Star Trek Phase II Enemy: Starfleet! Now Released!

[MikeH92467]

As I've said in the past, I tend not to beat up fanfilms too much for the acting or some of the technical aspects because so much of the work is volunteer labor, and that most of the actors are enthusiasts rather than trained. I'm keenly aware of how hard it is to do these things in even the best of circumstances. However, if viewers start comparing fanfilms to indie film or professional TV production, then they can't be surprised when these elements do fall under serious critical scrutiny and may be found lacking.

That said, the biggest problem with fanfilms in general is the cheapest one to fix: the scripts. If you're brutally hard on the script, if you really take it apart and take it to task, and if you're willing to "kill your darlings", you usually end up with a better story an easier time once you get into production. "Fix it on the page" is really the best filmmaking advice I've ever heard.

As to its script Enemy: Starfleet , as with Blood and Fire suffers from poor construction, unprofessional behavior on the part of the characters, and dialogues that are overlong and drawn out. Both episodes could be vastly improved just with dialog trims. I'd urge the writers to be brutal, look at every scene, find the lines that are the gold, the lines that really say something, and trim out the rest.

As Howard Hawks said, a great film needs three great scenes and no bad ones.

This really goes to support my theory that the weakest link is what will stand out. As the acting and technical standards improve, weaknesses in story construction and overall script quality will become more apparent. If you look at TOS season 3 it's easy to rag on the really bad episodes, but I think Spock's Brain and Way to Eden, etc might have had a chance to at least be average episodes if the original re-write team had been intact. It's worth remembering that Harlan Ellison has never gotten his panties unwadded after going through the rewrite process, but City on the Edge of Forever ended up being one of the most acclaimed episodes of the series. A talented writer and cold hearted editor may end up hating each other (at least temporarily) but mastering the re-write process is indeed a key to any series' long term success.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Just a short while ago, thanks to the hardworking team members on our Star Trek Phase 2 technical team, we've managed to get "Enemy: Starfleet!" online at YouTube WITH English captioning. (These captions are especially important for our deaf and hard-of-hearing fans.)

You can view the streaming episode with English captioning here:

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/episode_ES_Stream.html

If you want to watch the episode with the English captions/subtitles but they aren't appearing, the web-based YouTube player has some setting you might have to fiddle with.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

Watched the episode and loved it! The Phase II team has knocked it out of the park once again! (Still bugs me how Peter Kirk is older than he should be, but oh well)

 

[Amaris]

I don't mind the casting choice.

 

[Forbin]

Just watched and enjoyed.
The Enterprise looks gorgeous, I really love your space shots.

I like the recreated original set dressing - the trombone mutes! OMG!

 

[mari]

Just a short while ago, thanks to the hardworking team members on our Star Trek Phase 2 technical team, we've managed to get "Enemy: Starfleet!" online at YouTube WITH English captioning. (These captions are especially important for our deaf and hard-of-hearing fans.)

This is great! I've never had a problem with the sound on Phase 2 but my ears get worse every year, so, much appreciated.

I liked the story well enough, and the look has never been better. Can't get any pickier than that without a second watch.

One of these years I WILL get up there to help out... kind of feel like I owe you guys for having watched for so many years. And I'll make a donation once I get those pesky credit cards paid down again.

 

[Zeppster]

As to its script Enemy: Starfleet , as with Blood and Fire suffers from poor construction, unprofessional behavior on the part of the characters, and dialogues that are overlong and drawn out. Both episodes could be vastly improved just with dialog trims. I'd urge the writers to be brutal, look at every scene, find the lines that are the gold, the lines that really say something, and trim out the rest.

I think this is pretty spot on. Even though Blood and Fire was basically written by a professional. It had scenes that were a little too drawn out and could have been just fine if they were trimmed. Blood and Fire really suffered more than SE. The scene between the two Kirks about 20 minutes could just be cut completely because it really played no role in the show.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Just watched and enjoyed.
The Enterprise looks gorgeous, I really love your space shots.

I like the recreated original set dressing - the trombone mutes! OMG!

Well I got caught flatfooted when I decorated the set for that scene. It was originally to be staged in Kirk's quarters--but the way it was staged with Chekov entering from screen right, it couldn't be Kirk's cabin. (Kirk's cabin isn't laid out that way.) So the solution was to have Kirk and McCoy having their late-night brandy in McCoy's quarters--which is all well and good, except that I don't have a bunch of McCoy's quarters set decoration crap just lying around ready to go. So I improvised as best as I could and grabbed stuff that might be MCoy's that didn't have an immediate association with Kirk or Spock. (For example, you can't really put the three dimensional chess set in McCoy's cabin.). So I grabbed a lot of books--which are always laid with spines facing up in TOS so that the camera *can't* see what the books are. (In this case they are actually my set of Carl Sandburg's "The Prairie Years" and "The War Years"--a six volume biography on the life of Abraham Lincoln. Yes, they are meant to live in Kirk's quarters since he's the big Lincoln fan--but no one can see the spines, so I cheated for this scene.) I grabbed the trombone mutes out of the cabinet from the Sick Bay set--so that McCoy's quarters would look like Sick Bay on some kind of subconscious level. And then a tricorder and a couple of bottles of booze--and that's pretty much it. It's funny: all you really have room for is like four or five things. Any more than that and the scene looks cluttered with lots of crap lying around. Less is more in a counter-intuitive way sometimes.

We actually do see McCoy's quarters in "The Man Trap" but I don't really have all the right stuff that we saw. Heck, I don't really have any of it. So I wasn't really ready to pull of a McCoy quarters set. But you try to bloom wherever it is that you end up getting planted. In the end, I had to "paint" with a broad brush and not put in too much detail--and then I just had to hope viewers wouldn't look too closely. So this wasn't a re-creation as much as a faithful interpretation or extrapolation. I guess it looks Trek-like and cabin-like and McCoy-like--so that's pretty much the important thing--especially for a scene that lasts only 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

 

[Amaris]

I didn't even notice. When I saw that scene, everything clicked without a second thought.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I enjoyed "Enemy: Starfleet". Thank you, Phase II people.

The weakest points were the scenes involving Peter Kirk (why is he even on the ship/show?) and Chekov's phaser thing, which came totally out of the blue. Had we seen him tinkering with the phasers earlier, or discussing his idea with Scotty or Spock (or whatever) it might have worked.

Everything else was fine. Oh, except for that guy's ridiculous sideburns.

 

[Barbreader]

As always, I enjoyed this. I guess I'm less of a hard nose on the subject of trimming than some of your other viewers. I had some serious problems with the script, but I'll save those for my review at Star Trek Reviewed.

The acting and production quality were still outstanding.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Chekov's phaser thing, which came totally out of the blue. Had we seen him tinkering with the phasers earlier, or discussing his idea with Scotty or Spock (or whatever) it might have worked.

The thing that I realized the other night is that I thought Scotty and Spock basically did the same thing (channeling the phasers through the warp drive) in "The Paradise Syndrome" and it blew out the warp drive, resulting in a very long trip back to the planet of the Amerinds.

 

[JarodRussell]

Waitaminute. McCoy firing phasers?

 

[GSchnitzer]

Waitaminute. McCoy firing phasers?

Yes! Just like when he shot and disintegrated the mugato that attacked Kirk in "A Private Little War" or when he fired on the attacking Denevan mob in "Operation: Annihilate!"

 

[DaveGalanter]

Chekov's phaser thing, which came totally out of the blue. Had we seen him tinkering with the phasers earlier, or discussing his idea with Scotty or Spock (or whatever) it might have worked.

The thing that I realized the other night is that I thought Scotty and Spock basically did the same thing (channeling the phasers through the warp drive) in "The Paradise Syndrome" and it blew out the warp drive, resulting in a very long trip back to the planet of the Amerinds.

Oops? :-)

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, you know, Scotty and Spock are pretty smart - they did it wrong the first time so they had damn well figured out their error before they tried it a second.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

With respect to the six minute teaser posted last year:

On the minus side of the teaser, the way Spock and McCoy, especially, raised their phasers to fire, and then lowered them again, over and over, did not sell to me the idea that they were trying to aim at anything. Nor did it strike me that they were trying to avoid getting shot. These issues bothered me a lot. At least Chekov looked like he was seriously aiming at something, and actually doing so from behind cover, when he stunned Kyril. Chekov stunning Kyril was great.

Ensign Kirk would have known not to take the phaser rifle with him when he charged out to try to rescue the fallen comrade. He should have handed it to Chekov first, or at least just left it behind. For constructive criticism, I recommend using a military advisor with both combat and laser tag experience to help stage firefights like this in the future, if you can find one.

Of course, with all that shooting, I was also wondering when that whole hollow they were in was going to go up in a uridium explosion. Or "half the continent" for that matter. It didn't strike me as a smart place to stage an ambush that risked two ships (with crews of exactly how many each?) in such an explosion.

On the plus side of the teaser, I thought it was very funny when Spock just snapped the antenna off the jamming device.

 

[GSchnitzer]

We're already a couple of steps a head of you! You need to check out our credits.

So they need both actual combat and laser tag experience? (Hm. I don't know how much laser tag our advisers play; maybe I should check.)

For constructive criticism, I recommend using a military advisor with both combat and laser tag experience to help stage firefights like this in the future, if you can find one.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Thanks! Yes, laser tag! I imagine that's closer to how phasers would handle than real guns.

 

[PattyW]

Actually, what we NEED is oodles of time for the military advisors and director to work out the little details of these kinds of scenes. With our limited budget that kind of time isn't really there. They advise and then the director takes it where he wants to go...