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Star Trek Renegades
In the post-Voyager era, a new threat looms over the Federation. Admiral Chekov and Head of Section 31 Tuvok decide to take matters into their own hands, charging a ship full of misfit operatives to keep Starfleet’s hands clean by getting theirs dirty.
This was funded via Kickstarter and is intended to be a pilot episode that the folks behind it hope will get turned into a series. I’ll try to judge it accordingly.
Let’s start with the good stuff: The space battles are great—better than the majority of TV battles—and the special effects are generally really nice. (And the places where they hide them to save money are generally pretty subtle.) The makeup artist did a great job, especially given the number of aliens that appear. The diversity of the cast is quite good, especially regarding gender politics—it looks like more than half of the ongoing central cast would be female, and the ship’s “smart guy” is a heavyset, middle-aged woman.
But then we hit the big problem: The script was terrible.
Not that the concept was bad, mind you. Granted, people keep writing Star Trek as if it was Star Wars, where the solution to problems is to have an awesome fight scene rather than think or talk it out; but that’s not the real issue. Similarly, the cast is full of special snowflakes with dark secrets (Kahn’s granddaughter, an ex-Borg, a Pah-wraith worshipping Bajoran, a mysterious shapeshifter, Lewis Zimmerman’s girlfriend, a Betazoid who can’t read minds but can control limbs, an Andorian dominatrix hacker, etc etc) but Peter David made that work just fine in New Frontier. And the science is terrible, but we’re all used to that. No, the problem is just that the dialogue is crappy and the character introductions are all shoehorned in awkwardly. Some of the actors are better than others, but they really didn’t have a lot to work with in any case. (Admittedly, also, the earlier Trek series had some REALLY good actors involved. It’s a tough act to follow.)
Special note should be made of the sub-plot with Chekov’s great-great-granddaughter, which doesn’t really have much to do with the rest of the episode and could be easily dropped. And the actress playing her, Crystal Conway, is one of the weakest in the cast. This is all explained, though, when you notice that Sky Conway is the producer and co-writer. (The girl’s roommate also appears in two scenes, in what I first was convinced was a backer reward walk-on or something. By her second appearance, I was convinced she was either going to be revealed as a spy or that she and Cadet Chekov were boinking. Turns out no, she was just ignored after that. She was played by Madison Russ—who I’m 90% certain is Tim Russ/Tuvok’s daughter.)
Overall: It’s not great, but a diehard Trek fan (hi!) will treat it kindly and in a lot of ways it’s still better than the new movies. I’m pretty sure this was just a one-off thing and we’re not going to see it get picked up. On one hand that’s disappointing because I’d love to see a new Trek series on the air. On the other hand, if it did get picked up, I fear for what network execs would manage to turn it into.
This was funded via Kickstarter and is intended to be a pilot episode that the folks behind it hope will get turned into a series. I’ll try to judge it accordingly.
Let’s start with the good stuff: The space battles are great—better than the majority of TV battles—and the special effects are generally really nice. (And the places where they hide them to save money are generally pretty subtle.) The makeup artist did a great job, especially given the number of aliens that appear. The diversity of the cast is quite good, especially regarding gender politics—it looks like more than half of the ongoing central cast would be female, and the ship’s “smart guy” is a heavyset, middle-aged woman.
But then we hit the big problem: The script was terrible.
Not that the concept was bad, mind you. Granted, people keep writing Star Trek as if it was Star Wars, where the solution to problems is to have an awesome fight scene rather than think or talk it out; but that’s not the real issue. Similarly, the cast is full of special snowflakes with dark secrets (Kahn’s granddaughter, an ex-Borg, a Pah-wraith worshipping Bajoran, a mysterious shapeshifter, Lewis Zimmerman’s girlfriend, a Betazoid who can’t read minds but can control limbs, an Andorian dominatrix hacker, etc etc) but Peter David made that work just fine in New Frontier. And the science is terrible, but we’re all used to that. No, the problem is just that the dialogue is crappy and the character introductions are all shoehorned in awkwardly. Some of the actors are better than others, but they really didn’t have a lot to work with in any case. (Admittedly, also, the earlier Trek series had some REALLY good actors involved. It’s a tough act to follow.)
Special note should be made of the sub-plot with Chekov’s great-great-granddaughter, which doesn’t really have much to do with the rest of the episode and could be easily dropped. And the actress playing her, Crystal Conway, is one of the weakest in the cast. This is all explained, though, when you notice that Sky Conway is the producer and co-writer. (The girl’s roommate also appears in two scenes, in what I first was convinced was a backer reward walk-on or something. By her second appearance, I was convinced she was either going to be revealed as a spy or that she and Cadet Chekov were boinking. Turns out no, she was just ignored after that. She was played by Madison Russ—who I’m 90% certain is Tim Russ/Tuvok’s daughter.)
Overall: It’s not great, but a diehard Trek fan (hi!) will treat it kindly and in a lot of ways it’s still better than the new movies. I’m pretty sure this was just a one-off thing and we’re not going to see it get picked up. On one hand that’s disappointing because I’d love to see a new Trek series on the air. On the other hand, if it did get picked up, I fear for what network execs would manage to turn it into.