Well, I just finished my first watching of ST: Renegades.
In overall it was not bad..I would give it 3/5, an Okay albeit bit shaky start.
While I enjoyed parts of the story, in overall it was not very engaging. Some parts of the movie worked well, like the USS Archer versus Icarus stuff. I would have wanted to see more of that honestly speaking. I think the Icarus crew was interesting but I found myself bored when the action moved back to Starfleet HQ, despite the presence of veteran Trek characters there. The story should have been much more focused on the Renegades themselves. This would have given opportunity to flesh them out more.
I did not personally care much of Chekov's granddaughter, the Romulan woman or the Andorian babe. Those three seemed like a filler characters and did not really contribute anything to the plot much(and were the weakest actors also, IMHO). I hope we do not see them as regulars, because I think the crew of the Icarus is already big enough to develop characters from.
Giving more scenes to Lt. Masaru would have been good idea also, considering his part in the plot. If there will be more episodes, the writing needs approve for sure but it was not a completely disaster, because I did like some of background of the characters( the little we learned that is).
The acting was fine and most of the cast did their jobs quite well, hampered though by the sometimes weak writing I guess. I wish the cast would have been given more to work with.
I think Adrienne Wilkinson, Gary Graham and Chasty Ballesteros gave fine performances.
I found Sean Young giving a surprisingly flat performance, that came bit of an surprise to me actually
The special effects worked for the most part, especially the space battles were well made( I liked the ship designs) and some of the shots of San Fransisco were beautiful.
There were some bad effects too, like the shot of the mines at the start of the movie and the horrible shots of Starfleet Academy( just film in a real park next time or something like that maybe?).
The music was very forgettable and some of the sound effects could have been better, like the disruptors on the Klingon ships.
Sets were okay, though I did not like Chekovs office much, it looked too much like the interior of USS Archer. Shooting in some real office space with added props might have worked better maybe or at least changing the color of the re-used pieces from the yellowish to grey..to highlight it been a different location from the ship.
About the costumes then..
I did not like much the saggy SF uniforms, tighter fit would have served better. I did like the design otherwise some.
Are the cleavages really necessary? I am not puritan or anything and I do not mind women being sexy on screen..but in this case I found it mostly negatively distracting, especially on the case of Andorian woman. Not sure if the outfits add any depth to the characters in this case(and do female Betazoids always have to have boob window on Trek?)
On closing note..I hope the Renegades team will learn from its mistakes and improves to any future episodes(Making next ones in the 45 minutes format would be beneficial maybe). I would certainly like to learn more about the characters, like were the Ronara - Ichep thing is going and learn more about their pasts.
