Edit: Ninja'd by
RCAM!
Regardless, the point remains. There are no stakes if none of the characters face any legit peril in the course of their adventure. What's the point? It's just characters moving from point A to point B.
Question: In all the episodes of TOS you watched - did you EVER think, Kirk, Spock, or McCoy would die permanently - or the ship itself would be destroyed for good?
The drama IS in the journey of the characters from point A to point B.
That's true, but it's also a different comparison.
TOS was a weekly series. Kirk, Spock and McCoy were the bread and butter of that show at a time when killing off regulars was not as common or as possible as it is today.
I don't dispute your point that the drama can be in the journey of the characters, but this is a web-based film about six characters going to war and before we've seen the picture we've already seen a narrative framing device revealing that they've all survived to pat themselves on the back about how great they were at warfare.
Of course I never expected Kirk or Spock to get killed in a random episode of
TOS (Scotty, though, he surprised me that one time...) but here, half the dramatic gravitas of the film is centered on the war and the battle of
Axanar and this idea that it was such a bad conflict and that so many people were being killed. I mean, I am
certainly not trying to compare
Axanar to
Saving Private Ryan, but how many of those guys that went after Matt Damon came home by the end of that film? Montgomery Clift gets killed before he can even go defend Pearl Harbor in
From Here To Eternity. Christ, even Ben Affleck got offed in
Pearl Harbor.
A better example, though probably difficult (if not impossible) to achieve for
Axanar: the interstitial commentary and introductions from the actual vets during
Band of Brothers as the series progressed, only to reveal who they all were (by name) at the end and which ones did make it through the war and which ones, sadly, hadn't.
Again I will reiterate I am happy to wait for the finished film before making my final or official conclusions about it, but all I have to go on at the moment is
Prelude and my own speculation, and honestly, my own predliections about writing from my own experience and what I myself would have done if I'd taken on a project such as this, and yes, my own professional experience in network television and writers rooms for same.
That's my unique perspective here that people seem to have no problem laughing off because they don't agree with me, but it is where I'm coming from.