last year—and since each fan film runs between 90 and 120 seconds, you can watch all of them in less than 20 minutes!
You can vote for up to three of your favorite videos, and once you make your selections and click the “VOTE” button at the bottom, that’s it and your ballot is locked. So choose wisely!
Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, August 24. Then the three ultra-short films with the highest number of votes will be declared the winners, and results will be posted at the end of this month.
We now have five official entries, so it’s a horse race, folks! But I would like a few more ponies at the starting gate if possible.
Just a quick 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 less than four weeks away!
And 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:
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!
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:
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!
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)…
Continue reading “The 2025 SHOWRUNNER AWARDS now have their final 24 entries!”
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…
Continue reading “Meet this year’s JUDGES for the 2025 Star Trek Fan Film SHOWRUNNER AWARDS…”
Don’t look now, but my last published Fan Film Factor blog was on January 9th! And for a guy who prides himself on posting at least one or two new blogs a week, that’s almost an eternity of radio silence! Indeed, it had gotten so noticeable that one fan filmmaker actually IM’d me recently to ask if I’d survived the recent Los Angeles wildfires. (I was tempted to respond, “No, I died in a smoldering inferno last month. I’m writing to you from the Great Beyond…and they have Star Trek reruns!”)
So what did happen?
Well, as I mentioned in my final blog of 2024, I had been spending quite a bit of time finishing the writing of a new book on day trading. (Don’t laugh! I’ve gotten quite good at it, folks. And something has to pay for my next fan film!) But the book came out in late January, so that doesn’t explain my lack of blogger productivity for much of January and all of February.
I could, of course, blame the wildfires that devastates L.A. and left a number of our friends effectively homeless. But fortunately for myself and the Lane family, homes on the west side of Los Angeles were spared from the fiery maelstrom. I did volunteer at an organization called Project Angel Food (mostly chopping vegetables), but that didn’t take away too much blogging time.
No, the two reasons for my lack of new fan film blogs these past two months were twofold: the DIRECTORS CHOICE AWARDS and robots.
Usually, I simply report on the annual Directors Choice fan film awards. But this year, due to my entering of my own fan film, AN ABSENT FRIEND, into the competition, I am also a judge. And as it turns out, there were FIFTY-FIVE different entries this time out!!!! Some of them I’ve already seen, as they are Star Trek fan films. But others are superhero, Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters, The Last of Us, Power Rangers, Narnia, and a host of other sci-fi/fantasy/horror genres. And many of them are truly excellent and worth watching (for example, this one and this one). But while some of them are fairly short, others have run times of thirty minutes to over an hour…and there’s quite a few of those! So I’ve been spending a LOT of time just watching dozens and dozens of different fan films so I can cast an informed ballot before the March voting deadline.
As for the robots…
Continue reading “Where did JONATHAN go?”
First, my friends, I must apologize for being a bit less diligent in my coverage of Star Trek fan films this past year. Granted, I’ve still published over 65 blogs since January 1, 2024, but that’s compared with 90 blogs in 2023 and 114 in 2022.
The reason behind my diminished output is that I’ve been spending much of this past year co-authoring a book, which I’ve only just completed (it will be out early next year). It was a paying gig, so it needed to take priority. It’s actually my third co-authored book, my first being Starship Spotter (with ADAM “MOJO” LEBOWITZ, ROB BONCHUNE, and ALEX ROSENZWEIG) and my second, Being Santa Claus, still available for purchase in various formats here on Amazon.
But enough about me!
Let’s get started looking at what’s been happening in world of Star Trek fan films for the last twelve months. As usual, I won’t have enough time or space to get to everything, but here are the biggest stories of the year…
IS CROWD-FUNDING STILL A THING?
Sadly, the year kicked off on a bit of a sour note as a debate began to rage on social media whether Trek fan films should continue crowd-funding. It began when RANDY LANDERS announced that POTEMKIN PICTURES would no longer do any public crowd-funding. But then he added (somewhat forcefully) that he felt that other fan productions shouldn’t crowd-fund either. Things got heated from there. And sadly, in part because I didn’t agree, Randy told me to no longer cover any of his Potemkin releases on Fan Film Factor…and I have, of course, complied with his wishes, albeit regrettably.
Perhaps ironically, not many fan productions chose to crowd-fund this year. In fact, I only counted four during all of 2024 (well, technically five, since FARRAGUT FILMS ended one campaign and began another shortly thereafter), and those were for:
In previous years, crowd-funding campaigns were much more prolific. Now, it seems they are diminishing in frequency and, in general, bringing in less money (although FARRAGUT FORWARD did reach $47.5K before wrapping). Will 2025 continue to see this phasing out of crowdfunding? I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Continue reading “2024 Star Trek Fan Film YEAR IN REVIEW”