Star Trek:Renegades Pilot Being Crowdfunded

I'm going to watch it later tonight.

At times it was like a fan film, at times as good as some of the movies.

If found the lack of lens flare rather distracting.

I think a 13-year old boy wrote this...

Well, I watched Renegades, and it wasn't half bad. It was mostly bad. The script sounded like it was written by a hormonal middle school boy. The special effects range from decent to dreadful. The acting is awful, just awful. Everyone either sounds unemotional and tired, or high out of their mind.

I'm 30 minutes in. Don't feel like continuing. Would rather watch Endgame or A Night in Sickbay.

Some of the acting was bad. Perhaps a lot. But some of that I think was do to the bad writing. I think another factor might be that they didn't have a director with a big budget who was willing to shoot take after take after take until he got just what he wanted.

I thought Corin Nemec did really well at several points, and I could see him being better in the role than Scott Bakula or Kate Mulgrew. In a couple scenes he had something of a Shatner quality about him. In other scenes maybe a bit overdone or underdone. Sean Young's role seemed just a bit weird. Tim Russ and Robert Picardo were steady as always.

Stay with it. It gets better, I think. Won't swear to that, though.

Got 5 minutes in. It was worse than AIDS.

Think of the first 5 minutes as the part that should have been left on the cutting room floor and continue on from there.

It doesn't get better, save for one moment in which I laughed my ass off. It's about 42 minutes in where Icheb, or whoever the hell he is, uses his SUPER AWESOME BIONIC ARM!!!! to create a force field. For a moment, his hand looks like a giant hulk hand. Seriously. I spoilered it for people who don't want to see, so here it is:

It does get better. Go back and look how bad the first 5 minutes was. Embrace the suck.

Keep in mind that this was aimed a Star Trek fans so most of us won't get it.

This is the second time you have suggest you're not a Trek fan. I find it strange that a non-fan would download and watch this immediately on realise, shortly after years posting on a Trek message board.

Well, I had a look at it. I think its the best of the fan films so far. Tne acting, while not that good, is certainly an improvement on most of what's out and, by God, they actually found someone who could sound mix.

That said, it's trying to pull an Abrams and distance itself from past Trek, and that's where it fails. It's just basically a load of action. No real social commentary, moral dilemma or exploration of humanity. No boldly going. It was marketed as being "not your father's Star Trek". Yeah, you got that right. Doesn't even resemble it.

As for the plot, can someone explain it to me? Why is Section 31 now the good guys? The whole point of Section 31 in DS9 was to explore the morality of organisations that existed outside of the law and whether or not they were needed. Sloan was more of a villain than a hero and Section 31 existed in very much a grey area. Now, in this we have Tuvok as head of S 31 and he and Chekov conspiring to act outside the rules. It was portrayed as a given that it was morally justifiable and this is where the script really let itself down. In just going for a dark and gritty (*sigh*) actioner it skipped over the sort of moral debate that makes Trek what it is. Instead the audience is told that it is fine this crew are amoral and we should just accept that they are heroes, despite also being criminals. Pah, what a load of nonsense. It's the same "bad guys doing bad shit means we can save the day by whatever means" rhetoric that's been trotted out so often on film and TV in the post 9/11 world. But I ain't buyin' it. At least have the moral debate and not treat it as a given that these guys are heroes. That's where this schlock lets itself down most of all.

A few other minor complaints, such as some of the cheesy lines, the awful Starfleet costumes, and the use of Edward Furlong. They guy couldn't stand still in a scene and is clearly still high as a kite. It was irresponsible to hire him while in such a state.

The film is a valiant effort, but "fan" films really do still have a long, long way to go. Next up Axanar, which, for all it's lovely visuals, also looks to be more war, war, war action with the Trek name slapped on it.

IIRC, when Section 31 was revealed in DS9, most Star Trek fans considered it a natural and common sense thing for the Federation to have.

And don't diss Axanar.

I wonder if all those Trek alumni are doing fan films (for free...) because a. they don't get anything else or b. out of loyalty to the franchise. Probably a bit of both and to keep a foot in the door. I mean, according to imdb, Tim Russ did 10 (!) movies in 2015 alone. Every last one of them is Z class garbage I have never heard of. Or Robert Picardo. Exactly the same thing. Neither of them are bad actors. Or are they and we just didn't see it because they played that one role quite well?

They also tend to flock together. It's quite often you see more than one of them in a given movie.

Must be the Star Trek curse. Hardly any actor who's ever played a larger role in the Franchise has been successful afterwards. The only exception I can think of is Patrick Stewart.

Proof please.

Why, have you seen it? Why so protective? Oh, yeah...space battles. Well, you'll probably like this schlock as well then....

I don't have a link, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in the annual Star Trek issue of Cinemafantastique for the season where Section 31 was revealed (6th wasn't it).

So by "most fans", you meant "a discussion in a magazine from nearly 20 years ago".

Got it.

It wasn't a discussion IIRC. Just an article. Don't know if you ever read Cinemafantastique but they seemed to have a pretty solid feel for the fans in regards to Star Trek and other science fiction.

So, not even a discussion, but an article by just one person? No, I haven't read the magazine. I used to read Starlog back in the day. But I never took any articles in any magazine to be reflective of fandom's collective opinion.

Star Trek Continues and Axanar are the only fan projects worth a shit and good reminders that Trek, when done properly, can be fantastic.

Of Gods and Men and Renegades are good reminders of just how bad a lot of Trek can be.

I wonder if Dayton truly understands the morality and themes of the shows that he likes or if his autism prevents him from appreciating all but the brightest and loudest parts (space battles).

Perhaps you should point to the original series episodes where the "morality & themes" of the show are outlined?

In "Errand of Mercy", Captain Kirk tells the Organians directly (exact quote) "I'm a soldier".

If so, Media Central isn't the place to speculate on that.

I feel these two points are related. They're probably people who liked shows like 24. Personally I never really went for Roddenberry's idea of an ideal society, and liked the way DS9 addressed and even occasionally made fun of it. I felt that S31 represented a position that crossed the line, though, and was somewhat ironic in hindsight as pretty much the same position that became rather disturbingly the mainstream following 9/11, which was that liberty had to be sacrificed in the name of security, and that evil had to be done by "the good guys" as a matter of course in order to protect our way of life from other evil. Essentially the same mentality that excuses torture in the name of fighting the "war on terror." The thing that made them a good opposing viewpoint rather than the usual caricature it might have been was that they kind of had a point even if they went too far with it.

Perhaps I was a fan until I watched it.

Actually, I'm just trying to encourage more people here to watch Renegades so we can have a livelier thread about it, with more observations on what was good and what didn't work.

For example, the main villains had such thick prosthetics on their face (into Planet of the Apes territory) that their mouth was barely functional, making it look like someone was talking inside a big rubber mask. It also stripped them of any meaningful facial expressions. That isn't easy to pull off on the cheap, and they'd have been much better off with a human or Romulan villain.

So no?

I am 51% certain it's not speculation.

Getting back to Renegades, isn't it a good example of what non-fans see when they watch Star Trek? Some weird sets, weird aliens, stilted dialog, and bad action?

A trailer is probably not the best way to evaluate an episode or movie.

TNG would stuff every time they fired the phasers into each episode trailer to give the impression they had more action in an episode than they did.