In the Trek fanfilm circle everyone is considered a "tool" by someone. I've heard good and bad about James over the years but having never met the man or interacted with him in anything but a glancing fashion I've no informed opinion either way. The only observation I make is that he and his group have in the past been quick to make announcements about projects, but when many of those fail to come to fruition, there's nary a peep. That's tacky.
In my experience James is a decent guy, but also an extremely busy one. He’s always treated me with decency.
Nope, not at all. There have been plenty of childish moments to go around in the fan film community over the years, thats for sure lol.
To me it's that he kept the money raised to make more films and used it to make his own Bridge set which he is now making money off, and the guy has completely gotten away with it. That and he refuses to finish the films that have already being started, projects that we as fans were looking forward to and other people have put a lot of time/effort into. Also as you say he is a tad childish, there was something about people stealing his photos and not mentioning that they belonged to him, so he deleted them all and re-uploaded them with a watermark - not realising that the photo actually belongs to the person who took it, all he owns is the actual print so no one 'stole' anything from him.
James Cawley already owned a Bridge set - it's the one he's been making fan films on since 2004. He did not need nor use crowdfunded money to pay for it
It was the engineering set that he just *had* to build because STC was going to have one, and then he never released another damn fan film. Maybe that terrible one with Carol Marcus that busts continuity all to hell that I couldn't even get through watching once. I remember when he threw a fit over someone fan editing Kitumba to make it more streamlined, less talky and better pacing and had it removed. He scrapped an entire filmed version of "Mindsifter" to refilm it with his "new" cast and crew that caused quite a bit of contention between various people. Couldn't decide on whether they were going full scale "Phase II" or not and kept changing his branding (and whether the Enterprise had the new engines or not yet). Scrapped all of "Origins" cuz of the Vic Mignogna beef. And if I remember right, the entire idea to expand the sets, relocate and do crowdfunding for the episodes we will never get to see, was all set into motion by a one time affiliation named Alec Peters....
JC changed his mind a lot. Several episodes were heavily puiblicised but unfilmed Moving towards the movies with adaptations from p2; then goin back to be more like the 60s show; they were going ot build a P2 engineering but then he decided he wanted to replicate the series. Mind Sifter actually had a shoot, unfinished, then the script ws abandoned despite all the work the writer did. The one I wanted to see was Origins, a few clips did make their way to the internety with several returning characters like Pike, Number One, Finnegan, Dr Boyce, George Kirk. Hopefully in years time it can be revived, Yorktown style. There was also a high quality German film called Das Vermachtnis [The Legacy] that was similarly shot but abandoned because it was 'G*d's will' (The director's word, not mine!!). I know a lot of people around here are TOS purists but I always preferred Phase II for the moving forward, changing designs, introducing new uniform variants, Xon etc. Also after years of reading about them we finally saw versions of Kitumba and Blood and Fire (OK planned for TNG but same thing) But Continues have set a goal and kept to their word the way through, even with having to cut a couple of episodes because of the guidelines. We're about to finally get the end of the five year mission on screen.
I for one never cared about all this "completing the mission" puffery. All I care about are good stories made well. Weak scripts (true of 99% of fanfilms) aside, I think NV's big mistake wasn't waffling over going Star Trek (Phase) II, but stuffing the show full of characters to the point that no one got a good part; Xon being the exemplar of that, basically serving no function except taking lines away from Spock. And, as I've said before, my main beef with Cawley's group (aside from Jack Marshall's skipping off with Exeter's "The Mighty Galvanaut" and making it into "Come What May") was their getting lots of people to put all this time and energy into making shows which they later shelved without next to no comment and certainly no apologies to the people who made it. The Buck Rogers Begins debacle being a prime example of this.
He should create a spin off where he keeps getting caught in the transporter with different things and merges (Fly/Tuvix style) with hilarious consequences and hilarious names. EG: He goes in with a hooker - James Whorely. A spider - James Crawley. A crow - James Cawwley.
Going to take the high road here, and say let us not criticize what was not done, but rather let us cherish the episodes that were done, and thank James for all he has done to give us enjoyment over the past 13 years.
Just realized that something I thought I was replying to in this thread ended up in a different thread. Didn't realize I was having two conversations on similar topics in separate threads. My fault. This post was relevent here, too. Got really confused for a minute. https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/sta...dly-go-parts-i-ii.289325/page-3#post-12212252
I open multiple tabs at a time to respond to notifications, and sometimes cut and paste multiple quotes into one post, so its really easy for me to get off track like this as well. No worries! Just wanted the conversations to make sense in proper context. I believe I replied to something from Maurice from this thread, in a response to you in the other thread. Heh.
Indeed. There may have been problems over the years on NV/P2, but as Tom said, episodes produced should count more than proposals that didn't get made. No one is perfect (myself included). We may see these filmed episodes in the future ( remember how "The Tressaurian Intersection" got completed?) So I think that Mr Cawley deserves more praise than complaint headed his direction.