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Star Trek: Renegades Working On Episodes 2 and 3 (kickstarter.com)
JoSch1337 writes: The last time Star Trek: Renegades was on Slashdot was in 2013. It's an independent, canon-faithful Trek series with high production values and some of the actors from the TV shows. Since their original campaign, the team has produced an amazing pilot episode 1 and is now gathering support to produce episode 2, and even episode 3 if they reach their stretch goal. From the Kickstarter page: "Star Trek Renegades is an independent, fan-funded and supported Internet television series, executive produced by Sky Conway. Renegades features a combination of familiar Star Trek character and actors, plus a collection of hot, new rising actors. Set a decade after Voyager's return from Delta Quadrant, ST: Renegades focuses on a team of fugitives, who are on the run from the Federation while secretly working for the head of Starfleet intelligence, Admiral Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Tuvok (Tim Russ, who also directs) to root out internal corruption within the Federation as well as external threats."
Pavel Chekov, also known as Alfred Bester, fighting corruption in the Federation? Ha! The Alfred Bester and his corrupt Psi Cops were no match for John Sheridan, and were hoping to find a much weaker opponent in the Federation.
I watched the three episodes of Trek continues a while back. There were only three back then.I haven't had a chance to watch the latest two. Some of the actors could have been better, and it takes a little bit of getting used to them not being the same people as were in TOS. But the stories were pretty good, and the sets, wardrobe and effects were spot on. While you could make better special effects on most home PC's, they kept all of the CGI looking pretty damn close to the original series. I enjoyed it enough that I re-watched the original series again afterward.
Some of those fan productions have been quite good; not as good as the very best of any of the series, but a hell of a lot better than you'd think if you imagine them by the standards of typical fan fic. These are labors of love, and they're genuinely entertaining -- although I admit to being a little prejudiced in favor anything that someone obviously put so much care into.
As for competition, well one of the big difference between a pro and a dedicated amateur is that a pro can work a lot faster. These fan productions put out an episode every year or two; the official series churned out 25-30 episodes per year. In a way this was te franchise's artistic downfall; for the entire run of Deep Space 9 there were TWO Star Trek series in production; TNG in 94 and Voyager from 95 on. That meant they were putting out something like 50 episodes a year, and toward the end of the DS9 run it began to feel like they had more episodes on the broadcast schedule to fill than they had stories to tell. There were a number of episodes in DS9 and Voyager which damaged the franchise's reputation, which is a shame because both series at their best could be quite good.
The problem with these amateur productions is that even when they're surprisingly good they don't produce enough product; the problem with the series has consistently been that they've produced *too much* product. What I'd like to see is something like the old Columbo TV series, which put out a half dozen "movie of the week" episodes per year: less quantity (although not too much less), more quality.
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