CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

In the Caine Mutiny, Captaeris in Queeg was mean, stupid and thorougly incompetent. What makes him a compelling character is the gradual revelation is that he is not evil or insane, but an ordinary man pushed by exigencies of war far beyond his capabilities. Garth is certainly not incompetent, but the flaws in his character that he could have compensated for under normal circumstances suddenly had free reign, through whatever circumstances a writer wanted to come up with. It's sort of like when someone has a stroke or falls victim to dementia that takes away the filters that moderate their behaviors. Painting a picture of a perfect hero makes it hard to believe that such a person could suddenly become a psychopath. Much more plausible would be the idea that those flaws which would hardly warrant a footnote in a personnel/psychological file would come to the front and take over.Perhaps the vehicle for this would be a court of inquiry into Garth's crew revolting over his illegal order.

 

Fire the Pecan TorPIEdo, full slice!

 

It only matters in degrees – like it's probably worse not to do it when you have more time, like in a series or string of movies, but more excusable you don't when time is tight, or character development is not that important to the shorter story.

No, they didn't exactly say what the accident did to him, but later they say this:

CORY: How long before it takes effect, Doctor McCoy?
MCCOY: Reversal of arterial and brain damage should begin almost immediately.

It's not really a stretch since damage to a leg, for example, probably wouldn't cause so drastic a change, and they are talking about insanity. But it might not have been the accident that damaged the brain, but something about the shape changing process that poisoned the mind. We just don't know for sure.

I agree. I'm not sure how imperfect one must be, or how well flaws must be demonstrated before one could escape the criticism of Gary Stuism, though, at a time when canon suggests he's the very model or prototype for those other 1 in a million guys.

"Need" is not a word I'd use at all for fan films or Trek boards or many other things we do for fun – this isn't about a need so much as about a desire by one or more to make something, and/or one or more to watch it.

True. Well, not need it to be there so much as want it, but will it be enough, or even acknowledged as existing, if the flaws aren't numerous enough or big enough or altered enough? I'd have to reread that Axanar script to see, and it really wasn't a good read the first time so I'm not inclined to do that, but is somebody saying there is no way anything Garth did in it could be considered or interpreted as a flaw, even a minor one?

I'm not convinced it really hurts that much, either, unless, like I said, it's for longer treatments when you have so much room and time, it's almost inexcusable not to take some of that and show growth and change.

Patton, of course, was all those things, but they took 170 minutes to tell that one in the 1970 film.

 

From the few interactions I had with LFIM (before the s*it hit the fan and I found out what kind of person he really was), the basic concept sounded interesting enough. Is it a story that needs to be told though? IMO, no. It and the material it's sourced from is so obscure, it's better left to the realm of fandom/TrekLit etc.

If you are going to pull something from obscurity and blow it up into a full scale project, learn what you need to learn, surround yourself with people who know what they're doing (and possibly know more than you do) and for crying out loud - listen to any and all advice they give you. IMO, completely sidelining Christian Gossett and the team he helped assemble was a huge mistake (possible evidence that LFIM's ultimate goal wasn't to make a movie, but con/defraud fans.....??)

Get serious, be thoughtful and really treat your project with the care and attention it deserves, otherwise leave it all to the fans/authors/bloggers etc. No one's going to care about, let alone take seriously, some obscure piece of minutiae if you treat it like just another piece of fanwank

 

You shouldn't be sitting on the oven in the first place!!!

 

I can't believe I'm saying this, but, oooh.... too soon, Red.

 

Well as long as it's not the pie that's burning..........

 

This is proof that an awesome episode can be written in 5 words or less..... as soon as my editor trims it down a bit.

 

Sign at the end of the universe.

 

PI ?
3.14 etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc
;-)

 

Only if you can get Kate Bush to sing it...

 

Axanar has a new co-writer:
https://fanfilmfactor.com/2017/11/3...s-joins-axanar-as-co-writer-interview-part-1/

 

Who is going to tell Paul about this?

 

I really hope for his sake, he knew nothing about Alec or Axanar before he got involved.

 

Won't be long now. Les Cirques du Shitstick goes on...

 

from the interview (emphasis added):

This was after he exchanged bon mots with the columnist about how the "detractors" are "shouting" and this also doesn't matter because "it doesn't have anything to do with him".

So, to this new co-author and developer of film business in Georgia, you may wish to consider in light of "where's the problem":

1. An opinion: this project is not going to go forward any differently than it has in the past. When the next large scale assault on property rights, the next failed diverting of fan money into a for-profit venture on the order of a million bucks, the next social media posts playing with the idea of shooting Axanar critics appear, when the next wholesale verbal abuse of every single donor who dares even ask status online emanates from Axanar, it WILL have something to do with you.

2. The lawsuit was not about "CBS not letting fans make their film". It wasn't just Axanar "facing the studios' opinion that they might be running off with the franchise". It WAS Axanar running of with their franchise. The cash of their franchise, and the licensing authority they have over their franchise. A Federal appeals court judge made Trek jokes ridiculing the actions of Axanar in his evaluation of their court filings. Does this tell you anything? And Axanar didn't "relocate" to Georgia from sort of successful run in Hollywood, it had to find some place to go when its project and unlicensed funding scheme crashed and burned.

3. You say you are a Trek fan from long back. You may not yet want to make this effort, but you will find out true colors about what sort of fan attitudes exist in Axanar from the record. Its not your warm fuzzy. Its a long history of ridicule on the electronic record of Trek that wasn't a product of the ever-name-changing "studio" producing Axanar, the one and only source of "authentic" Trek remaining on Earth. This even includes during a podcast ridiculing Nichelle Nichols personally for having an Afro in the movies. The bottom line is that any enthusiasm you perceive at Axanar for Trek is overshadowed by the actual behavior towards Trek people in the industry and towards donors.

Good luck with your reputation if these personality qualities of Axanar blossom in a new iteration. Hope you avoid also earning a sobriquet from Wesley.

4. You say you are a professional and you have dealt with all sorts of "con" talk, and concerns you have heard are no more than that. Have you talked to the long list of professionals who were once like you but since have fled ducking to try to distance themselves from Axanar? You really think your professionalism will make it different this time? Look at what they have said on the record. Check out for example the Trek Zone podcasts.

5. If these points constitute "screaming", fine. Good luck. You are going to need it. The sincere fan project and aspirations you have been sold might be nice in the abstract, but the public record shows there's an entire ring highway of other attitudes and business methods around it that defeat all that. Don't be fooled by the enthusiasm of freshly minted volunteers. Look at the business record, as the business developer you are. That conduct and the treatment of its 'customers' (donors), speaks for itself. Does the state of Georgia want to fund a project that applied over a million bucks from crowdsourcing on top of an unlicensed IP, to build a private studio to compete with the IP holder in their genre and industry? Really? Will your colleagues who are not Trek fans see it so rosy as to miss this?

6. Did you know there's no such thing as a Vulcan as intellectual property, because other characters in literature and myth have pointed ears? Axanar does. It said so in court while attempting to build a case that around a million bucks of fan money spent on a for profit generic SF studio buildout is "fair use" of Trek IP.