No. I am protesting the strict time limits per episode they have placed on fan productions. Come on, 30 minutes max? Are you kidding me? I view these guidelines as an effort to kill fan productions. You are free to agree or not.
Sorry, that doesn't fly. If you want to be mad at someone about the restrictions, be mad at Alec Peters. Everything was fine until he fucked things up for all other fan film producers. CBS was well within their rights to impose restrictions on what others can do with CBS's own intellectual property. Heck, they could have just said that no one can make fan films anymore. But they didn't. You may think that a 30 minute max is some kind of evil plot by CBS to kill fan films, but it's not, because CBS could have killed them right then and there. But they decided that if someone is even considering doing what Peters did, that there's going to be consequences. That's life.
Well, they're not. Bearing in mind that fans have no right to produce and distribute Star Trek films, there's certainly no reason that the studio should permit them to overgrow their bounds. Half an hour is a reasonable limit to set.
Your average episode of Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents had stories introduced and satisfyingly concluded in shorter amounts of time. And unlike a Trek fanfilm, they had to introduce everything wholecloth. For eg. Twilight Zone's 'The Cold Equations,' 'Elegy,' 'On Thursday We Leave Home,' 'When the Sky Was Opened,' and 'The Lonely' could have all been (decidedly bleak) episodes of Trek. And they all clock in at 26 minutes.
But, thirty minutes doesn't allow for bloated pew-pew space battles of the sort that Axanar relies entirely upon for its appeal.
Only problem is that each fan production episode must be less than 15 minutes long. That doesn't allow for pretty much everything!
They could have said no and be done with it. There is no legal reason that CBS must allow them to continue anyway. Fan films should be an expression of fun and exploration within the franchise, not an attempt to make feature length demo reels. A half-hour is a pretty reasonable time for amateurs to learn the art of storytelling and character development.
The guidelines exist to prevent anyone else exploiting the Star Trek name for their own personal gain as Alec Peters has.
Definatley not hating on it having not even seen it. However, this may be the LAST chance for trek in any kind of tv format, that being said, I am concerned about some of the decisions they have made. The new series is only 13 episodes long, and is a shot at getting Trek back on "tv" on a more permenant basis. In that case, what they should have done is a combination of fan service, AND appeal to the masses. Get popular current actors in the main roles, set it post nemesis, and have cameos AS THEIR FAMOUS CHARACTERS from Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks and other fan favorites. This way you get the people who are new to star trek coming to look at the actors they like from other shows (GOT, Better Call Saul etc) and the hardcore fans who are obvioulsly going to tune in to see the guest appearences. You don't have to overdo the guest appearances, in a 13 episode season you could have Picard feature in the pilot, Quark or Worf or someone in episode 5, Sisko in the finale. just as an example. EVERY trekkie would watch that, even though i know some will say they wouldn't, lets face it you all know you would. Instead they seem to be going in pretty much the opposite direction. I'm all for trying new things but in this case, with so much on the line for the future of Trek, I think they should have played it safe, and done what would have gotten maximum interest. An obscure time period and space fungus scientists is extreme risk imo, and if it doesn't work it's goodbye trek for the next 15 years.
No. No one likes fan service except for some 30 year old "teenagers" wanking off in their parents basement. Most fans just want good storytelling. CBS isn't trying to appeal to trekkies. They're aiming for a completely new market, and hope that those who have enjoyed trek in the past will come back. Playing it safe is what killed Voyager, Enterprise and the TNG movies. What part of "reboot" is confusing people?
They can't afford to play it safe. The playing it safe created two spin off series that retreaded the TNG formula for multiple years. Regardless of what Star Trek fans would watch, CBS wants to reach new markets and new audiences and expand their marketshare. Paramount showed that they can freshen it up with ST 09 and insert a little bit of rock and roll to freshen it up and be successful in drawing in a newer audience.
Yeah, they need to look to the future - trekkies will come along; they always do. It wasn't loss of the fan audience that sank Enterprise.
Which is why force awakens is the highest grossing movie of all time? That was the ultimate "playing it safe" coming back off very unpopular prequels and containing heavy fan service. Must be a lot of 30 year old basement virgins. (Are we really still using that metaphor in 2017?) They went with what works. I wouldn't say voyager or enterprise played it safe. Voyager went to a new region of space and enterprise an unexplored era. And it wasn't "playing it safe" which killed them, it was bad scripts. As for the TNG movies, ONE OF them played it safe, First Contact, and it's considered one of the best. Insurrection tried a very different idea of a big screen movie and failed, and nemesis script sucked. As I said I'm open to seeing if this works but I'm not optimistic.
St09 did well as the audience was starved for trek for years. Into darkness fell off the pace Beyond, the most "rock and roll" was barely a succesful movie and the future of the franchise on the big screen is questionable. None of those movies focused on a space fungus scientist. The reason they fell off was because the scripts got progressively worse. As all trek scripts since ds9 finished have. The key aspect is good scripts, if they nail that it'll be a success. If not. It's over
Exactly. The key is good scripts and good characters, not rehashing old tropes, ideas and characters. Also, I don't think Beyond was the most "rock and roll" of the new films, as it relied heavily on tried and true Trek tropes (McCoy and Spock being among the most forefront, and Kirk's personal struggle on deciding whether or not to be captain being a close runner up). I think 09 did the best job, giving us a new take on the characters, presenting a different arc for Spock and Kirk, as well as adding more action than before (with First Contact and Nemesis being predecessors to that). I think Beyond, as enjoyable of a film that it was, relied on many nods and Trek tropes, and failed to capture the attention in the way that 09 did. The optimism is overwhelming.
I agree with you as we need good scripts, but I don't agree that all scripts got worse since DS9. Voyager never found it's voice except for a few episodes, but Enterprise season 3 had a DS9 season 4-5 level script, and Enterprise season 4 was awesome on pair with DS9 s6-s7. With Voyager and Enterprise the franchise was suffering from fatigue, as we got too much Star Trek, especially when we had on air DS9 and Voyager on parallel with 52 episodes a year. That was too much. They should have developed more Enterprise taking 2-3 years break after Voyager. With Discovery being only 13 episodes and with some good scripts we could have a successful Star Trek series once more. I still don't care about the settings