Fan fiction: Boldy going where no fan has gone before

Who hasn’t wanted to stick on Vulcan ears and say ‘Affirmative, Captain?’ There are a few people who have taken that desire to new heights and created their own all-new Star Trek adventures, currently proliferating on the internet. Owen Morris wonders what all the fuss is about…

For some months now, there’s been considerable buzz about a new online Star Trek project, Of Gods and Men. Featuring actors from every generation of Trek (from Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig representing the classic series to Gary Graham flying the flag for Enterprise), it was designed as a 40th anniversary treat for the fans.

And maybe, if and when it ever gets released, it will be.

But to go from multi-million dollar budget films and TV series to something that just about stands up on a computer screen… Aren’t Nichols and her colleagues almost betraying the franchise, particularly when the actors around them aren’t, shall we say, exactly up to the same standard?

There are a lot of these fan films around at the moment. As well as Of Gods and Men, one of the best known is Star Trek: New Voyages, which has recast the original crew to present the final two years of Jim Kirk’s five year voyage. Much publicity has been gained from their coups in getting William Windom to reprise his role of Decker from the classic episode The Doomsday Machine or David Gerrold to adapt and direct his infamous Star Trek: The Next Generation script Blood and Fire – and those elements are worth watching. But as for the rest of it? The acting is dire. The effects are passable, at best, and fall apart when viewed at any decent size.

These are common failings of fan films. Whether they’re produced in Poland (Horizon), Barcelona (Conflictos), Scotland (Intrepid) or Ohio (U.S.S. Hathaway), they are labours of love more than anything else. Those involved give up great swathes of time to prepare the material, learn the lines, create the costumes and pull it all together in post-production, and it’s a bit unfair to compare their efforts with their official counterparts. However, a lot of them seem to think they come off favourably in the comparison, and that’s simply not the case. In some extreme cases, they even want to become ‘official’ continuations of the Star Trek legend.

Fans have wanted to create their own stories for Star Trek ever since the first episode aired in September 1966. Super 8mm cameras were borrowed from parents to film youngsters playing at being Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. As technology progressed, and more importantly, became cheaper and more widely available, these films increased in technical ability, and with the advent of the internet, the films could be widely seen at the click of a mouse. Many of today’s best-known directors cut their teeth on these sorts of films, as proved on numerous DVD extras!

The wide availability of the films has led to all sorts of problems, because CBS Paramount owns Star Trek, lock, stock and barrel. They own the character names, the ships, the designs and everything associated with it. That means that these films have to be made ‘not for profit’ – which, in the harsh realities of everyday life, means ‘at a loss’.

For something to be official, it has to have a licence from CBS, and there are very clear guidelines imposed on those who have those licences. A novel written for Pocket Books’ Star Trek line goes through numerous checks and balances to ensure that the characterisation matches what’s on screen, and that it fits with established continuity. Exceptions can and have been made, such as with the new Enterprise novels, but on the whole a Pocket Book story could have been produced for the television series on which it’s based, albeit perhaps with a limitless budget.

Fan films don’t go through those checks and balances, although it has to be said that the fans themselves are often stricter on the characterisation than CBS would ever be. There’s not a ‘production value’ check either, and some of the fan films are horrendous in this respect.

There’s another hurdle that these films would have to cross if they were to become official, and that’s the contracts of the actors who originally played the parts. It’s long been accepted that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy have a say as to who plays Kirk or Spock, so the recasting of those roles in Star Trek: New Voyages is a major sticking point to their becoming official. With the greatest will in the world, neither of the replacement actors is of the original actors’ calibre.

The films also meddle with continuity. Of Gods and Men sets part of its tale in an alternate reality - always a good way to handle such matters - but establishes a family for Uhura in the ‘real’ universe that doesn’t fit in with officially licensed stories.

But the lines do become blurred. If George Takei is playing Sulu, or Original and Animated Series story editor Dorothy Fontana is writing the script, surely those stories have more of a ‘right’ to be official? After all, these were the people who created Star Trek in the first place. And if Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry, son of the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, says that he regards something as official, doesn’t that count for something?

The answer, in all honesty, has to be: no, it doesn’t. Even the licensed novels aren’t regarded as official. On numerous occasions right up to the end of Enterprise, the writers cheerfully contradicted something ‘established’ in the books, if they even knew it existed in the first place. It’s a safe bet that the new Star Trek movie, while adhering to the canon of broadcast Trek, will drive a truck through the theories about Jim Kirk’s youth proposed in even the best written tie-in novels.

And are the actors themselves cheapening the franchise by appearing? Certainly they don’t seem to think so, and in the case of Of Gods and Men, the sheer volume of Trek alumni in the cast and behind the camera would seem to indicate that they enjoy doing it.

Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly and Doohan from the original series, or Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes from TNG would only reprise their roles on screen for a sensible fee. They may be willing to cheerfully spoof their characters – Doohan in Knight Rider 2000, or Frakes on Cybill, for example – but they wouldn’t ‘pull on the pyjamas’ (as the TNG cast used to say), to work in a hot and sweaty upper New York state converted factory for peanuts.

Putting this very politely, those actors have other roles on which to concentrate post-Star Trek, whether in front of, or behind the camera. An appearance as a villain on 24, or directing episodes of Bones are more valid career paths than reprising a role from x years ago, alongside some wannabe actors whose death scenes are embarrassing in the extreme.

So are any of these fan films worth watching? Many of them have their moments, and from all accounts, Blood and Fire may well see New Voyages’ production values rise steeply. Of Gods and Men promises a lot, but the interminable delays (it was meant to be out at the start of 2007, and there’s still no sign yet) isn’t a good omen. But unless you’re a devoted Trekker who needs to see absolutely everything, it’s probably best to give the others a miss!

Click here to visit the Star Trek: Gods and Men homepage.