Star Trek New Voyages (and Star Trek Continues, to a lesser extent) were beautiful, and I'm so glad that they existed and I'm deeply upset with Paramount for fucking them up.

(There are 3! Episodes of Star Trek New Voyages that will never get finished because between them being shot and being released, they became explicitly illegal.)

Of course, this is because they were always illegal. They were copyright infringing, it just didn't matter until Paramount decided that fan films had gotten too good, and posed a real threat to their bottom line.

I don't think I can fully explain how much Paramount's capricious fan film guidelines radicalized me w/r/t my views on copyright.

Of course, both New Voyages on occasion and Continues in most (every?) episode featured Vic Mignogna as Captain Kirk.

I have heard from credible sources that, in addition to being a first class creep ( see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Mignogna#Legal_battles_and_sexual_harassment_allegations ) he was also probably a thief!

I feel like I shouldn't continue this discussion without acknowledging that.

Anyway, problematic people aside, the concept of these Star Trek fan films was beautifully naive: "let's do Fan Fiction but for Television"

Fan fiction is also illegal, and usually tolerated at best. (It shouldn't be illegal, but that's another story!) and that's while most Fan Fiction could not possibly supplant the work who's copyright it is infringing. Who would read Fan Fic without reading/watching the thing its based on?

At the time that Star Trek New Voyages started coming out there hadn't been any Star Trek on TV or in cinemas for years, and the early episodes of NV... Well, they are a little unpolished, rough around the edges.

But, by the time the later episodes were released, and by the time Continues hit the scene, two things had changed:

1) these fan films became absolutely as good as or better than many episodes of Star Trek that had aired on television (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4TC5wl0IzE&list=PL5h4ur_aSq8NxKIK0TWk6puXu4E1RjT8y&index=5 or any of the later episodes for example.)

2) J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film was released, and quickly became a blockbuster trilogy of ... well, shall we say "Flashy" films?

In short, there was money on the line.

And the reception of the Abrams films was mixed. You wouldn't know it looking at their reviews today, but opinions were Divided.

Casual viewers ate them up, but hardcore fans absolutely hated it. And they were Loud. They weren't critics, they weren't viewers. They didn't make the films fail, but they did Talk. A lot. On youtube, and in comic book shops, and in letters to Paramount.

And, I can't speak for every one of those nerd, but at least the ones around me were *firmly* of the opinion that the true spirit of Star Trek lived on, not in the cinema but in the fan films on youtube.

@ajroach42 The Abrams flicks and VGR being the dumbest thing I'd ever seen (it has since been exceeded), killed my interest in "New Trek". The spirit of Real Star Trek lived in GalaxyQuest and Stargate SG-1, and hard-ish SF books by Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher, and "James SA Corey".

What Paramount does now is at best a diversion; I loved Lower Decks, because it talks about Real Star Trek, but it's not a replacement for it. And of course they knifed it in its bunk early.
#startrek

@mdhughes

What constitutes the spirit of real Star Trek?

That notion might be a bit of nostalgia at play alongside some good criticisms.

A lot of post-Disco Trek is magnificent. A lot of episodes on the TOS, VOY, and TNG episodes are redic.

Anything shown on screen is Real Star Trek.

@ajroach42