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Behind the Scenes With the Star Trek Fan Reboot
SternisheFan writes: The original Starship Enterprise was on a 5-year mission, but the original series was canceled after the third year. A continuation of Star Trek:TOS is being created by a dedicated cast and crew intent on keeping true to the spirit of Gene Roddenberry's television show. From recreating the original sets with incredible accuracy and attention to details, staying faithful to original storylines has been a true labor of love for all involved. Here are a series of videos showing the progress being made on recreating the iconic series. (And if you missed it last time, here's the first episode they produced.)
I chipped in for their funding campaign, and I am glad I did. So far the first 3 episodes are great. Mignogna and crew have really done a wonderful job on Star Trek Continues.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
I've watched a few of these fan made series - I have yet to find one that was actually watchable. The sets can be great, the lighting, the CGI effects - but what always kills these series is the acting. It's awful. Always. I have yet to find a fan series with passable acting. If they could get decent actors, they could use cardboard boxes for sets and it would at least be watchable.
So, to summarize....it sucked so bad that you watched hundreds of hours of it?
Yet Another Fan Made TOS? Here's the first group I heard of: http://www.startreknewvoyages.... They actually got Sulu. What's this new one got?
In college, I stopped watching television. Afterwards, it just struck me as stupid and self righteous, but maybe that was a reflection of society as a whole.
No, it's not a reflection of society as a whole. You were right the first time....it was stupid and self righteous. But that's just what happens why you are young and stupid and get caught up in that whole "I'm too smart for anything on television, so I won't even own a TV" meme.
You seem to know an awful lot about a series that you seem so dislike so much.
I can certainly criticize and critique episodes and movies, but obviously I liked/like Star Trek and won't slam it as-a-whole. Admittedly I didn't watch Enterprise beyond the pilot, nor did I see Nemesis or the second JJ Abrams movie.
I've seen a faux-documentary related to Prelude to Axanar that was pretty good. They got a lot of experienced actors to participate, and their costuming and sets were decent, and the writing seemed pretty good too. Certainly good enough to be better than the worst TOS and TNG episodes, probably ranking up in about the middle of the pack. Certainly not Measure of a Man, but not Shades of Gray either.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I've watched everything they've made so far, it really is well done. I like how the stories flow from the original episodes on which they are rooted.
The look and feel of the TV show is preserved, from the background music to how the way the show was lit. The actor who originally played the god Apollo is re-cast in the first episode, green skinned alien women in the second show, and the third has final closure to what happened to the Harkonnens after the episode 'Mirror Mirror' ended. Goateed Spock is back!
If you were ever a fan of Star Trek, you'll enjoy these remakes.
Yes. All those faults, and still the best science fiction serials ever. Doesn't that say a lot for the potential of the genre?
I'm not really interested in fan-made anything, for the usual reasons. This team's version of Pilgrim of Eternity is however nothing less than remarkable and deserving of much credit.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
http://www.startrekcontinues.c...
I think the simplest explanation is that when you're at college you're just too busy studying to keep tabs on what's on TV. After college, you have more leisure time and you start watching again.
Enterprise was actually surprisingly good, with a few exceptions; I only watched it a few months ago, since I had turned my nose up at it when it was new. It did start out a big rough and had a little too much gratuitous sexuality at first, but when it settled down it was pretty good. The main problems with Enterprise are: 1) the opening theme music. It's absolutely horrible. I don't know WTF they were thinking with that whiny emo crap. But there's an exception here: the two mirror-universe episodes in Season 4 had excellent music and intro scenes of humans blasting everything and conquering. And 2) the whole Xindi attack plot arc in Season 3 was too much. It was an obvious parallel to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and just didn't go over that well.
I also didn't bother with the second Abrams movie; the first one was too much of a disappointment.
Agree on TOS and TNG.
TNG in particular is hard to re-watch. A drinking game based on "reroute power from the" would probably kill the hardiest drinker within a few episodes. It did have a surprising number of really solid episodes though, and while boring and predictable, the rest of the show is generally watchable.
You didn't miss much with voyager. They went way overboard with the whole strong female lead thing, and created an all knowing all powerful and totally unbelievable character with Captain Janeway. They then surrounded her with cardboard characters and a central plot that held no tension (lets face it, no way they were getting home by the end of the episode.. ever). It had a few ok episodes, but unlike TNG most of it is just unwatchable dreck.
Now DS9 is where I disagree. Yes it was a cliche war story, but it was a well done cliche war story. Also unlike the other ST shows the characters actually had, well, character.. and there was an actual ongoing story arc, and the civilizations they ran into mostly made sense because they wern't just there to make some point within the span of an episode.
This fan fic already has a few episodes in the can. And it's so good, that even the most horrible episode in the bunch (the one with the Orion slavegirl), is simultaneously unwatchable, and completely watchable on its merits as a very faithful recreation of a typically bad episode from the original series. These guys have got it down pat. They know exactly how to faithfully remake an honest homage to an average bad episode from the original series. And it's certainly doesn't hurt that the episode's guest star was none other than Lou "The Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno. As an Orion slave trader. In full body green makeup!
It's eery watching Chris Doohan in this series. The guy is a spitting image of his old man. Looks like a younger Scotty. Close your eyes, and you can't tell it's not Scotty. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the episodes as they came out. They were far more entertaining than either of the two terrible reboots. I refused, on principle, to pay money to watch the crap reboots in the theaters. But if these folks ever manage to crank out a reel, and it makes it down to my local megaplex, I'll be the first in line to buy a ticket.
http://www.startreknewvoyages....
TNG a bunch of technobabble and reengineering the ship to solve the problem of the week
Don't forget all that poncing around space so they can talk down to aliens with their self-righteous moralizing!
1) the opening theme music. It's absolutely horrible. I don't know WTF they were thinking with that whiny emo crap.
They were thinking: "Hey, kids like this shit, right? We need to appeal to the younger crowd. That's where the money is. So we'll toss the old symphonic opening scores. We'll also sex it up a bit with a hot-bodied Vulcan in a skin-tight suit. Oh, and we'll make sure to fabricate a few excuses to strip that suit off and smear a bunch of oil on her. This is gonna be big! ... Plot? Shit, the writers will figure that stuff out. Don't bother me, I'm figuring out the important stuff here!"
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Busy doing what?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It would seem that all of their sets are based on the original set plans which were designed for the 4:3 aspect ratio. Trying to shoot in a widescreen format would likely show parts of the set which weren't intended. I mean, check out how much of that bridge set is open plywood. That set requires some strictly framed shots to work right.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
You have a relatively low /. id#, still that's not a sure indicator of age. Why 'more of the same'? Speaking for myself, having grown up in the late '60s/'70s, pre-VCR days, there wasn't a heck of a lot of choice available when it came to thought provoking television shows in the U.S. then. You had reruns of ST:TOS, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits available to you, and not much else. So maybe it can be called 'comfort food' for those generations, perhaps akin to later generations seeing reruns of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For my father's gen, it might have been cowboy movies. To be able to re-visit a show from your formative years is a type of 'Pepperidge Farms remembers' moment, and each gen has their own version.
You didn't miss much with voyager.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip...
You want the real continuation of the 5 year voyage? Go with the guys that have been making episodes for over 10 years.
www.startreknewvoyages.com
Vic and his crew are no where near the level of accuracy and faithfulness to TOS as the New Voyages team is, and their latest episode, Mind-Sifter is all the proof you need.
This seems to be common among Star Trek fans. There's one guy I know who literally went through every episode of several "generations" of Trek - it took him months - and did nothing but complain about it. The sets, the props, the plot, the characters, everything. A steady stream of complaints on a near-daily basis.
I had considered checking out Trek before, but there's just so much material there and nobody could give a firm recommendation. Now, after this guy, I'll be making it a point to avoid Star Trek. I'd heard the stories about Trekkies, thinking they were exaggerated - they aren't. I'd go to a furry convention before a Trek convention, at least the furries know how to have fun.
I'd suggest checking out Star Trek, despite that 1 guy who whined a lot.
For the purpose, a short-list, and some quick recommendations...
* The Original Series ('66-'69) - dated, and it shows. Only watchable for nostalgic reasons
* The Next Generation ('87-'94) - showing its age, 1st season quite bad, rest varies between bad and very good, decent place to start, can be a bit preachy
*Deep Space Nine ('93-'99) - Decent visuals, seasons 1-3 pretty poor story-wise, end of season 3 through season 6 pretty decent-to-good, more action-based than previous stuff. Fairly dark, difficult place to start
* Voyager ('95-'01) - better production quality than other series, somewhat action-centric at times, less preachy (ignoring certain episodes). Can be used as starting-point
* Enterprise ('01-'05) - Actually not Star Trek. Attempt to make a more streamlined, easy-to-watch Trek. Can be used as starting-point, but may be difficult going back to eg. TNG afterwards.
Some episodes you can try watching (even if out-of-sequence and spoilery), to get a feel for Trek:
* The Measure of a Man (TNG)
* Inner Light (TNG)
* In the Pale Moonlight (DS9) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9, TOS-cross-over)
* Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy (Voy)
* Year of Hell, Part 1 & 2 (Voy - 2 episodes)
* Broken Bow (Ent - 1st episode)
* Carbon Creek (Ent)
Yeah, these generally considered amongst the better episodes of their series, but shows some of the varied themes and styles of Star Trek (I left the out mirror-universe things, they are generally stupid)
Don't bother with watching any of the movies, they are largely bad (he said, having the complete collection on blu-ray) - shame they haven't made any Star Trek movies since 2002.
Some episodes you can try watching (even if out-of-sequence and spoilery), to get a feel for Trek:
I'm sorry, but it's Geek Law that every list of ST episodes to 'try' must include TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...