Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/07/trekkers-ascendant.html
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I hope Legalities 101 is on the curriculum.
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This is essentially the same approach that Lucas Arts decided to take with Star Wars fan films over a century ago. Glad to see that CBS finally caught up.
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So, no more fan episodes and an expensive “school” for how to make fan episodes if the making of fan episodes was still allowed? What is James Crawly actually doing involved in this travesty of a sham of a mockery?
Who are the insanely stupid people they expect to shell out money for this?
AND an official tv show that blatantly ignores any look and feel of a show set ten years before TOS that they want us to shell out money for that no one was clamoring for to begin with?
Star Trek is so very dead to me.
The alumni of Trump University?
The thing is, the fan films were never exactly legal, they were just tolerated. I wish Cory didn’t say stuff like this,
In 2016, CBS/Paramount brought a lawsuit against Axanar, a very successful group of fan-film producers who’d crowdfunding more than $1M to make a kick-ass Star Trek video.
because there’s another side to this.
http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/star-trek/258864/judge-rules-in-star-trek-axanar-fan-film-lawsuit
The really short version is that they promoted themselves as an independent Star Trek motion picture, which because of the weird split between film Trek and TV Trek, put it in the corsshairs of Paramount instead of CBS. Further, they were selling stuff like Axanar Coffee. This would be like me making a Game of Thrones fanfilm and funding it by selling Baratheon Ale.
However you feel about copyright and other property rights, it landed them in legal hot water. The icing on the cake was that they used the Kickstarter money not to produce Axanar, but to build a commercial production studio.
Both Alec Peters (Axanar) and James Cawley have worked in an official capacity; Peters was an archivist, and Cawley worked in the TNG costume department. (IIRC he made the Wesley Crusher acting ensign uniform. Yes, that one.)
Also, this.
Yeah, that’s James Cawley on the bridge of the Kelvin Enterprise.
Also, this.
That’s from Enterprise. I think they built their own sets, but some of the props came from Cawley iirc.
The big difference between Alec Peters and guys like James Cawley, and even Vic Vignogna, is that they didn’t try to turn their Trek fan films into a profitable business. Peters allegedly did. That’s why they released those guidelines which, despite all the wailing and moaning, is just a set of guidelines on how to absolutely, positively not get a call from the legal department.
The whole thing of them supposedly hating fan productions…apparently they don’t. They still tolerate them. But they don’t tolerate people acting like it’s community property to do with as they wish. And again, however we feel about that, the fact is that they are still (imho) very lenient.
I mean, I’m sure people have noticed that Star Trek Continues, while it is down to two more episodes, is still releasing episodes, and that Vic and Michelle Specht have been doing the rounds at the cons in their costumes. Hell, Vic played a Commodore in Star Trek Online, and of course Chris Doohan played Scotty in the same story line.
Latest episode.
Also, this.
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