Star Trek 2017

Oooh, Shiny.

I really hope they spend most of their money on good writers though.

I hear that.

I can't wait

There are a bunch of fan-based Star Trek videos on YouTube. Some of them are pretty good. The acting is awkward which makes me appreciate skilled actors more, but the stories and visuals aren't all that bad.

I have been blogging about the Axanar mishigas for months. So yeah, I've watched STC, NV, etc. (Star Trek Continues and New Voyages). Looked at Horizon - it's impressive for the tiny amount of money Tommy Kraft used, but it's still ....

So yeah, I have seen a ton of them lately. Definitely make me appreciate the pros more.

I don't understand the linkage, if any, between all these YouTube Star Trek videos. Are they connected an any way, other than being Star Trek Stories? Are they produced by the same bunch of people, or are they all unrelated? How are they funded? Do they have coherent plot lines which carry over multiple episodes or are they all independent?

Sorry for all the questions. There are too many of them for me to actually watch, so I haven't worked it all out yet.

Some of them are crowdfunded, which has become problematic. There's a gulf between being crowdfunded and getting pros, versus more or less doing it in your basement.

Star Trek Continues is the biggie and their funding is a mix. The big guy behind it is James Cawley. They are very big on trying to recreate the original TOS sets, costumes, etc. The guy playing Kirk is generally a voice over actor. Their Sulu is (I believe) a guy from Mythbusters? It's possible I've gotten a few of the productions confused.

New Voyages was first called Phase II. Their site is currently under construction and I think they are on hiatus. They are also in the TOS era.

Star Trek Horizon is Tommy Kraft's labor of love, a cheap (something like $50k), mostly greenscreened film set in the ENT era.

Axanar is purportedly the story of Garth of Izar (from the TOS episode, Whom Gods Destroy). The production has been sued by CBS/Paramount for copyright infringement. Now, all of these productions are skirting that line if not crossing it, but Axanar really stomped on it by paying salaries, claiming to be an indie film and not a fan film, claiming to be better, etc. They also have a donor store where they are selling providing in exchange for a donation knockoff merchandise, mainly models and patches, but apparently also apparel. There was a related coffee merchant who slapped their images onto bags of coffee (yes, really), including a picture of actor Tony Todd, who had left the production. Lots of uncomfortable irregularities (there's a good word for them).

Anyway, I blog about all of that insanity here - http://www.gandtshow.com/tag/semantic-shenanigans/ (some of those are links to the podcast, which is NSFW). The lawsuit is in Federal court and it is ugly.

Thanks. This is the only one I really watched. And yes, it did have Grant Imahara from Mythbusters in it. It also had the original actor from that Greek God episode from TOS.

Reviving this one because of the sad death of actor Anton Yelchin. Definitely gone too soon.

That was incredibly sad news. I only knew him from the roles he played, but the characters were so endearing that I thought maybe a bit of the actual actor was coming through. Such a strange and unexpected way for a young life to end. It continues to be sad to think about it.

Yeah - awful for someone not even 30 to go.

And it's only getting more intriguing!

There's a certain bit of Klingonesque engineering to the USS Discovery.

For viewers outside of the US and Canada:

CBS/Netflix connection

It's Klingonish/similar to a McQuarrie design which was rejected for Phase II (good lord, I'm a geek).

It's concept art; mainly, according to the show runners, they wanted to showcase the score which was created as - get this - an audition piece.

We cover this on the podcast (truth is, we covered Beyond a lot more yesterday). I imagine I will be broadcasting about this for months. It is getting to be rather exciting.

Oooh ahhh oohhh dig it.
https://streamable.com/pmp54

Is that a fan production or a Hollywood production? It's pretty slick, but doesn't seem quite as slick as a normal Hollywood trailer.

That is the trailer for the new series coming this fall, to CBS All Access.

Ahh, it's a TV series. Sorry, I don't pay much attention to these things any more so I forget their history.

The fact that it's a TV series explains why the trailer lacks that flavor of overbearing melodramatic grandiosity of the movie trailers.

So if I plug an Amazon Fire TV Stick into my TV, is that all the hardware I need to have a CBS All Access subscription on my TV?

If anyone has this All Access thing already, can you pre-download shows and then watch them after they are all downloaded?

I asked. Fire stick + subscription = you can watch it on TV.
There are other devices that can use cbs all access: roku, playstation, xbox, android and apple devices.
For the second question, right now, Netflix is the only service that my podcasting pal is aware of that currently offers downloads of their content for offline viewing.