Star Trek fan productions


Star Trek fan productions are productions made by fans using elements of the Star Trek franchise. Paramount Pictures, CBS, and their licensees are the only organizations legally allowed to create commercial products with the Star Trek name and trademark. The fan film community has received some coverage from the mainstream media.

Films

''Paragon's Paragon'' (1974)

Star Trek fan films have been made since the 1960s by individuals and various fan groups but, before the advent of inexpensive digital cameras, editing and effects in the 1990s, most were on a simple home movie level. An early effort to achieve something more was John Cosentino's Paragon's Paragon, which was an unofficial adaption of James's Blish's "Spock Must Die!," an early Star Trek spinoff novel. The film ran for an hour and was shot on 16mm film using a full-size recreation of the Bridge set. It also used a wide variety of film special effects techniques on a budget of over $2,000-- equivalent to $10,000 in today's dollars-- and received considerable coverage in Don Dohler's Cinemagic magazine for low budget filmmakers. Dohler subsequently used its crew to make his first feature film, The Alien Factor.

''Digital Ghost'' (2000)

Digital Ghost was a German-language, Star Trek fan film set within the continuity of the movies. It is the story of two Starfleet officers from USS Enterprise-E delegated to test the next, completely automated starship, the Enterprise-HC. The film was directed by Thomas Wolff, produced by Joost van Wingerden, with CGI from Tobias Richter.

''[Star Trek: Of Gods and Men]'' (2007-2008)

''[Star Trek: Axanar]'' (2014)

In 2014, fans and former cast members organized a fan-made short film called Prelude to Axanar, setting up a Kickstarter project with a target of $10,000, but which raised well over $100,000 instead. This short film is planned to be followed by a full-length feature film called Star Trek: Axanar, funded by a much larger Kickstarter project. These films star Richard Hatch, J. G. Hertzler, Kate Vernon, Gary Graham, Michael Hogan, and Tony Todd, all mainstream actors who are veterans of Paramount's Star Trek franchise and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. Prelude to Axanar features both new and familiar characters from the Star Trek universe:
The short film for Prelude to Axanar was released in June 2014. In August 2014, the production raised $638,000 on Kickstarter, and writer-producer Alec Peters went into pre-production for the feature film Star Trek: Axanar.
On December 29, 2015 the project was hit by a lawsuit from CBS and Paramount Pictures filed in Central California federal court, stating the Axanar works infringed upon their intellectual property by making use of "innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes." In March 2016, Peters' Axanar Productions filed a motion to dismiss or strike Paramount and CBS's claims, saying the elements mentioned in the court filing are not protected by copyright and is seeking premature relief from a work, the Axanar feature film, that does not exist. The motion to dismiss or strike was denied by the court and the case went to a jury trial in January 2017. On January 21, 2017, the lawsuit was settled.
On June 26, 2016, during the Axanar lawsuit, CBS and Paramount released a set of guidelines for Star Trek fan films to follow. Notably, these restrictions require films to: Be no more than 15 minutes long and have no stories longer than two installments ; play on YouTube without commercials; and all participants are required to be amateurs who have never worked on Star Trek or another licensee of CBS or Paramount Pictures. The creation and release of Axanar will be allowed only on these terms.

''[Star Trek: Renegades]'' (2015)

''Star Trek: Horizon'' (2016)

- Tommy Kraft, Star Trek: Horizon creator

Awards

Star Trek: Horizon won four of twelve categories in the 2017 Independent Star Trek Fan Film Awards, presented at and by Treklanta.

''What We Left Behind'' (2019)

In 2017, eighteen years after the finale, What You Leave Behind aired, Ira Steven Behr announced a crowdfunded documentary named What We Left Behind, deriving its title from the name of this episode, which met its goal of $150,000 within 24 hours. The documentary will reflect on Star Trek: Deep Space Nines legacy, featuring interviews with the cast and crew of the series and speculating on what would have happened had there been an eighth season. The documentary was released in 2019.

Series

''[Star Trek: Hidden Frontier]'' (2000-2007)

''[Starship Exeter]'' (2002-2014)

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''Star Trek: Phase II">Star Trek: Phase II (fan series)">Star Trek: Phase II'' (2004-2016)

''Star Trek: Dark Armada'' (2006-2016)

''[Star Trek: Odyssey]'' (2007-2011)

''Starship Farragut'' (2007-2016)

''[Star Trek: Intrepid]'' (2007-2018)

''Star Trek: Osiris'' (2008)

''[Star Trek: Phoenix]'' (2010)

''[Star Trek Continues]'' (2013-2017)

''http://www.starshipgrissom.com/ Starship Grissom'' (2016)

Starship Grissom was a short lived educational fan film based on the original Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry.
Join the crew, which includes a teen-aged cadet fresh from Star Fleet Academy, on its mission to explore planet L-197, which is a newly discovered planet in the Lyra System. But what starts out as a regular mission to determine suitability for colonization quickly becomes anything but routine.
This episode is approximately 15 minutes and touches on the subjects of Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Fine Arts, and Leadership. There is a list of lessons at the end of the episode; each will include a video introduction by one of the crew with printable lesson plans and materials. The lessons cover Common Core and STEM standards and can be modified for Advanced Placement or Special Education students.
Starship Grissom was filmed at Starbase Studios, formerly located in Oklahoma City.

Potemkin Productions (2016-2019)

and spin-offs: USS Tristan, USS Deimos, USS Endeavour, Battlecruiser Kupok, USS Triton, Hospital Ship Marie Curie, USS Webster. Set at the TOS movies timeline.

''Star Trek: These Are The Voyages...'' (2017-2019)

''https://sites.google.com/view/bloodoftiberius/home Blood of Tiberius: A Star Trek Faninmated Production'' (2019)

Theatre

''Klingon Tamburlaine'' (2019)

In 2019, Los Angeles based theatre company, , premiered their show in the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival. The show is a creation from Christopher Marlowe’s medieval pageant of will, war and conquest re-imagined as epic sci-fi spectacle. Tragedy! Romance! Mighty verse! Great battles waged on land and in space! Honor and glory! Qapla’! Klingon Tamburlaine is an unofficial fan production adapted from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II. During its run, the show gained a large amount of attention throughout the Los Angeles community. It won several awards, including the Encore Producers' Award and the Pick of the Fringe Award. was offered a three week run in October and November at Theater.

Audio

''[Star Trek: The Continuing Mission]''

''Star Trek: Defiant''

''[Star Trek: Excelsior]''

''Star Trek: Lost Universe''

''Star Trek: Outpost''

''http://www.USSEndeavor.com Endeavor''

Parodies

Improvised Star Trek

''[Redshirt Blues]''

''Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation''

''Stone Trek''

''[Steam Trek: The Moving Picture]''

''Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning''

is a 2005 parody film produced by five friends in a two-room flat with a small budget and the support of a few hundred fans and several dozen acquaintances. It is the seventh production in the Star Wreck movie series, and the first of professional quality and feature length. It is a dark science fiction comedy about domination of the world and the universe, and a parody of the Star Trek and Babylon 5 franchises. The audio track is in Finnish and has English subtitles.

Star Trek x 60's Batman Crossover

Up The Enterprise

[Voyage Trekkers]

Machinima

;Borg War

Trailers

;Bring Back Kirk

Legal issues

The attitude of the Star Trek copyright and trademark holders toward fan works has varied over time. In early 1996, Viacom sent cease and desist letters to webmasters of Star Trek fan sites that contained copyrighted film clips, sounds, insignia, or other copyrighted material. In the lead-up to the release of ', then-president of Paramount Digital Entertainment David Wertheimer stated that Viacom was targeting sites that were "selling ads, collecting fees, selling illegal merchandise or posting copyrighted materials." Under threat of legal action, many websites shut down.
Jennifer Granick, a San Francisco criminal lawyer who went on to champion cyber rights, felt that the unofficial sites should be covered by the fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law. In 1998, then-UCLA associate professor Howard Besser claimed the entertainment industry as a whole was, and cited Viacom's actions toward Star Trek site webmasters as an example of, "exploiting concerns over digitization and attempting to reshape the law by strengthening protection for copyrights holders and weakening public rights to access and use material."
Star Trek fan films have, until recently, operated in an informational vacuum, since Paramount has made few official statements regarding their existence. Fan filmmakers have generally kept a low profile, hoping not to draw attention to themselves. However, with the demise of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, the fan film community began drawing more attention in the media, and even a certain amount of recognition from the entertainment industry.
', one fan series, has established an understanding that Paramount must be properly credited as the owner of Star Trek-related intellectual property.
On December 29, 2015 Star Trek: Axanar was hit by a lawsuit from CBS and Paramount Pictures filed in California federal court, stating the Axanar works infringed upon their intellectual property by making use of "innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes." In June 2016 Paramount issued guidelines to assist fan-made productions from litigation; in summary:
Because of the guidelines issued by Paramount as a result of the Axanar case, Star Trek: Renegades made changes to the script of their upcoming film "Requiem" to remove all references to Star Trek. The series itself was renamed Renegades.