Beam Me Up, Sulu (2026) -- documentary about lost 1985 fan film with George Takei
How many old, long-lost fan films did he do?
I just saw this come up in the Apple store and had no idea it was a new thing. It feels like more of an excuse to talk about the representation of Asian men on TV which is fine with me, but I'm curious what this fan film is actually like. ol
They say what it’s like in the trailer.
Not good, apparently.
An odd way to go in terms of marketing something, but that’s the choice they made.
Not good, apparently.
An odd way to go in terms of marketing something, but that’s the choice they made.
Yeah, I kind of assumed it'd be like the documentary about the Indiana Jones fan film, where the story of making the fan film becomes the heart of the story.
Oh strange, the actual fan film came out three years ago. I assume someone thought to make a documentary about it after they saw it... that or the documentary took way longer to make than they expected.
I’ve no doubt the documentary will be more interesting than the film itself. I like these ‘snapshots’ of fandom from certain times
As fan films go, the completed film A Time to Heal is by no means awful. I found it entertaining. My advice to anyone watching A Time to Heal, especially someone who's not used to watching fan films, is to calibrate your expectations accordingly.
It's a historically important fan film. Whether the finished film is what the original might have been had it been completed at the time is an irrelevant consideration, since we can know no other film.
It's a historically important fan film. Whether the finished film is what the original might have been had it been completed at the time is an irrelevant consideration, since we can know no other film.
The documentary is fine. The Star Trek aspects of it are pretty boring if you're a fan at all - I understand why they include that, but there's only so many times you need people saying that Star Trek was groundbreaking and yadda yadda yadda.
It's also part George Takei biography, which most people who know Star Trek would know about but isn't as well tread territory so having him talk about his life is nice. There's also a short tribute to James Shigeta as well which is nice. I've always recognized him as a character actor from the time but never really thought about his career. It doesn't really go into his history, if he has one, but it's a neat interlude.
The most interesting part is the making of the documentary itself and I'm surprised they filmed so much b-roll and random stuff outside of the production to have all this footage of them working on the film - at least when Takei and Shigeta are around. There's some tension with the original director that they don't really touch on - Stan, the producer, lost the footage and basically moved on from the project after he father stopped funding the project in order to get him to focus on school again and that seemed to have caused a decades long rift that they don't really touch on. But I think seeing them try to make the film originally, then also seeing Atkins, someone from like 20 years later, "rescue" the film and finish it is neat.
This is what I was mostly expecting, similar to that documentary about doing the shot for shot remake of Indiana Jones that the kids-turned-adults finished a few decades later. I wish it was more of the documentary anyway.
And at least there's some admission that the fan film isn't that great. lol
I'd say if you're interested in the history of the fan film, it's worth checking out. The standard "Star Trek is awesome" stuff does take up a lot of time and it's nice to see fans talk about how Star Trek is meaningful to them and all that and it helps if you're showing the film to someone who knows nothing about Star Trek whatsoever... but then I'd wonder why they'd be interested in this documentary at all.
I also did just check out the fan film and yeah, it is what it is. Credit to Atkins for trying to make anything work with only the original footage, and the fact that he himself took 12 years to finish the thing is definitely a sign that this is really a labour of love for everyone involved.
It's also part George Takei biography, which most people who know Star Trek would know about but isn't as well tread territory so having him talk about his life is nice. There's also a short tribute to James Shigeta as well which is nice. I've always recognized him as a character actor from the time but never really thought about his career. It doesn't really go into his history, if he has one, but it's a neat interlude.
The most interesting part is the making of the documentary itself and I'm surprised they filmed so much b-roll and random stuff outside of the production to have all this footage of them working on the film - at least when Takei and Shigeta are around. There's some tension with the original director that they don't really touch on - Stan, the producer, lost the footage and basically moved on from the project after he father stopped funding the project in order to get him to focus on school again and that seemed to have caused a decades long rift that they don't really touch on. But I think seeing them try to make the film originally, then also seeing Atkins, someone from like 20 years later, "rescue" the film and finish it is neat.
This is what I was mostly expecting, similar to that documentary about doing the shot for shot remake of Indiana Jones that the kids-turned-adults finished a few decades later. I wish it was more of the documentary anyway.
And at least there's some admission that the fan film isn't that great. lol
I'd say if you're interested in the history of the fan film, it's worth checking out. The standard "Star Trek is awesome" stuff does take up a lot of time and it's nice to see fans talk about how Star Trek is meaningful to them and all that and it helps if you're showing the film to someone who knows nothing about Star Trek whatsoever... but then I'd wonder why they'd be interested in this documentary at all.
I also did just check out the fan film and yeah, it is what it is. Credit to Atkins for trying to make anything work with only the original footage, and the fact that he himself took 12 years to finish the thing is definitely a sign that this is really a labour of love for everyone involved.
I finally saw Beam Me Up Sulu. (It pains me to leave out the comma, but the onscreen title doesn't have one so...)
It was pretty good. Yeah, a lot of rehash of stuff if you're a die hard Trekkie, but I thought they did a fairly good job of keeping it interesting. The TAS-esque animation for all the events they didn't have footage for was a nice touch.
I wish the actual Yorktown short was included on the disc, but I understand how legally tricky that might have been.
It was pretty good. Yeah, a lot of rehash of stuff if you're a die hard Trekkie, but I thought they did a fairly good job of keeping it interesting. The TAS-esque animation for all the events they didn't have footage for was a nice touch.
I wish the actual Yorktown short was included on the disc, but I understand how legally tricky that might have been.
I don't blame the other guy. Even now Stan Woo seems to have a "Eh, I just lost interest" attitude about it, which I imagine would rankle some of the people that put all their effort into it. It would me. It's not like the footage was truly lost, it was in their house under a bunch of stuff, basically.
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I would like to see a HARDWARE WARS documentary (shorter versions may now exist). I also wonder what the running times are/were for the Sulu doc and the fan film respectively.
The title is fraudulent, though. Sulu is not a transporter operator. Scotty however was made a technical captain along with Spock, McCoy and others.
The title is fraudulent, though. Sulu is not a transporter operator. Scotty however was made a technical captain along with Spock, McCoy and others.
I've met Ernie Fosselius, who made it. He doesn't like it when people act like it's a fan film, because it's actually a satire of the film.
Yeah, it seems like a thing they had to bring up because it would be too much of a whole to ignore but they also didn't want to elaborate or dwell on it. Or maybe the guy was being really professional/polite and that's all he said about it.
