Star Trek Fan Films

[captainbasil]

May 28, 2016 11:41:25 GMT -5 StarFuryG7 said:

This new episode was released three weeks ago apparently, but I only learned of it just now.

'Star Trek Continues' E06 "Come Not Between the Dragons"





By the way --I just love all the activity here. This place is just buzzing with excitement.

Thanks for posting this. I did not know it was out yet.

[StarFuryG7]

Jun 13, 2016 9:06:49 GMT -5 captainbasil said:

Thanks for posting this. I did not know it was out yet.

Don't get your hopes up too high. I touched on it briefly in the Weekly Discussion Thread over in the Trek forum on Reddit, but suffice it to say I found it to be a disappointment. Beyond that I won't say anything until after you've seen it for yourself.

[captainbasil]

I appreciate that. I will check over on reddit. I was let down by The White Iris so I am curious about this one. I plan to wach it today.

[captainbasil]

Thanks for warning me. I thought this episode was kind of lame. I liked seeing Gigi Edgely but the story was dull.

[CRAMBAM]

Really? I actually thought it was pretty awesome. Captured my attention and the spirit of TOS--even the acting was decent, which is rare in fan films.

Too bad Paramount's new guidelines pretty much kill fan films.

[StarFuryG7]

It was Star Trek for grade schoolers if anything, and pre-fourth grade at that.

What are you thinking of it in conjunction to ..."The Squire of Gothos"? Even that episode was far more mature than "Come Not Between the Dragons."

If you're intent on arguing that it's a Star Trek story, then perhaps TAS at best.

Don't get me wrong --the work on the technical side wasn't bad. The creature, despite clearly being a man in a suit, was fairly well done, and it's penetration of the ship early on was decently impressive. It wouldn't have been as easy or practical to shoot back in the 1960s, and the optical effects would have been quite costly.

However, the story was simple, basic and very childish. Even Kirk trying to communicate with the Companion in "Metamorphosis" wasn't that silly. It had a mature basis.

I just couldn't deal with it, and they brush off the damage done to the ship by the kid creature at the beginning as though it was no big deal even though people could have died. You would think Kirk would have expressed more concern about that than he did, and we get this quiffy ending with him preaching to this alien being as though that creature would give the slightest shit.

Not very good at all in my view.

[captainbasil]

Definitely Continues weakest effort.

[StarFuryG7]

Apr 28, 2012 16:39:25 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

Well, I guess I ticked some people off, but I am right about it really being Cawley's hair:

=========================
As has been said, James dyes his sandy-blond hair black for his Elvis gig. If he's shooting one of our episodes around the time he's doing some Elvis performances (which is, well, almost always), he ends up keeping his hair black for the role of Kirk, too. Fortunately, no one really cares all that much.

James doesn't wear wigs; the hair you see in all our episodes is his own natural hair. (If he did wear a wig, he'd just get a Kirk wig and wear it instead of wearing his Elvis wig for when he plays Kirk. Why would anyone intentionally wear an Elvis wig for Kirk?)

I honestly cannot believe this exchange was from over a decade ago. I really can't.

Nevertheless, be that as it may, I went to see Shatner with a friend in Ticonderoga this past weekend. I'm more convinced than ever that Cawley wears a wig. In fact, I hadn't even given it any thought at all while there until my friend brought it up. No, not our previous conversation here, which he didn't know about, but he brought up Cawley's wig in conjunction with Shatner supposedly wearing one also. After he mentioned it, which was well into the day's events, I made it a point to take a better look when I got the chance. I saw James several times at the event, a few times very closely. I can give a breakdown of those situations, but when he walked past me outside the makeshift museum, I immediately drew the conclusion that my friend John was correct, and he was very sure it was a wig. When he passed me, only a few feet away, it definitely looked like a wig.

Now, why would he wear one, especially when not performing as Elvis? I have no idea. Like me, perhaps he's follicly challenged. That's the only thing I can think of, and maybe, given that he travels the country as an Elvis impersonator, it strikes me as at least feasible that he wouldn't want his image and reputation affected if pictures suddenly started floating around of him with no hair.

It's not really my business anyway, and I don't care. It just strikes me as a little strange.

He seems like an okay guy though, so whatever.

[CRAMBAM]

You should have tried to take the wig off. If it came off, you could have been like Frank Drebin and said, "I knew it."

[StarFuryG7]

That would have been incredibly rude.

I have a few pictures, but nothing that great. I didn't take any pictures of Shatner, although perhaps I should have.

I did walk away with an autographed picture of me and him on the bridge set though. So at least I got that one. My friend did as well, but they pulled a fast one with that on their website.

The bridge was incredibly small and didn't look anything like the size of what we saw in the original series even though Cawley claims (I was told) it was built to scale of the original blueprints.

Hard to believe if you were to see it in person.

[CRAMBAM]

That's interesting, but things on TV always look bigger than the actual sets. So you must have got a picture with Shatner as part of the package.

[StarFuryG7]

Jul 12, 2023 16:52:57 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

That's interesting, but things on TV always look bigger than the actual sets. So you must have got a picture with Shatner as part of the package.

I got a picture on the bridge with him, which he later autographed. You stand behind him between the turbolift and communications station as he's seated in the captain's chair. It was a bit costly, and I don't know whether they pulled an intentional bait-and-switch, or if it was a genuine unintentional accident, but their ad for the event on their website indicated the cost for the picture and the autograph were $160. Then, once you got there, that particular page had been taken down from the website, and they hit you up for $160 for the picture only, and then told you it would be an additional $120 for the autograph. The woman was nasty, and she said to me and my friend, "Here's the owner (meaning Cawley) now, so take it up with him." He was literally two feet in front of me at that point, and it was very clear by the expression on his face that he didn't care to be bothered with it. John and I could have been real bastards and made a big issue of it, but no one else was complaining about it, at least that I saw, and trust me when I tell you, Cawley disappeared quickly once that happened. The guy was tired, he made that clear more than once while on stage right before Shatner came out to speak to the audience. So my friend and I just paid the extra $120 each, got our autographs, and then moved on.

The way the event was managed was very poor in my opinion. We didn't even stay for the tour at the museum after we left the school where the stage and pictures and autograph session were held because the line was long and they were only taking ten or fifteen people in every fifteen minutes, so we would have been waiting in the hot sun for hours to take a brief tour of a small complex.

All-in-all, because of the way things went, I told my friend I likely wouldn't be going back for any future events.

What would you have done?

[CRAMBAM]

Well, a long time ago, I went to my first and only Shatner appearance and I got an autograph picture with him. Would have loved a real picture but that wasn't offered at the time. So for me, I would have just paid for the picture and not the autograph.

[Mel]

I used to go to Trek conventions in CA and NY. I lived in CA and my friend who loved Trek moved to NY. We would go to the conventions together in both states. A lot of airfare was involved, so I don't think we cared that much about autograph fees.

Still, I remember that I once stood in line for a photo of William Shatner who was autographing the photos. I don't remember what it cost. I do remember that my friend thought it was too expensive, and, the line was annoyingly long. She was patient, and I was glad to get it, back then. I have no idea where it is anymore.

I would love to see the Star Trek set in person. Hard to image that it's small.

[CRAMBAM]

You'd be surprised how small some sets are. If you've ever been to a talk show, it looks a lot bigger on TV. I would imagine the same with the Enterprise bridge.

[StarFuryG7]

Jul 22, 2023 20:50:46 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

Well, a long time ago, I went to my first and only Shatner appearance and I got an autograph picture with him. Would have loved a real picture but that wasn't offered at the time. So for me, I would have just paid for the picture and not the autograph.

Strange that I didn't see this post from you last week and am only stumbling upon it now.

At any rate, Shatner is 92, bro. It was either get his autograph now, or, in all probability, never get one given his advanced age. And I know what you're saying. I've been to plenty of Conventions where Shatner appeared, and could have gotten his autograph long before now, but didn't for the same reason you would have taken the photo only and moved on without the autograph.

Look, I saw Nichelle Nichols the year before Covid-19 hit. I took a picture with her at NYCC the year before the pandemic struck, and I paid for an autograph separately as well. Shatner sure doesn't need the money, and I don't even know why he does these kinds of appearances anymore. I doubt it's for and because of the money. I think he does it to keep himself going. I've been a fan of his, and Trek, for pretty much my entire life, since I was a boy, almost as far back as I can remember. At my age now, and I'm older than you by about five years, that's a pretty damn long haul, let me tell you. So I really had no qualms about paying for a picture and an autograph with Nichelle. She's been a part of that lifetime of reflection too that I have to look back on now, and even though I'm fairly confident that she was in relatively okay shape financially when I last saw her, she wasn't anywhere near as well off as Shatner. Was it really going to kill me to give her and her son, who was acting as her manager, eighty bucks for a picture and an additional sixty bucks for her autograph, after the better part of a lifetime of fond memories watching her in the TV show and the later Trek movies she appeared in? No, of course not. And it was the least I could do.

And I don't blame Shatner for what happened in Ticonderoga. I have no reason to think it had anything to do with him and every reason to believe it was due to poor management on the part of Cawley's team. And the way they pay for it is my not returning there again. I can live with that.

You have to pick your battles in this life, and some of them just aren't worth the bother. For me, that situation was one of them.

[Mel]

Jul 28, 2023 14:22:13 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

You'd be surprised how small some sets are. If you've ever been to a talk show, it looks a lot bigger on TV. I would imagine the same with the Enterprise bridge.

Yes, I saw lots of talk shows, and actual TV show episodes, being filmed. We lived near Hollywood and all the out of state relatives always wanted to go to Hollywood and Disneyland. Had to imagine one could get tired of DL but I did. All those lines, and the heat!