• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar 2 - Electric Boogaloo-Fanboys gone WILD-too many hyphens

Do you enjoy pie?

  • Yes, sweet, please

    Votes: 79 40.9%
  • Yes, savory, please

    Votes: 42 21.8%
  • Yes, any kind

    Votes: 80 41.5%
  • No, I'm a heathen

    Votes: 37 19.2%

  • Total voters
    193
I’m still amused by the argument that amateurs are somehow disadvantaged by only having a fifteen to thirty minute running time. I mean really, story length is utterly irrelevant to whether you can tell a good story or not. Unless you’re a talentless hack, in which case it doesn’t matter how much time you have, you’ll still be a talentless hack.
I see the time limit as more of a blessing than a curse. It should force amateur writers to focus on telling the story, rather than follow the inclination to chase every detail and wank every fannish desire. :techman:
 
You make some interesting points.

You know a cool fan series that would likely follow under the guidelines in an anthology in the vein of Marvel's "What If?" Series. There are a ton of what if scenarios you could play with and if it ends up with the world ending.. oh well. Turn in next time (like TZ/OL has done on occasion). With a what if type scenario anything is possible.
Honestly, fan films like the ones described by @captainkirk, IMHO stand a much greater chance of making a copyright case for transformativeness/fair use precisely because they're the kinds of stories the official franchise isn't interested in doing.
 
I see the time limit as more of a blessing than a curse. It should force amateur writers to focus on telling the story, rather than follow the inclination to chase every detail and wank every fannish desire. :techman:
It also dovetails with the funding ceiling. With the funding ceiling, does anyone think they could make a 2-hour film which wouldn't look cheap?
 
And again, if anyone thinks Mr. Peters was somehow doing 'Axanar' just to follow his 'dream' of making a fan film; and was "not in it for the money" - I just saw something from another tread in this very BBS discussing another 'tie in' Peters would get money from:

Post: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/is-star-fleet-battles-officially-dead.299611/page-5#post-13052937

From the above post:
Before the Axanar fan film got sued into near-oblivion by CBS, Ken was in negotiations with Alex Peters to build an Axanar setting for Squadron Strike. I playtested several of those ships, years ago, and am really bummed that they are likely to never see the light of day. There are no published settings for Trek, because CBS, for the most part you're on your own. But here is where the beauty of the Squadron Strike system lays...you get an Excel (or OpenOffice) Spreadsheet Of Doom (several megabytes, which is HUGE and COMPLICATED for a spreadsheet) where you can build the ships you want! You can be faithful to an existing universe or make your own!
 
And again, if anyone thinks Mr. Peters was somehow doing 'Axanar' just to follow his 'dream' of making a fan film; and was "not in it for the money" - I just saw something from another tread in this very BBS discussing another 'tie in' Peters would get money from:

Post: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/is-star-fleet-battles-officially-dead.299611/page-5#post-13052937

From the above post:

Of course no one sane thinks he was doing it 'for the love of the game'. Guy was all over this thing. Taking money directly, buying himself things indirectly, trying to sub-license things he didn't pay for the license to, using donated money to stand up a for-profit business, trying to sell things directly to places like Netflix, trying to sell the 'borrowed' unlicensed material back to the license-holder... Basically everything except spend money producing a product. He may have eventually gotten around to doing that, but he was going to 100% make sure he had his own financial business up and running first with his free cash...
 
It also dovetails with the funding ceiling. With the funding ceiling, does anyone think they could make a 2-hour film which wouldn't look cheap?
I could. But not if you're paying everyone. If you can throw all the money at the production you could, but you'd have to really know what you were doing and find locations you could redress rather than build sets.
 
Good point. But if we're breaking guidelines, why stick to the crowdfunding ceiling? :)
Wasn't his statement actually regarding the feasibility of producing a good longer movie if the guidelines were to allow one?
 
Last edited:
You ignore the fact that those aren't science fiction series. In fact, all your examples are comedies/sitcoms. I suspect most of the examples you might want to cite are either sitcoms or kid's shows.
When making a Star Trek as opposed to a generic sci-fi short, you don't need to waste time establishing the universe. Trekkies will know.
While we're on the subject of what can be done in a short film, I feel that the potential of fan films has been largely wasted in favor of canon exploiting vanity projects. The fact that they're not official stories means that you can do almost anything that would never work in an actual episode of Star Trek. Always wanted to see a day in the life of civilians on 24th century Earth? It can be done as a fan film. Always wanted to see the heroes die and only the redshirts make it out alive? It can be done as a fan film. Always wanted to see a gender-swapped version of Picard and Riker? It'll be hard to find actors who can pull it off but it can be done as a fan film.
Agreed 100%. Around a decade ago, a group remade the Kirk/Pike recruitment scene from ST'09 with women and it was awesome. More stuff like described here.
 
:lol: No, it was a non-canon FASA design. One of the not-so-conventional configurations:
battleship_kelrianda.jpg

K'el ri'Anda-class battleship. Translated in full to “Dangerous Fat Man”.
 
Because I believe the topic of long-form versus short-form film is actually a topic that deserves its own thread (and because I think a prolonged conversation about it is off-topic), I'm going to compose a separate response for this on a new thread. I'll post a link once I've started the thread. My replies to some of your comments will be part of that thread.

Universal Translator Output: "Some people disagree with me so I'm taking my toys and going home."
Ah, the ever-popular "let me call out my opinion as I run out the door so I can't hear your reply."
This response irritates me on two levels. First, I think the tone and sentiment are childish and cruel, and from what I've seen of other messages you've posted, they are beneath you.

However, the thing that actually gets my metaphorical goat is that your comments ignore the reality of what just happened on this thread. It should not be difficult for you to understand how it might be emotionally draining to debate over a dozen people, with similar politics and ideologies and practiced responses, tag-teaming you over the span of multiple days. There is an ideological slant to the people posting on these forums, kept pure by the practice of "wolf packing" those with differing opinions, and when people in the ideological out-group are properly antagonized, they either leave or their understandably frustrated reactions are used against them by the moderators to boot them from the forums.

This is not a victory of your rhetoric, Maurice. It's a failure to offer an environment conducive to civil and constructive discourse.
 
Because I believe the topic of long-form versus short-form film is actually a topic that deserves its own thread (and because I think a prolonged conversation about it is off-topic), I'm going to compose a separate response for this on a new thread. I'll post a link once I've started the thread. My replies to some of your comments will be part of that thread.



This response irritates me on two levels. First, I think the tone and sentiment are childish and cruel, and from what I've seen of other messages you've posted, they are beneath you.

However, the thing that actually gets my metaphorical goat is that your comments ignore the reality of what just happened on this thread. It should not be difficult for you to understand how it might be emotionally draining to debate over a dozen people, with similar politics and ideologies and practiced responses, tag-teaming you over the span of multiple days. There is an ideological slant to the people posting on these forums, kept pure by the practice of "wolf packing" those with differing opinions, and when people in the ideological out-group are properly antagonized, they either leave or their understandably frustrated reactions are used against them by the moderators to boot them from the forums.

This is not a victory of your rhetoric, Maurice. It's a failure to offer an environment conducive to civil and constructive discourse.

To be fair, the person @Maurice was responding to seemed to be acting far more childish.
 
This is not a victory of your rhetoric, Maurice. It's a failure to offer an environment conducive to civil and constructive discourse.
What the hell are you babbling about? That poster was yet another in a long line of such people who come in here and rattle off a bunch of opinions we've discussed 100 times before and when people don't embrace it, leave. The poster had already said they were leaving, and I just pointed out how childish such behavior was. I stand by that.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top