Lightinspire
Lieutenant Commander
If they are going to keep going they need to get back to great story telling like In Harm's Way..I consider that to be their best episode ever..Blood and Fire has alienated some of their fans, some never to return.
Should Phase II move on?
- Thread starter MostlyHarmless1
- Start date
And good riddance to 'em, I say. The intolerant, the bigoted, and the close minded should feel alienated, and as often as possible.
These would people who probably never "got" Star Trek to begin with. I've watched the parts of Blood and Fire that have been made available so far and just don't see what all the fuss is about. The romantic elements seen in B&F are no more explicit than anything else we've seen anyone else do in any other episode of Star Trek thus far.
I think Phase II needs to keep doing what they are doing as long as they want to do it.
And yet it doesn't seem to have affected their viewership. If anything it's gone up.
But keep tiliting at that windmill if it makes you feel better.
i have to admit when i first heard of them i thought .
oh dear wonder what crap this is. but i can honestly say i thourghly enjoy what they've come up with, it's good they are trying to link the tos era with the movies.
by the way has anyone heard when blood and fire part two is due out?
oh dear wonder what crap this is. but i can honestly say i thourghly enjoy what they've come up with, it's good they are trying to link the tos era with the movies.
by the way has anyone heard when blood and fire part two is due out?
The folks behind Phase II should keep doing whatever they want to do.
Agreed!
I think it's important to clarify a couple of points.
It's true that "Blood and Fire" might have alienated a few viewers. (I don't know if I would really call them fans, but perhaps deep down they are.) But our dowload counts and server logs and Internet forum traffic and e-mails and advertisers and sponsors all indicate one thing very, very clearly: the number of people who might have been alienated are precious few--and the number of people who are supportive if our creative decision far surpass our naysayers. So rather than just relying on your anectdotal evidence, if anyone asks you about how our "Blood and Fire" creative decisions have worked out for us, the answer is: "overwhelmingly positive, far surpassing our wildest expectations." I think Gene and Majel and Gene Coon and Bob Justman--and so many others--are looking down proudly, seeing that another barrier is falling.
What has been particularly rewarding in all this is that many of those who have been most supportive of our creative decision are those who have felt alienated nearly their whole lives. I guess if a handful of people now feel alienated because of the acknowledgement/inclusion of a particular (and much larger) segment of the population, then I guess it was a logical decision in some "good of the many outweighing the good of the few" sort of way. I remember reading about how "many" fans felt "alienated, some never to return" when the black communications officer kissed the white captain back in 1969. Nowadays, such concerns just kinda seem quaint and laughable. And I think history will repeat itself.
"In Harm's Way" is a fine episode. But it's worth noting that "World Enough and Time" was nominated for a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award. So the informed science fiction consuming public seems to have higher accolades for "World Enough and Time." Bet we're proud of all our episodes. Only time will tell if "Blood and Fire" gets nominated in 2010 for either a Hugo Award or a Nebula Award.
We've screened a not-quite-yet finished version of Part 2 at a few conventions, so we're getting close. Maybe another month or so. Although our product can never be perfect, as is always the case with us, we want to make sure we try to dot all our i's and cross all our t's. But we're eager to show it to you all as much as you are all eager to see it.
I understand why people get impatient for an episode or part of one. The trick is that the people involved in the creative process have to work for a living, and still produce good Trek. Not an easy job, I think. Even with paid professionals, the new Trek movie took a long time to be filmed, edited and given special FX. 
I still think Phase 2 is the gold standard for "independent productions." I do agree that "In Harm's Way" is my favorite so far. But I also greatly enjoyed "World Enough and Time" and the rough cut of "Blood and Fire" that was shown at last year's Shore Leave convention.
Of course, there are lots of others. I hope to live long enough to see the completed episode from Exeter (because what I've seen so far has been great), Intrepid since they decided to put that series in a post-Nemesis era, and fan films that slip my mind right now.
So have patience, grasshopper. I doubt many of us could do better.
I still think Phase 2 is the gold standard for "independent productions." I do agree that "In Harm's Way" is my favorite so far. But I also greatly enjoyed "World Enough and Time" and the rough cut of "Blood and Fire" that was shown at last year's Shore Leave convention.
Of course, there are lots of others. I hope to live long enough to see the completed episode from Exeter (because what I've seen so far has been great), Intrepid since they decided to put that series in a post-Nemesis era, and fan films that slip my mind right now.
So have patience, grasshopper. I doubt many of us could do better.
This is the number one thing that bugs me about Exeter, Phase II or even "Of Gods and Men." Don't schedule a release before the thing is ready.
If we weren't waiting on the second half of a Phase II episode, a wait for the next episode wouldn't be annoying but part of one? It's beyond ridiculous in some cases. Also, for Phase II we read about all these other episodes going before the camera (like "The Child" & "Kitumba") and not a peep about the conclusion to "Blood & Fire."
This crap happens in comics too. So-called professionals slip schedules and books ship late. Some "monthly" comics don't come out monthly and so forth. Some titles can't even maintain a release schedule at all like "All Star Batman & Robin."
I've worked with writers who make it a habit not to release the first part of their serialized fiction before they've written the last chapter. That's my rule of thumb as well.
We do have a few fans who have suggested what you have suggested: that we should have not released Part 1 of "Blood and Fire" until Part 2 was also completed. But I'm reasonably sure that if we had Part 1 fully completed and we simply held it until the follow-up Part 2 episode was also completed, there would be no end to the grief we would get from people wondering why we were intentionally holding up a release of an episode just to have the two Parts released close together. People would scream at us for sitting on a completed episode. That being said, we've had some fans who have suggested what you are suggesting: that we should work on our episodes, take about a year per episode to complete each of them, and when we finally have six episodes completed, release all three of them one week after another so that we'd have six weeks in a row of all new Star Treks--just like the "regular" series.
So, I'm pretty sure no matter what our release schedule is on our free Star Trek show, someone will be dissatisfied at the frequency and distribution. We tried to guess how long people would be willing to wait between Parts. But also factored into that equation is the question of how long people were willing to wait following "World Enough and Time"'s release in August of 2007. You say that if people were waiting for just another episode rather than "Part 2" of a story, the wait wouldn't be as annoying. But actually, the number of complaints we got about the long wait between "World Enough and Time" and "Blood and Fire, Part 1" was staggering! If we held "Blood and Fire, Part 1" any longer than we did, we were concerned people would start screaming "It's been almost two years since my last free episode! Where the hell is the next one already? Why is it taking so long? What! You have had one completed for six months and you're just sitting on it?!" Of course, the truth is everyone has different levels of patience and someone is going to be unhappy no matter what we do. But we also tried to keep in mind that the season-ending cliffhangers for the recent era of Trek (TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) all had about a three month lag between the cliffhanger and the resolution episode. So we used that as a guide--although, as was suggested, we all just do this for fun in our spare time and special effects for Part 2 just got to be more ambitious than we had anticipated. But in the end, I understand that you would have preferred to wait 24 months following "World Enough and Time" to have both Parts of "Blood and Fire" released relatively simulatenously, rather than to wait just 18 months to see Part 1 and then 6 more months to see Part 2. I get that. I'm sorry. (We figured that if seeing both parts in quick succession was really important to some viewers, then they were completely capable of refraining from viewing Part 1 until Part 2 was released--which is exactly what many of our fans do. Seldom do they say "Please, Phase II, take responsibility for my uncontrollable urges and make it so I am unable to view Part 1 until Part 2 is out!")
It should be remembered that most of the time it takes to produce one of episodes is attributable to a small team of post-production visual effects artists. So while an episode is being worked on in post-production, that doesn't preculde us from doing the principal photography on another episode, and another, and even another. Since people take off vacation time from work while kids are out of school for the summer to come and participate in our shoots, the window of opportunity we have to shoot one of our episodes (with a cast and crew of close to 200 people) is the few months of summer. Shooting one of our episodes is an ambitious undertaking. If, hypotethically, "Blood and Fire, Part 2" isn't ready until, say, September, it would be a shame to intentionally delay shooting another episode until Part 2 is finally released, because we can't then start filming our next episode immediately. Our next opportunity to shoot an episode would then be another full year away--the *following* summer. But perhaps your concern isn't that we shoot episodes while other episodes are still in post-production. Perhaps your concern ist that we announce or discuss that fact.
At any rate, in the hopper is "Blood and Fire, Part 2." Look for it in another month or two. We've already screened it at a number of conventions with not-quite-finished visual effects, so it's geting close to being done. "Enemy: Starfleet" is our next production, followed by "The Child." I don't know if we'll get *both* of those out before the end of the year, but I'm confident at least one of them will be out. We then shoot "Kitumba" the first two weeks of June, and we might try to squeeze in shooting David Gerrold's "Bandi" before fall sets in. Don't hold me to any projections; we avoid announcing release dates before we know the episodes are ready. It's hard to know how candid to be with anticipated release information: some people scream when things don't happen as we predict and some people scream when we shy away from revealing more information because making accurate predictions are too difficult. (Sometimes it's even the very same people complaining about both sides of the coin.)
So, I'm pretty sure no matter what our release schedule is on our free Star Trek show, someone will be dissatisfied at the frequency and distribution. We tried to guess how long people would be willing to wait between Parts. But also factored into that equation is the question of how long people were willing to wait following "World Enough and Time"'s release in August of 2007. You say that if people were waiting for just another episode rather than "Part 2" of a story, the wait wouldn't be as annoying. But actually, the number of complaints we got about the long wait between "World Enough and Time" and "Blood and Fire, Part 1" was staggering! If we held "Blood and Fire, Part 1" any longer than we did, we were concerned people would start screaming "It's been almost two years since my last free episode! Where the hell is the next one already? Why is it taking so long? What! You have had one completed for six months and you're just sitting on it?!" Of course, the truth is everyone has different levels of patience and someone is going to be unhappy no matter what we do. But we also tried to keep in mind that the season-ending cliffhangers for the recent era of Trek (TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) all had about a three month lag between the cliffhanger and the resolution episode. So we used that as a guide--although, as was suggested, we all just do this for fun in our spare time and special effects for Part 2 just got to be more ambitious than we had anticipated. But in the end, I understand that you would have preferred to wait 24 months following "World Enough and Time" to have both Parts of "Blood and Fire" released relatively simulatenously, rather than to wait just 18 months to see Part 1 and then 6 more months to see Part 2. I get that. I'm sorry. (We figured that if seeing both parts in quick succession was really important to some viewers, then they were completely capable of refraining from viewing Part 1 until Part 2 was released--which is exactly what many of our fans do. Seldom do they say "Please, Phase II, take responsibility for my uncontrollable urges and make it so I am unable to view Part 1 until Part 2 is out!")
It should be remembered that most of the time it takes to produce one of episodes is attributable to a small team of post-production visual effects artists. So while an episode is being worked on in post-production, that doesn't preculde us from doing the principal photography on another episode, and another, and even another. Since people take off vacation time from work while kids are out of school for the summer to come and participate in our shoots, the window of opportunity we have to shoot one of our episodes (with a cast and crew of close to 200 people) is the few months of summer. Shooting one of our episodes is an ambitious undertaking. If, hypotethically, "Blood and Fire, Part 2" isn't ready until, say, September, it would be a shame to intentionally delay shooting another episode until Part 2 is finally released, because we can't then start filming our next episode immediately. Our next opportunity to shoot an episode would then be another full year away--the *following* summer. But perhaps your concern isn't that we shoot episodes while other episodes are still in post-production. Perhaps your concern ist that we announce or discuss that fact.
At any rate, in the hopper is "Blood and Fire, Part 2." Look for it in another month or two. We've already screened it at a number of conventions with not-quite-finished visual effects, so it's geting close to being done. "Enemy: Starfleet" is our next production, followed by "The Child." I don't know if we'll get *both* of those out before the end of the year, but I'm confident at least one of them will be out. We then shoot "Kitumba" the first two weeks of June, and we might try to squeeze in shooting David Gerrold's "Bandi" before fall sets in. Don't hold me to any projections; we avoid announcing release dates before we know the episodes are ready. It's hard to know how candid to be with anticipated release information: some people scream when things don't happen as we predict and some people scream when we shy away from revealing more information because making accurate predictions are too difficult. (Sometimes it's even the very same people complaining about both sides of the coin.)
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Slightly off-topic, but I don't remember reading about a negative reaction to "Plato's Stepchildren." In fact, I recall reading the opposite: the cast, crew, and (particularly) the network were surprised by the literal lack of backlash. Nichelle Nichols described receiving a single mildly negative but light-hearted letter.
As one who likes to get his Trek history straight, where'd you read about fans being alienated by the interracial kiss? And how can I obtain a copy?
Sorry for the diversion.
I'm not sure if Nichelle Nichols described that the production received one and only one complaint or if she merely described that Roddenberry shared with one and only one (out of presumably many) letters of complaint. (I don't remember the exact language in her book well enough.)
I think my source for the notion that there were indeed letters of complaints received about "the first interracial kiss" probably comes from David Gerrold's book The World of Star Trek or Susan Sackett's book Letters to Star Trek. I wish I could find the exact quote. But it'll turn up. This "conventional wisdom" probably had some original source--although I concede that conventional wisdom is sometimes merely old wives' tales.
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Thanks! I've read neither, which means I've got my summer reading now.
Ah, what a nerd I am...
Lightinspire
Lieutenant Commander
I guess I like In Harm's Way the best is because near the end right at the last minute the Enterprise from the future comes to the rescue...I loved it..
ST-One
Vice Admiral
"Worlds Enough And Time" is, I think, the current high-water mark for the Phase II folks as an overall production - there is not a glaring weakness in any aspect of it, IMAO.
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