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(This article has some rather blunt observations about the representation of race, nationality, sex, sexuality and religion by multiple litigious media companies. I strongly doubt that the editors of SoylentNews would ever approve official publication of such an article and therefore I publish this, without editing, in a personal capacity.)

I really want to watch some high-quality, fan produced StarTrek. However, the pipeline is exhausted. This is due to the rights holder being extremely restrictive. This leaves me quite disgruntled.

I've made friends through a shared interest in StarTrek. It has also been useful in a professional capacity because it allows some technical concepts to be conveyed more concisely. I've been persuaded to visit Pages Bar in Pages Street, Westminster, London and (due to booking error) persuaded to attend a StarTrek convention where Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Jennifer Lien (Kes) and William Shatner (the third best actor to portray Captain James Tiberius Kirk) were guests of honor.

Pages Bar was the most fun but that closed many years ago. Saturday evenings were for StarTrek. other evenings were for other science fiction themes. The bar had a large model NCC1701D Enterprise hanging from the ceiling and some of the tables were in the style of 10 Forward. About 1/3 of the patrons wore StarTrek uniforms, although ranks below commander were quite sparse. Some of the remainder dressed as Borg or Klingons. (Top tip: Wear a tampon under a Klingon prosthetic forehead to absorb sweat.) There was a dealer table run by a guy who was known as the Ferengi due to his generous discounting policy. The bar served Romulan Ale (lager with a dash of blue food coloring) and Tribble Burgers (which were probably about 90% beef and 10% horse.) It also showed official episodes of StarTrek, fan productions and promotional video for conventions. There was often one guest of honor, such as George Takei (Sulu) or Garrett Wang (Harry Kim from Voyager). Every Saturday was like a mini-convention.

When the rights for StarTrek transferred from Viacom to Paramount, the latter scoped around to see if any rights required enforcing. When it encountered Pages Bar, the reaction was akin to "WTF is this???" Paramount made a token effort to enforce rights. Romulan Ale and Tribble Burgers were dropped from the menu but it was otherwise unaffected. It was generally understood that Pages Bar pushed a little too far and shouldn't push further. This was respected by fans and Paramount gained considerable goodwill.

Similar truces stood for many years but during this period, the cost of quality cameras crashed, the cost of post-production crashed and a growing number of actors from the growing canon were willing to participate in a growing number of productions. Cribbing from reason.tv's brief history of fan productions prior to StarTrek: Axanar getting sued, this first occurred in 1985 when George Takei appeared in Yorktown: A Time To Heal and then Chekov, Uhura and Tuvok appeared in the (rather good) fan production, StarTrek: Of Gods And Men. The latter also had Gary Graham from Alien Nation.

I find most of the legacy fan productions to be unwatchable. The seven seasons of StarTrek: Hidden Frontier rivals The Next Generation by size and is widely available. However, many of the sets were rendered with less than 100MHz processing power and composited to NTSC VHS at 525i before being archived, sampled, uploaded and transcoded to 360p. Early episodes of StarTrek: New Voyages and Starship Farragut have equal distribution quality. StarTrek: New Voyages becomes extremely watchable from Episode 8: Kitumba. It helps that Episode 9: Mind Sifter has a retro 5:4 aspect ratio and is consistent with StarTrek: Of Gods And Men. Unfortunately, StarTrek: New Voyages finishes at Episode 10. Starship Farragut has an astounding set but the acting hasn't improved over 20 years. The actors have merely gone from having the presence of young middle-managers to having the presence of old and fat middle-managers. One is more suited to the rôle of dental receptionist with Stage 4 RBF rather than StarFleet Communication Officer. It is ass-clenchingly awful and not in an amusing way.

With seven episodes of StarTrek Continues each raising funding and then StarTrek: Axanar raising US$1.3 million of crowd-funding across Kickstarter and IndieGogo, Paramount/CBS (or whatever it is called nowadays) decided to set rules which prohibited anything beyond 2×15 minute productions - and no canon cast or crew allowed in *any* rôle, paid or unpaid. And Paramount/CBS set these rules with nothing ready for StarTrek's 50th anniversary. Thanks, guys.

Like some other members of SoylentNews, I paid to see the first two StarTrek reboot films and I decided that I wouldn't be conned on a third occasion. Zachary Quinto is surprisingly good as Spock and Karl Urban is versatile as McCoy but that isn't enough to redeem it. I hear that the series: STD StarTrek: Disco Discovery is also awful, in part because it differs more from canon than many fan productions and, in part because of an overt progressive agenda. StarTrek is renowned for tolerance and harmony but occasionally pushed too far. A kiss between Kirk and Uhura was censored in Alabama, although that's a place more closely associated with incest than racial tolerance. The Original Series and The Next Generation also attempted to cover racism and homophobia more tactfully. However, The Next Generation had an unconscious undercurrent of casual racism where, for example, black actors portray a violent race. Also, good Klingons are portrayed by actors of Christian, West African descent and bad Klingons are portrayed by actors of Muslim, East African descent. Furthermore, the Ferengi have a remarkable similarity to the stereotype of a short, ugly, money obsessed, Hollywood Jew - complete with the sexual objectification of women. (StarFleet also has an acute shortage of gallium and therefore none of the LEDs are blue.)

Look further afield and other science fiction is just as bad. I hear that the StarWars triple trilogy is awful. Episode 4, Episode 5 and Episode 6 are swashbucklers in space with excellent three act structure - individually and as a trilogy. Repeating this on another scale was ambitious. Unfortunately, it failed. Technical problems were overcome, such as matching analog and digital cinematography. However, Episode 1 has no plot. (It also has Jar Jar Binks which some believe is a German, Italian and/or Latino immigrant stereotype.) Journalists were shown pre-release screenings where 80 minutes of the footage was shown in a random order. Ostensibly, this was to prevent the plot being published but this was soon discovered to hide the lack of plot. Episode 2 has been described as "attack of the cloned plot". Episode 3 has the unenviable job of tying two bags of shit to Episode 4. Given the circumstances, this was achieved competently. However, that's not a recommendation.

Disney StarWars was made in record time with an overlap of cast and crew with the StarTrek reboots. When their work on StarTrek scores zero out of 2 and previous work on StarWars Episodes 1-3 scores 1/2 out of 3, I'd be an idiot to pay to see Episodes 7-9 in a cinema. The film: Solo may also disappoint. Despite all of the advances in textiles and fur rendering, audiences complain that Chewbacca looks worse than 40 years ago. At best, this is a failure to meet raised expectations.

There is also the issue of affirmative action casting. After StarTrek cast a white male captain (William Shatner as Kirk) then another white male captain (Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard), StarTrek cast a black male commander (Avery Brooks as Sisko) than a white female captain (Kate Mulgrew as Mrs. Columbo in space Janeway). With far more clumsiness and the full wisdom of hindsight, StarWars Episodes 7-9 has a black male protagonist and a white female protagonist. What an original combination! Are they called Cisco and Janeway? And, apparently, a character from Episode 5 is now pansexual. I hope this gets viewed with equal clumsiness.

A much bigger issue is that big budget action films have converged on the hero's journey plot. Unfortunately, the film industry has been following the example "beat sheet" from the book: Save The Cat to the extent that the film: Pacific Rim, the film: Skyfall, the film: The Dark Knight Rises and many others can be played concurrently. Minute-by-minute, almost the same plot is followed, complete with blatently underlined plot developments for the protagonists' and antagonists' intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Among other matters, this fully explains Bruce Wayne's pointless flashbacks and the 58 second dojo scene in Pacific Rim. Film industry experts, such as Lord Putnam, thought that finances would fall apart by 2010 but inertia has carried it to 2018 and perhaps much further. How many times are you going to pay to see the same film made with different actors?

Meanwhile, an astounding amount of money is spent on television. Black Mirror costs more than US$1 million per episode. Westworld costs more than US$3 million per episode. The Crown costs more than US$5 million per episode. Adjusting for inflation, budgets are typically lower than The Next Generation. However, no-one is paying, for example, US$6000 per second to composite a star-field at warp. And, at a minimum, everyone shoots lossless digital at 3840×2160, 60FPS, 10 bit per channel. The money spent to subscribe to video on demand and the money spent on productions has lured multiple Oscar winners away from film and stage. Regardless, much of this big budget television can only be streamed from proprietary systems over the Internet. Although, even when Black Mirror was made for broadcast, it was never cut to length or with regular advert breaks.

CBS's reaction to a fan production reaching US$1.3 million was to sue and shut it down. It had reached professional quality and a professional budget. It was also produced with love and on its own schedule. That was too much competition. However, given that CBS is the center of an eco-system where it has sole discretion about the revenue model, CBS could have chosen many other options:-

1. Recruit the best talent.
2. Allow fan productions to continue.
3. Move to a licensee only revenue model.
4. Allow 2×15 minutes under fair use and charge licensing fees on anything else.

I envision a scenario where a credit card processor takes 3%, crowd-funding platforms take 2% and CBS takes 5% or so. A worked example for StarTrek: Axanar's US$1.3 million funding would be US$39000 for credit card processing, US$26000 for crowd-funding, US$65000 for licensing and the remaining 90% (US$1.17 million) for production. Licensing requires due diligence, signing a standard contract, approving a script and approving footage. This would be per episode or per film and budgets could grow by at least a factor of five per production over an unlimited number of teams.

Prospective teams, in their own time and at their own expense, would have incentive to pitch productions which are consistent, original, interesting and plausible. Fans would choose the best proposals with their own money prior to production. CBS would take fees while enforcing minimal regulations. It would be easy to trace the majority of money from the largest productions. In particular, it would be implausible to raise significant money on an obscure website without it being discovered by CBS.

Even without this quality control, the better fan productions have been consistent with each other. The Original Series and StarTrek Continues are rigorously consistent to the extent that Gene Roddenberry's son regards both as canon. I know a partially-sighted science fiction expert who is unable to distinguish any difference beyond a holodeck, a counsellor and Vic Magnogna's less stilted delivery as Kirk. And where it differs, it is preferable.

Where StarTrek Continues overlaps with StarTrek: Axanar, it is consistent. Likewise where StarTrek: New Voyages overlaps with StarTrek: Of Gods And Men and The Original Series. Anyone failing to meet this established standard will lose the respect of their peers. With fan efforts, the peer pressure is more important than turnover or licensing. However, with the three most recent StarTrek films and the seven most recent StarWars films, quality has been secondary. Goodwill has evaporated and it may not return.

I'm a fairly typical case where cinemas have lost at least US$60 of revenue. I assume that there are millions of similar cases. I'm willing to forego a big screen experience and put some of that shortfall into quality, small screen, fan productions. However, my favorite options are closed due to a licensor without vision. StarTrek could become a vast fan led franchise of impecable quality. I dare to suggest a commons with a shepard. But, on CBS's current path, I have taken my business elsewhere. The condition to bring it back isn't particularly high but I won't wait forever.

In the interim, I'll watch stuff that I've already seen or find the nearest alternatives. Many businesses compete with their previous work and some preference is due to familiarity. Microsoft is a great example. However, there are few businesses where neophile customers prefer the work from 30 years ago or 50 years ago.

Executives wonder why we prefer StarTrek Continues, StarTrek: Axanar or science fiction such as The Expanse. They have a simple, positive message without being preachy. There is plausible diversity without casual racism or sexism. (1960s style uniforms are the major exception to sexual equality.) For amateur productions, we can overlook a large amount of lopsided diversity because fans represent themselves; often at a financial loss. Meanwhile, official productions are decreasingly successful at casting people who embody Gene Roddenberry's vision of harmony. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were quietly Jewish without issue. George Takei has been as openly homosexual as possible while pursuing a career. I get the impression that Zachary Quinto would rather be omitted from discussion and perhaps I've already said too much. Where did it go wrong? Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar had a robosexual plot and then got written out of The Next Generation. Apparently, appearing in Playboy magazine did not prompt the studio to drop her. Whereas, the alleged actress, Alice Eve, and, to a lesser extent, the Scientologist, Kirstie Alley, have been notoriously transphobic. Alice Eve is best known for being filmed in underwear and next best known as the antagonist in Black Mirror, Season 3, Episode 1: Nosedive. (Charlie Brooker: You are an arch troll.)

Maybe the StarTrek canon has spread so far that it has all become doggerel. However, yet another hero's journey and a shutdown on homages isn't a long-term strategy. CBS is in a unique position that few brands can ever hope to achieve. But it is trashing cultural heritage with a random series and a few cheesy films. Follow the example of Lego. Unfortunately, Lego has at least a 1×16 up its ass about MiniFig licensing. Ignoring that, Lego has sold fan designs on a revenue share basis, encourages conventions and encourages the use of unofficial software in combination with official hardware. We probably like Lego more than StarTrek. We probably spend more on it too.