Make it stop.
Please.

I'm a fan of _Star Trek: New Voyages_. I'd place their second episode, "In Harm's Way" in the top 5 of ST:TOS episodes. And the latest one, while I personally didn't think the story was any more than just good, did have excellent production. The sets are spot-on, and the music is perfect! It's an amazing job for what is basically a bunch of people in their garage.

I loves me some Star Trek (obviously) but every now and again am harshly reminded that "fan" comes from "fanatic."

OK, let me first say that I loved the original Star Trek series when I was a kid. That said, is there anything more annoying than these overboard, crazy-ass Star Trek fans? Just let it die already.

Why would we want to stop it? This is the future, folks. On the one hand you have inflating production costs, which leads to networks becoming increasingly squeamish. They won't risk blowing a couple million bucks on something that may or may not make them money. That means a few more CSI spin offs in the works.

Secondly, you have fans, writers, actors and directors wanting more creative control and the wiggle room to experiment. You can't do it on TV anymore because of reason 1 so why not do it yourself online? Sure the production values may be a little lower than desired but that will change over time as online content catches on and attracts investors.

"out of increased confidence?"

I'm ashamed to admit I watched part of the first episode they did, and other than being surprised how much money they sank into it...I thought the acting was no better than any other fan film.

The whole thing's so weird.

This looks great!

Congrats to the fans who produce this series! You must really love ST:TOS to do this kind of production. So kudos to them! I'll have to check it out.

I saw a bunch of these at Dragon*Con last year. I was impressed.

I give them credit for doing this. I know of a group of Finnish fans who made a whole series of ST spoofs. They did an amazing job of doing a ST vs B5 spoof (90 minutes long) which was damned funny. I'd rather have fans who love the stuff do it than the dorks at Paramount who killed the golden horta.

Gyrus is right. Mainline TV and cinema will eventually find itself obsolete as low overhead (ie: no $110 million stock option CEOs) studios will be blazing a path. Hollywood is doing what the big tech/drug and other firms are finding out that there is such a thing as being too BIG. It won't happen overnight as some intertubes "guru" dipshits once prophesied, but it will happen within a decade or two.

@ManchuCandidate: What will happen in the short term is the studios and networks creating small subsidiaries to head hunt online content that they can then funnel into their pre-existing distribution network.

Eventually, some smart creative indies will realize they don't need the big networks and just run an Office or quality show straight through online viewing and downloads, without the networks being invovled at all. That will probably take a few years but will be awesome to see.

The secret word after or is Seinfeld.

@Plague: Like Kirk said to Kruge:

"I... have had enough.... of... YOU!"

I watched some of these a few weeks ago. I am not a Star Trek fan, other than watching it with my dad when I was a kid. Maybe that made it nicer for me? I don't know.

Anyways, the first couple had knee jarring bad acting, but by the third one, it was either not so bad, or my brain had melted.

I like them. I have been showing them to my friends, and they thought they were good, too.

I say good on them.

on the whole the episodes are chock full of cringeworthy moments, but yet make me smile more than say, any episode of voyager or enterprise.

Just so long as they don't go using any of the proposed 1970s Phase II scripts. One was a Klingon epic that might have been interesting but has been completely contradicted by the later series; two were filmed as TNG episodes; but some of the others were, judging by synopses available in a few books, so bad that a Phase II TV series would have been lucky to last as long as the TV series of Logan's Run. Like for example the City on the Edge of Forever ripoff in which Kirk finds himself in Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941.

TNG FTW!

These are great. The guest stars alone are worth putting up with the flaws.

"I'd place their second episode, "In Harm's Way" in the top 5 of ST:TOS episodes."

I'd place it in the waste disposal and switch the control to "disintegrate". The ones with George Takei and Walter Koenig don't suck though.

"...don't feel too guilty when enjoying it despite the production values and hammy acting. The Science Fiction Writers of America are right there with you."

I wouldn't go that far, as quite a controversy erupted amongst SFWA members (and others) when this appeared on the ballot, despite its apparent lack of eligibility.

I've been watching these since they came out and have been pretty impressed. The episodes are as good as at least half of the episodes of the later iterations of Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, & Enterprise) and I like the fact that they're doing it independently.

I find it interesting that the stories of TOS were a reflection of the times and that New Voyages is a reflection of the new ways of doing things in media.

What James Crawley and company do wrong.... ACT !
Crawley chews up sets and over acts worse than anyone could imagine..unless they seen the guy who plays spock. the look of the guy who plays spock makes me want to shut down my computer and scotty and bones We have no fear of hollywood breaking up this cast.

What they do RIGHT ...Everything else ! the scripts are at least as good as any on TV (okay Dead Checkov wasn't great but everyone has an off day)
the production features some great CGI
I think The Great Bird would have been proud. This FAN series gives us hope for web based content.
As I fan I wish the episdes would give the second tier characters more to do. (Star Trek IV had a relationship between Scott and Uhura

Another FAN based series that deserves a look is STAR TREK: Hidden Frontier and it's spin off Star Trek:Odyssey the scripts arent always great but the acting is better.

I was talking with a friend about these last night. They are entertaining- very high end amateur, but when you take them at face value, they give you your money's worth
[a beat]
What makes these watchable, though, is the enthusiasm. The mainline Trek shows have not had this sort of enthusiasm in decades. I really look forward to what they come up with next.

And they actually have better production values than TOS...

i watched the sulu episode last nite and i have to say i'm impressed. sure some of the acting is bad and some of the camera work is amateurish. but hey!! they're amateurs at film making!!

the fact that they're starting to attract real pro actors and scripts ('world enough and time' is a great script) from credible writers says several things about these 'fan-films': this is the wave of the future and this is what digital technology has wrought.

the better the scripts get, the better the talent they'll attract, the better this show (and others like it) will get.

i think what we're witnessing is the early stages of a transition of power (i'm not sure how to put it, i'm winging it here.)

paramount should do it's self a favor and invest in these ventures. maybe something as small as marketing, equipment donation, whatever, but remain hands off. these people are keeping their franchise alive and could do a better job of it if they made some sort of living from it.

in any regard, fan films of this quality are a remarkable achievement, and this is with their own money and donated time. think of what they could do with a sanction from paramount.

good luck to them, i'll be watching.

Whoa!

I fired this up out of curiosity and made a minor discovery. The co-writer and director of this "award-winning" episode is none other than Marc Scott Zicree.

Who? Mr. Zicree wrote the outstanding Twilight Zone Companion some years back. It's part encyclopedia, history text, and love poem to the show and the people behind it. Absolutely pregnant with quality and insight from page one. Can't recommend it enough to fans of the original series. This guy knows true fandom (and how to write), so it's not really surprising to find him involved in another labor of love involving a 60's sci-fi show.

Whatever anyone thinks of fan films, New Voyages does some heavy work, but "award-winning" means something different these days.

[www.startreknewvoyages.com]

Thanks to TV Guide's "vote as many times as you like" policy, New Voyages got their fans to give themselves the award.

[www.startreknewvoyages.com]

They also mobilized their fans to join WSFS to nominate the George Takei thing. Is this something that movie studios and TV production companies regularly do? If it is, then I'm not really inclined to let awards influence my choice of entertainment. I don't support publicists.

It makes little sense for Paramount to invest in projects that already serve them as publicity vehicles for their brand - for free. As has been mentioned here and elsewhere on the net, Paramount has invested over $150 million into the next film and its push back to a summer release date is a clear indicator that they expect to make a tidy sum from their investment. Fan films, regardless of how many professionals they attract, simply won't be able to justify Paramount's expending their human and capital resources in light of this. Besides, whether they are sanctioned or not should not limit anyone's ability to appreciate their efforts, nor will it stop professionals from lending their expertise to pad their resumés.