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Star Trek: New Voyages, The Fan-Based Star Trek Series (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times has published an article on Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan production that's based on TOS. “People come from all over the world to take part in this — Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and every state in the union,” said James Cawley, the show’s executive producer. “That’s the magic of Star Trek. It’s spawned this whole generation of fans who went on to professional careers — doctors, lawyers, engineers — who are now participating in that shared love here.” With TOS fans generally being less than enamored with the movie reboots, are fan produced web series the wave of the future?
and now Slashdot.
Seriously, love this reboot series. Worth the buffering every time!
I just watched the 5 eps on the website over the last week, very enjoyable, even if fan made. They even had them in HD.
I really wish we had a star trek series on tv, over the last year I re-watched DS9, last year I re-watched Voyager. I finished the Stargate Series last month.
The state of sci-fi on tv really sucks right now.
I tried watching one of the episodes and I could not finish it. Acting on TOS was bad, but this was just unwatchable.
Dammit Jim, it's free entertainment not a million dollar budget production.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Nope. It's more like "the original" or "the grand daddy of".
This is something that should have "popped" on Slashdot about 10 years ago.
The NYT is basically your embarrassingly uncool parent of a teenager here.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
McCoy: It's dead, Jim.
Spock: Fascinating.
Scott: I cannae get ye any mor power!
Rand: [flashes legs, wiggles]
Uhura: Transmission lost, sir.
Chekov: It's a Russian invention.
Sulu: Captain, stay away from the controls! If you touch them, we'll be destroyed!
Kirk: There’s another way to survive (proceeds to write TekWar)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Happened to catch the first few seconds of the second episode. Captain Pike calling for saucer separation? That was dumb when TNG did it in its first episode. Maybe this was just an alternate timeline or something, but I'll stick with Star Trek Continues, thanks.
It is nice to know that self proclaimed "Trekies" are taking the intellectual property that once belonged to Paramount Pictures.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What I am still surprised at is the copyright owners don't hunt and pursue their fans and try to destroy them like so many other companies normally would.
I just hope it doesn't happen any time soon considering the new film series that have been happening now.
Of course, I am really hoping that these people are smart enough to use these fan projects to gauge interest in a possible new series.
This is pretty much free research in to target markets for new products done by others.
And since these things tend to be fairly high quality, it wouldn't even damage reputation of the series by proxy.
This is one common issue that a lot of these companies face when they end up issuing C&Ds, they absolutely shit themselves and think a fan project will ruin the reputation of their products and dilute them so much that they becoming meaningless.
But that very rarely happens. Stupid things like that usually end up on Fan-fiction, not actual full-on productions like these.
Better yet are those companies that even embrace their fans works and give them an official greenlight and support for work.
Sometimes even the actors or staff that have worked on the series have even been involved in stuff like this. And that includes some Star Trek fan series.
These companies actually have the brains to realize their fans aren't a bunch of blabbering morons and will treat their fan-work with respect that it deserves since they are actually putting their own money on the line, or crowd-funded money in some occasions, in which case it is their own reputation on the line, which is an even bigger thing than a company trying to protect its IP.
The whole issues of fan-work productions are self-correcting, they can't really damage a persons IP. Very very few people are stupid enough not to know the difference between a fan-work and official product, especially in the geek sector of media.
Crytek and Bethesda are others who have allowed fan works with Timesplitters and Fallout respectively, in the gaming sector.
Bethesda is one that is another seemingly paradoxical situation considering how their parent company tried to sue MOJANG of all people for a game called Scrolls totally being a rip-off of The Elder Scrolls.
Crytek have said with the current Timesplitters Rewind fan-game that if it actually managed to get enough people back in to the series that they will seriously consider a full official game on PC. The quality of work on the fan-game so far is top-tier, done in spare time by a group of fans around the world.
Fallout, likewise, the fan series Nuka Break, hilarious series, very Fallout-like in comedy, great special effects and make-up team.
If only more companies would officially support fan-works. It really does improve relations with the fans and can even re-ignite interest in older series.
"Open sourcing" your IPs would be an even bigger leap to improving those relations.
Hell, even just allowing people to "hop on-board" and influence a products future can be a step in the right direction. So many companies just straight up ignore their fan-base (Nintendo!) and it just comes back to bite them in however many years time. These companies just never learn.
If I understand correctly, checking Internet Archive, Star Trek: New Voyages has been around since 2006, and there's lots of other Star Trek fan-based series, so I guess the real story is that the New York Times wrote an article about one of many such series?
I through Cawley did a great job as Kirk and was very sad when he stepped down from the role. In fact, I attribute a lot of the series success to his portrayal of Kirk.
You do understand that $190,000 in 1966 was equivalant to well over a million dollars today, right?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I really enjoy this web series. They have been around since 2004, and their episodes continue to improve over time. I think this is the future of Star Trek, because Paramount seems to be more interested in just making another action film, rather than a Trek film.
Star Trek New Voyages doesn't have a Doohan relative on their cast. They have had George Takei and Walter Koenig reprise their TOS roles, though.
Try watching Andromeda. I always wrote it off without watching but ended up really enjoying it. Tyr was everything the Klingons should have been. True enlightened warriors instead of playing politics.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As both Star Trek Continues and Star Trek Phase II are fan funded, it's hugely unfortunate that they can't seem fit to combine forces and up the quality in a single concerted effort. I have a personal preference for what Vic has done with Star Trek Continues, but see merit in what Cowley is doing with Phase II. Its unfortunate that the federation remains divided.
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
The air compressor appears to be a c2006 type 4 porter cable 6 gallon 150 psi pancake compressor.
Just in case you wanted to recreate their set recreation.
Imho the compressor is a poorly built piece of junk.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
You do understand that $190,000 in 1966 was equivalant to well over a million dollars today, right?
Dammit Jim, he's an Anonymous Coward, not an Economist.
Or a mathematician.
Or relevant.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
The older series didn't have enough angst for the current generation. Not enough "it's about me."
True. Gene Roddenberry banned all of that from being covered. The crew was supposed to get along and that was that.
You can wonder about the viability of that, let alone the hypocrisy, but that's another story. It was declared by fiat.
The last good SF out was Firefly. It's all been downhill since then.
Firefly, good SF, eh? Well, that was 2002. 2005 if we count the movie.
Since then, among others, we've had the Battlestar Galactica remake, and Caprica, Defiance, Eureka, Warehouse 13, FlashForward, Continuum, Orphan Black, Fringe, the 100, Falling Skies, Lab Rats, and who knows how many in Japan and the UK, and elsewhere in the world.
Exactly what have you seen, and what would you do to make it better?
My parent's house, a 2-story colonial, in 1964 was $18,500. The $230/month book of payment coupons was terrifying.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I guess it depends what kind of sci-fi you like. I happen to agree with you, most of the shows you listed are decent, plus others like Heroes, Orphan Black etc - plenty of good stuff in the last decade. However of all those shows, only BSG is primarily space-based, so if that's what you're after, pickings are a bit slimmer. Sure, there are cheap-and-cheesy shows like Dark Matter, and I'm sure others that weren't memorable enough for me to remember their names right now. Someone looking to replace the likes of Trek, Farscape, Babylon 5, Firefly, etc though might well feel there's not been much for them.
Oh no... it's the future.
I much prefer Star Trek Continues. The guy playing Kirk has really nailed it. The mannerisms, the acting style, everything. The stories are really, really good too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Stargate Universe was excellent too. What seems odd is that shows that are consistently great from the very start always get cancelled early on, like SGU and Firefly, but shows which are campy cheezefests in the early days and take a good season or two to get going (TNG, Farscape, B5) somehow get renewed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You must be joking. SGU was anything but Stargate. Crappy plot, no stargate type fun (you know, Jack O'Neil, Mitchel, Vala). Oh well, at least they had Tamara Johansen :P
anon as not to undo moderation
You do understand that is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether $190k then was, or was not, significantly different from 1m today, right?
You also understand that "making the film", specifically the part that got less expensive, is a tiny, tiny part of the undertaking, right?
You also understand that without dedicated props departments (such as those at DesiLu), props take much more time and energy and are less efficiently made in this case as compared to TOS, right?
You also understand that the number of dollars put out for anything from a bit of particle board to the plastic for a switch and the material for the costumes has increased proportionally as well, right?
You also understand that as these people are not professionals, they are no doubt at all putting in more work on some things than the crew at DesiLu, right?
I am sure your understanding is wide and deep, O Anonymous One.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The thing is, inter-crew conflicts are unprofessional. Real teams that have to get things done don't do that. They are expected to work out disagreements peacefully, with out letting them interfear with the work. As in, doing work where mistakes cause people to die!
All of this drama is from "Soap Operas" on television, it has warped people's perceptions. Notice that those TV shows never show anyone doing any actual work, either... 8-)
Stargate Universe was excellent too. What seems odd is that shows that are consistently great from the very start always get cancelled early on, like SGU and Firefly, but shows which are campy cheezefests in the early days and take a good season or two to get going (TNG, Farscape, B5) somehow get renewed.
I certainly wouldn't consider the examples like B5 and farscape "cheesy" And I'm really surprised you dissed TNG.. Anyways , in answer to your comment, they were signed up for multi year terms, like many other shows, especially if the producer has a solid track record. TNG's producers certainly had that. B5 was signed for the entire run of 5 seasons ,after it was intentionally closed. Not cancelled, because there was no more to it. The only one that was cancelled was the B5 spinoff Crusade, a real shame, but it was apparently too slick i.e. not enough "action" for the average plebe.. :sigh:
I couldn't agree more.