Since I am all done with the Canon Star Trek films and TV series, with the exception of the animated series which I am slowly watching), I decided to venture out into the expanded universe of books and fan made productions. Since Star Trek Renegades has not been released yet, I though I would go through the back catalog of videos based, and some audio based, fan fiction. These are os moved brief reviews:

Of Gods and Men

This is actually a film that is free on YouTube, as well as on DVD I think, that features a lot of the original cast. It takes place after Star Trek Generations where some maniac (don't really remember the character's name) gets God-like powers which spins off, yet another, mirror universe. Most of the original cast is there, with the exception of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, in addition to the person who captained the enterprise in generations - you know, the one where most critical systems would be installed on Tuesday, yet they wanted to take her out for a spin early. Talk about bad planning. The film ws actually not that bad. Aesthetically it reminded me of a mix between classic TV TOS and the original movies. Since I was going in thinking that this would be a TV TOS intern s of visuals, the experience wasn't at all disappointing. If they can do such a good job with this, I am really curious to see what they do with Renegades. The only plot point that's a little weird is the NCC 1701-M, or the "museum" version of the original enterprise. Why go through the trouble of creating and entire original constellation class ship to be in a museum? Seems like a waste of resources to me.

Hidden Frontier (seasons 1 & 2)

I am still watching this one since there are seven seasons of it. Each season of this series consists of 30-minute streaming or downloaded episodes (QuickTime files). The creators caution you to start watching from season 6 because by that time they got things down, but is ended up going with season 1 first in order to get the story from the start. I think that this fan production has potential, and maybe something that can beer made now that there technology is better. Most episodes suffer from some pretty bad green screen artifacts and pixelation. If this were fixed the visual experience would be better. The dialogue and plot aren't bad. The main antagonist are the "gray." They seem to be flag ships that are like space versions of jelly fish, and they want to take over the universe. Nothing we haven't seen before with the Borg, species 8472 and the dominion ;-). The acting these first two seasons is pretty bad. It seems that there are missed queues, awkward pauses, and some characters seem to either be reading from a script (lack of voice inflection), or they seem to over do it. It reminded me a little of wormhole x-treme, the stargate SG-1 fake TV series: "it's what I do...it's what I DO,... it's what I do DO" heh. The other funny thing in this series is that in addition to the Star Trek sound effects that they use (a mix of classic and post TNG), they use the theme to Stargate SG1 and sound effects from Star Wars (pew! Pew!). Cognitive dissonance:) In all fairness I was warned about this on the website, but it wanted to see how bad it really was. I hope it gets better as the seasons progress.

Star Trek: Intrepid

Star Trek intrepid was the first fan made series I started watching. It doesn't have many episodes and the episodes vary in length. One of them has Picard working secretly for section 31 as far as I recall. The overall production seems better than Hidden Frontiers. The plot revolves around colonization of areas new to the federation and the strained relations between colonists and the federation who protects them. One of the main antagonists seem to be the Orion Syndicate. That said, the series seemed a bit all over the map. Why did the colonists have this strained relationship with starfleet? Why are they colonizing? What happens in the end? I think the fact that episodes are of varied lengths contributes to the sense of non complete story. The acting wasn't bad, and the visuals were good for a fan production. It was also nice to see actors with accents oth than standard American in the cast. All things considered, a mixed bag, but I wish there were more

Star Trek: Federation One

This series is by the hidden frontier people. The first season is video and consisted of two episodes. The second season is all audio. The premise is pretty interesting: it deals with the president of the Federation and it tries to solve the assassination of the previous president while dealing with mundane issues such as Education Reform. The visuals are much better than the first two seasons of hidden frontiers that I saw. Between the two seasons my preferred season was the visual one. The audio-only season was written and recorded too much like it was meant to be visually produced. As such, it really left a lot to be desired since the acting was a little over the top, maybe to compensate for the lack of visuals, and the audio was not descriptive enough to help the listener visualize what's going on. The fact that the story kept jumping around didn't help either.

Star Trek: Diplomatic Relations

Diplomatic relations was an audio-only series, and unlike Federation one, it seemed better geared toward the audio medium. The background music helped set the tone of the series, the acting was much more subtle and enjoyable, and the story made much more sense in the audio narrative. The background, as one may surmise form the title, is all about diplomats. This is not something you see often in Trek so it as a welcomed change. I really wish they had more of them!

U.S.S. Angeles

It seems that this is the series that started it all back in 1999. You can see son Hidden Frontier people in in is series, and you can see some emerging characters and story lines. Just like the first few seasons of Hidden Frontiers, the visuals are not that great, and the acting isn't all there, but it's people into Trek having fun doing what they do, so it wasn't that bad if you had it on in a small windows while doing other things. I would give this series a pass if you had to devote your entire attention to it.

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