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If you’re a major Star Trek fan, then you’ve probably watched every episode of every series including the original as well as all the movies at least once, or have you?

Star Trek – Of Gods and Men

One may realise that’s there’s various amateur Star Trek fan film productions out there which are available to watch totally free on-line, but only one actually features some of the top cast from Star Trek the original series as well as from other series acting alongside some of the most dedicated Star Trek fans to produce what is actually a high quality and well acted feature length production with surprisingly reasonable special effects. I won’t ruin the surprise, but Star Trek fans will most certainly immediately recognise many of the actors. It’s the only fan production of Star Trek that in my opinion has really captured and followed on from the original Star Trek series and it’s never been on television meaning only a small fraction of people will have even heard of it, let alone watched it. The script is also professionally written and won’t disappoint.

If you’re a Star Trek fan, then I recommend you watch Star Trek – Of Gods and Men, it’s so well made that you will probably forget it’s a fan made production at all. If you have a reasonable broadband connection, right click and select high quality when watching as well as full screen. The feature length production is in 3 parts, enjoy!

To watch Star Trek – Of Gods and Men and for more information, please visit the official site at:

http://startrekofgodsandmen.com

Other Star Trek Fan Productions:

Star Trek: Phase II

If you’re a fan of the original series, then have you heard of Star Trek: Phase II? The series attempts to bring back the original series to life with the new voyages of The Starship Enterprise. In fact Star trek: Phase II has created quite a stir amongst many die hard Star Trek fans with already quite a cult following. With an extremely limited shoe-string budget and only some of Star Trek’s most dedicated fans as the unpaid actors, they have done an incredible job to reproduce the original Star Ship Enterprise and crew in this non profit production. This is certainly a true fan production and they have already produced 5 full length episodes at the time of writing with at least 3 more planned. The work to produce just one episode must have been an absolute mammoth task.

Unfortunately, unlike Star Trek – Of Gods and Men, Star Trek: Phase II doesn’t have the luxury of being able to include any of the professional cast from any of the official Star Trek series and it’s at first very difficult to get your head around having totally different actors taking the place of all the original crew on Captain James T. Kirk’s Star Ship Enterprise. The amateur actors try very hard to pretend they’re the original crew in every respect, but to me it just doesn’t work too well although it’s hard to criticize when they’ve achieved so much attempting this almost impossible task. The acting is in my opinion obviously going to be inferior to the original actors on the original series and I was left constantly comparing them, feeling disappointed. My favourite character, Mr Spock is played by more than one actor throughout the series, although neither are anywhere near as good as Leonard Nimoy in the original role and Mr Spock’s logic and the humour around him just hasn’t been reproduced well at all in my opinion, nor is his complex and sometimes humorous relationship with Dr. McCoy. In fact a lot is lacking and the way these actors try to imitate the original crew is in my opinion very artificial. I certainly found it very difficult to take it seriously and to really get into the story which I suppose isn’t too badly written although in my opinion still not a patch on the talents of the various original series writers including Gene Roddenberry himself who obviously also created Star Trek in the first place.

The visual special effects used in Star Trek: Phase II are obviously very cheaply created on a PC and are often somewhat dodgy to watch, although they fit the purpose they’re certainly not fully authentic to the special effects used in the original series. The sound effects and incidental music is very cleverly recreated authentically from the original series throughout which is quite impressive. Most of the original Star Ship Enterprise is amazingly visually reproduced in fine detail throughout, especially the bridge which is probably the most amazing achievement of this fan production. Most of the characters are authentically dressed and made up including the original looking Klingons as from the original series which look nothing like the Klingons seen since Star Trek The Motion Picture in 1979 when Klingons were completely redesigned with the familiar ridges on their foreheads.

Star Trek was often quite sexually controversial for the 1960s in various ways and love it or hate it, Star Trek: Phase II attempts to continue in this tradition in Episode 4: “Blood and Fire”, by featuring a gay kiss scene. The male couple are engaged to be married and this is accepted on board the Enterprise by all it’s crew including Captain Kirk himself in exactly the same way as a straight relationship would also be similarly accepted. The episode certainly promotes gay equality and gay marriage. Obviously it shows that times have changed however since the 1960s original series as a gay relationship, especially a gay kiss scene would have been much too controversial even for Star Trek back then.

To me Star Trek: Phase II just doesn’t cut the mustard although it’s still quite entertaining. It in my opinion remains somewhat weak and non gripping when compared to the genuine article, but like I said earlier, it’s still an incredible achievement for a non-profit fan production and is certainly worth a look if you’re a die hard fan of Star Trek The Original Series. Incidentally, Jeffrey Quinn, who plays Mr Spock in the earlier episodes of the series also plays a part in Star Trek – Of Gods and Men, you might want to watch out for him. In fact Jeffrey Quinn has starred in various Sci-fi fan productions.

Some Star Trek fans may know that the name, “Star Trek: Phase II” was originally going to be the title of a new Star Trek series which was planned to be aired back in 1978, but instead it evolved into Star Trek The Motion Picture. It’s therefore a fitting name for a good quality Star Trek fan production series.

To watch Star Trek: Phase II, the fan production series and for more information, please visit the official site at:

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

Even More Good Quality Fan Star Trek Fan Productions:

There’s many more good quality Star Trek fan made productions which I will soon review here, they all have original settings and story lines unlike Star Trek: Phase II (reviewed above) that reproduces the original Enterprise and crew, so you don’t have the problem of getting your head around having different inferior actors playing existing very well known characters.

In the mean time, PLEASE CLICK HERE for more information on all the fan productions available.

Please watch this space for further updates…

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