Star Trek: First Frontier on Kickstarter

[Mudd]

I thought Mudd was one of the funnier moments...

 

[UssGlenn]

I'm about halfway through, But I can't believe you can be a big enough fan to make a feature length fan film and not realize "The Cage" does indeed have all three different colored uniforms. The difference between Command and Operations is subtle but it's clearly there.

 

[Noname Given]

I'm about halfway through, But I can't believe you can be a big enough fan to make a feature length fan film and not realize "The Cage" does indeed have all three different colored uniforms. The difference between Command and Operations is subtle but it's clearly there.

Yep - Gold, Blue and a light Brown. (That's why I didn't have an issue with ST: D's Copper-esque color and no red ).

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Oh boy... I felt I was hard of hearing trying to watch this darn thing. And I only caught bits and pieces of it. Also is it just me or is this film's climax the ending of the Babylon 5 telefilm "Call to Arms" (i.e. the Crusade prequel/pilot) with a different result.

Overall, this felt like an 80s indie parody of a 50s B movie in Star Trek drag. Like Amazon Women on the Moon minus the camp.

Note to fan films: Please please drop the brooding, traumatized starship captain that doesn't want to be a captain but still does and learns he really does want to be a captain after all. I'm sick of watching How the Captain Got His Mojo Back. ("His" because the majority of fan film captains are dudes.)

 

[USS Intrepid]

Note to fan films: Please please drop the brooding, traumatized starship captain that doesn't want to be a captain but still does and learns he really does want to be a captain after all. I'm sick of watching How the Captain Got His Mojo Back. ("His" because the majority of fan film captains are dudes.)

Some of us did that before it was cool. Well okay, after it was cool but at least before it was *entirely* passé.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Some of us did that before it was cool. Well okay, after it was cool but at least before it was *entirely* passé.

Yes, but Hunter is an enjoyable bloke to watch.

 

[fireproof78]

The sound mix was rough and annoying. The uniforms were a constant source of small irritation. But, I thought they did a decent job of presenting April with PTSD in an appropriate manner. Overall, it's a good fan film.

 

[UssGlenn]

Also is it just me or is this film's climax the ending of the Babylon 5 telefilm "Call to Arms" (i.e. the Crusade prequel/pilot) with a different result.

I was thinking Independence Day

 

[Mark 2000]

Note to fan films: Please please drop the brooding, traumatized starship captain that doesn't want to be a captain but still does and learns he really does want to be a captain after all. I'm sick of watching How the Captain Got His Mojo Back. ("His" because the majority of fan film captains are dudes.)

Which is basically the original Pike. Which is probably one of the reasons the first TOS pilot didn't go over well. One of the great thing's about Kirk is that he loves his job and he makes us love it too.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

I don't want to be too harsh. This is a fan film, after all, and and it's certainly better than anything I could do. But the audio mix was a huge problem. The dialogue was frequently hard to hear; I'm pretty sure I missed some plot points because I couldn't make out what people were saying. And while I certainly understand using preexisting music, wouldn't it have made more sense to use music that the film's audience doesn't know by heart? Using the TWOK soundtrack seemed kind of lazy to me.

 

[Maurice]

Which is basically the original Pike. Which is probably one of the reasons the first TOS pilot didn't go over well. One of the great thing's about Kirk is that he loves his job and he makes us love it too.

Yep!

Not addressed at Mark, but for people interested in the subject I've addressed this before in the Fanfilm Writer's Primer.

To wit...

The Reluctant Hero Topos*

If you watch more than a few fanfilms you'll quickly run into this, especially in first episodes of a series. You know the drill: the main character, usually the captain, is given an assignment they feel that can't handle or are not ready to handle, and must be persuaded/cajoled/ordered to shoulder the responsibility.

Sounds like drama, right? Well, only if done well. It’s surprisingly hard to pull off, and has a lot of pitfalls. So allow me to make the case against doing one for your own film.

Strike 1: Commonality & Overuse

As at the top of this post, and as “Karzak” here once posted:

f this were the first time a fan film were doing this, it would be a different story (literally!) but today, here, now, it's just old hat. Even seaQuest did it in their pilot and that was Roy fucking Scheider, 20 years ago!

So, how common is his story? Off the top of my head...

• Starship Valiant “Legacy”
• Dreadnaught Dominion “Haunted”
• Intrepid "Heavy Lies the Crown"
• Even Starship Farragut grazed the issue
• And a number of announced but since abandoned fanfilms have also used this at their jumping off point, as can be seen in the trailer for the aborted Star Trek Anthology series.

Strike 2: Wish Fulfillment Down In Mary-Sue City

Mary Sue’s are so amaaaaazing and taaaaaalented that everyone looooves and respeeects them, but they’re so wonderfully humble they just can’t see that about themselves, and they’re so good they save the day. This is fannish wish-fulfillment, especially since the people playing the captains are almost invariably the show creators or someone close to them.

I think the allure of this gimmick is the implication that the character is grounded and just regular folk, which supposedly makes them relatable. But that idea’s betrayed by the fact that everyone and their mother is convinced they’re the greatest thing since Tranya, so It smacks of false modesty.

Strike 3: Character Assassination

You want your audience to believe your captain is an officer worthy of that post, and someone riddled with self-doubt and guilt is not a great way to demonstrate that, especially on our first encounter with them. First impressions stick. I'll say it again: overcoming personal tragedy is a valid story, but it's a tricky line to walk with a ship captain because it can easily undermine their believability in that role. Going there runs a high risk of making your main character look weak-willed and possibly whiny.

And it's often done in a manner which smacks of outmoded thinking. The lead is typically pressured into getting back in the saddle by characters who think they need to get their confidence back who are not medical or psychiatric professionals, but superior officers and colleagues, which smacks of too many real-world situations where soldiers were thrust back into combat when they weren't emotionally ready. I submit that's not for Admiral Bullmoose to decide, however well-intentioned.

Pro and Khan

Now, there are perfectly valid stories to be told using the reluctant hero scenario, but as the start for an upbeat adventure/exploration show? Probably not.

Let’s examine why.

Pro Trek provides fine examples of when this works and doesn’t work.

We’ll start with the Mitochondrial Eve of the whole family: “The Cage”. In this story we have a morose captain who’s fed up with responsibility, smarting from an expedition gone tragically wrong, so much so that he’s decided he’s had it: time to resign and devote his life to other pursuits. But then he’s captured and offered a life free of responsibility, where his every whim and fantasy can play out sans consequences. And he rejects that, choosing to accept painful punishment and seek escape at any cost instead of accepting this E-ticket to Fantasyland.

It might surprise you to know that that’s my choice for the unsuccessful example. Why? Because the story is a cheat. Pike is never actually tempted because there’s a big ugly catch: he’s a circus animal doing tricks, and punished when he doesn’t perform to expectations, ergo the story doesn’t allow him the luxury of actually being tempted. With all their powers of illusion, the aliens who cage him choose to insist, “you’ll dream for us”, which, naturally, puts his back up. This is where—of all things—Star Trek Generations got it right: when in a fantasyland without consequences there’s no thrill. It’s empty. For “The Cage” to work as drama Pike should likewise have been thrust into an illusion without realizing that’s what it was, one where he found the perfect girl and a perfect life full of romance and passion and hedonism, yet finds himself dissatisfied, thus proving to HIMSELF that this isn’t the kind of life for him, and gradually learning the truth of his imprisonment when his captors step up the game to compel him to play along. But the way the story is written Pike’s being offered a fantasy with catches too big for him to ever consider. He never had a real choice and as such his decision at the end to Keep On Trekkin’ isn’t earned or even that interesting.

Now let’s look at Star Trek II. In that story, Kirk is down about where his life has gone. He's feeling sorry for himself, old, useless. Bones diagnoses his problem: he's hiding from himself, his true self. Spock reinforces that "commanding a starship" is Kirk's "first, best destiny," by giving Kirk his blessing to take command to deal with an emergency. But the story subverts expectations almost right away because Kirk blows it, he screws up, gets his ship crippled and some crew injured or killed. Maybe he doesn’t have The Right Stuff anymore. So the personal stake there is that Kirk now has to get his mojo back—be the Captain he once was—to fix this situation, which he eventually does. He finds his way back to the life he wants, but at terrible personal cost.

Why the above works whereas “The Cage” and most "get back on the horse" fanfilms don't is because the story dramatizes the act of the character finding themselves. Despite the cheerleading of the other characters, the hero does not at first succeed, so we're right there with the failed captain feeling the pain and doubt. In fact, in the end, the Captain still blows it… his ship and crew are toast and he’s not the one to save the day, the real hero is Spock (a fact that points to other problems with the script that aren’t germane to this discussion). The story dares to say, "This person is NOT Captain Perfect. This character is Captain Fallible. This person can make mistakes. This person may indeed be one of the best, but that's not a get out of jail free card. There. Are. Consequences."

One additional example, albeit an oblique one: Deep Space Nine even went there in its opening segment, with Sisko considering resigning his commission. But unlike the previous examples, Sisko neither doubts himself or needs convincing that he’s up to it. Sure, he has valid concerns about raising his son in the environment of this assignment and unresolved anger and grief at his past, but the reluctance stemming from that does not make him a weak character, nor stops him from driving the action of the story. In fact, it’s through his action, in pleading the case of his kind to the aliens he encounters and baring his soul to them that he actively creates the solution to the problem and his personal situation.

That’s a far cry from how fanfilms typically do it.

In Conclusion

If you’re dead-set on that kind of story, to make it memorable you’re going to have to put a twist on it, dare to subvert expectations.

We all expect the captain to realize that “first best destiny”, but imagine if the experience does the opposite: convinces that captain that they’re through making life and death decisions, tells off the cheerleading admirals, maybe even hands over command to the XO who demonstrates their aptitude for the job. You thought this was the story of how captain A got her mojo back, but in fact it’s about how the XO stepped up and proved who really earned a command.

Hell, let the captain, who’s unwilling to sacrifice any more lives, actually DIE saving their crew… and without magic blood or Genesis devices to bring them back.

Or, be really really daring and tell the story of how pushing someone too far ends in tragedy all the way around.

That, my friends, is drama.

Fulfilling destiny as Mary Sue, aint.


* "Topos" is the actual word for what people typically misuse "trope" to cover. Topos (plural topoi) is a traditional theme, formula or convention in literature or rhetoric, whereas a trope is when something becomes a metaphor for something else. So, as this blog post of the subject illustrates, alien invasion is a topos (premise) while alien invasion as a metaphor for colonialism (a la The War of the Worlds), and the irony of that, is a trope.

 

[Bixby]

I'm not going to hold my breath, but damn it would be so refreshing if in a future fan film series the creator decides to make the Captain an insufferable son-of-a-bitch...like Styles from Trek 3: the Search for Spock. Like there aren't that kind of person clawing their way up a ladder out in the world.
Personally I'd love to see how a showrunner would handle a character like this...but maybe that would take more acting talent than about 97% of people out there could channel.

As much as I agree with you about the ever-annoying ''reluctant Captain'' trope, I cringed at the sight of yet another instance of Starship porn in a fan film...where the film wastes precious minutes following the main character in a shuttlecraft feeling pangs of puppy love over long deliberate Playboy-like camera pans along the surface of their new girlfriend...uh, I mean space vehicle...
I swear, it's gotten so ridiculous now. who gets this worked up over their family SUV or electric scooter? I know it's taken straight from TMP and Wrath of Khan, but enough already with shooting a captain and his ship with the same intensity as Judge Reinhold slobbering over Phoebe Cates

 

[Noname Given]

Oh boy... I felt I was hard of hearing trying to watch this darn thing. And I only caught bits and pieces of it. Also is it just me or is this film's climax the ending of the Babylon 5 telefilm "Call to Arms" (i.e. the Crusade prequel/pilot) with a different result.

Overall, this felt like an 80s indie parody of a 50s B movie in Star Trek drag. Like Amazon Women on the Moon minus the camp.

Note to fan films: Please please drop the brooding, traumatized starship captain that doesn't want to be a captain but still does and learns he really does want to be a captain after all. I'm sick of watching How the Captain Got His Mojo Back. ("His" because the majority of fan film captains are dudes.)

The whole "Captain questions his career..." Is definitely an overused trope in Star Trek over the years.

TOS - Captain Pike in "The Cage".

TOS feature films - Captain Kirk in "Star Trek Ii: The Wrath of Khan"

TNG - Captain Picard in "Family"

DS9 - Commander Benjamin Sisco in "The Emissary"

VOY - Didn't watch it past the first season because the writing was absolute crap. But given in the first season Captain Katherine Janeway was consistently written as bipolar; she must have questioned her Captaincy at some point in the voyage...

ENT - Captain Jonathan Archer in "Home".

The other thing all these first Enterprise fan films have (and this one did too) is the annoying fly around of the Enterprise so the Captain assuming command can see what a beautiful ship she is.
^^^
The sequence was way too long in ST:TMP and I'll never get why every fan film that has the plot where the Enterprise is first being launched has to copy that particular sequence nearly shot for shot.

 

[Admiral2]

My big problem was that the music soundtrack overwhelmed the dialogue for a good chunk of the film.. Otherwise, it was atypical fanfic shoot-em-up.

 

[jespah]

Further to Maurice's point, why don't we ever see a captain getting back in the chair to assuage the grief of miscarriage?

 

[Tosk]

Boy, the audio really makes this a slog to get through. I wonder if they're considering a remix.

Edit: Ah, good.

I also know of the limitations in audio in some places. I planned to fix everything before release but the quarantine has us hit hard financially, I did what I could, I just didnt have the funds any more, I paid for the entire film myself. The issues will be fixed soon for a special edition. Please forgive any shortcomings, I did my best. Hopefully you can still enjoy the movie.

I think I'll wait for the special edition.

 

[USS Intrepid]

Yes, but Hunter is an enjoyable bloke to watch.

You’re too kind.

For what it’s worth, I thought the guy playing April was good, but I’ve always seen April as envisioned in Diane *Duane’s Star Trek novels, and I’d have preferred if they’d hewed closer to that portrayal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the direction they took, but I like that Duane gave us a character that wasn’t so much the archetypical chisel-jawed action hero.

*Edit: oops, that should be Diane Carey, not Duane.

There isn’t really anything that sets this version of April here apart from any of the other Enterprise Captains of that era (okay, he’s married but that’s a fairly superficial distinction). As presented here, you could easily just swap him out for Pike or Kirk and I’m not sure you’d notice the difference. As Mark and Maurice already mentioned, his journey as a character here is pretty much the same as Pike’s in The Cage. Again, there’s nothing really wrong with that, but I would have liked to see something different.

All that aside, as fanfilms go, it’s solid enough. Sam Cockings’ CG certainly stands out, and I thought the acting was pretty decent. I found it entertaining enough, though I did skip over some bits. The whole fandom menace thing just doesn’t sit well with me though, and for me that does cast a shadow over it.

As always, your mileage may vary.

 

[Maurice]

I also know of the limitations in audio in some places. I planned to fix everything before release but the quarantine has us hit hard financially, I did what I could, I just didnt have the funds any more, I paid for the entire film myself. The issues will be fixed soon for a special edition. Please forgive any shortcomings, I did my best. Hopefully you can still enjoy the movie.

Well, that's kind of a lame excuse. Basic audio balancing is not that difficult, and if they were paying anyone to do it, they should remand a refund.

 

[scifieric]

If I have this in the wrong forum, please tell me.

Well, I can state that Star Trek, First Frontier is finally out after 5 years. Normally, I don't get that excited about fan productions, but ... there is some of my work in the thing.

Star Trek: First Frontier

The thing that they bought from me, they didn't even use! They originally approached me for my Pike-era USS Enterprise. But the guy who was making the effects didn't use it and used his own. I'm FAIRLY sure they used my shuttle craft and changed the backs of the nacelle engine caps (mine has the ball in it). I'll have to look and see if they even used the shuttle interior I built for them.

Movie:

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First Credit:

 

[Mysterion]

For what it’s worth, I thought the guy playing April was good, but I’ve always seen April as envisioned in Diane Duane’s Star Trek novels, and I’d have preferred if they’d hewed closer to that portrayal.

Do you mean Diane Carey, perhaps? Best Destiny, Final Frontier, etc.