What is up with fandom?

The Internet has become the single greatest and the single worst invention humanity has ever crapped out. Ever. On the one hand, it is a conglomeration of the totality of human knowledge and a place for humans to act social, even if actually being social scares the poop out of them. On the other hand, it’s given nearly everyone on the planet a voice that can be heard by nearly everyone else on the planet. No, this isn’t some pro-censorship article. What I’m driving at is that the whole situation is simple metaphorical audio physics. When you get one voice by itself, that voice doesn’t have to be very loud in order to be heard, but when you get billions, suddenly all of the voices have to be louder in order to be heard above all of the other voices, which in turn increase in volume, which in turn causes the original voice to increase in volume, and I’m pretty sure you can see where this is headed. To compensate, and by natural design, we homosapiens tend to congregate with those others who share similar interests and beliefs as our own. This cuts down the amount of noise that we have to be exposed to in order to find Internet voices that are saying things that we find interesting, or entertaining. It’s not a perfect system, but it does work, most of the time.

Where am I really headed with this? Well, as a huge Trekkie,I tend to listen to other Trekkie Internet voices when I’m online and recently, my Internet has been blowing up over an event that’s been more polarizing than that time that Paramount announced that the next Star Trek show was going to be a prequel to the Original Series. In case you haven’t been following the event, I will recap. I do want to point out that I will try to remain as neutral as I possibly can here as the events that I’m about to share are not designed to be the sole direct focus of my thoughts. Now, a few years back, I think it was in 2013, I caught wind of a Star Trek fan film that was seeking funding via crowd sourcing called Star Trek: Axanar.  According to the pitch on Kickstarter, it was meant to take place several years before TOS started and focus on the exploits of Garth of Izar, a very minor character from TOS that only shows up once. They did their initial crowdfunding campaign successfully, made a promotional short to give people a feel for the quality they were going for and everyone was pretty happy by the end of it all.

Fast forward to December of 2015. Axanar dropped the Star Trek monicker at the behest of CBS and Paramount, but that month, they both decided to lay a lawsuit against the group making the film. This is the initial event that set off a firestorm of epic proportions within the Star Trek fandom. I don’t wish to imply that there hadn’t been some brushfires previous to this, but this single event caused the sleeping volcano of animosity to erupt in a way that no one thought possible. Suddenly, there were producers of fan shows making rude and snide comments about the crew of Axanar. Said Axanar crew tried to remain civil for a time, but then certain ‘official’ Trek news sites started playing an agenda against the production. Fans were equally divided. Some were very much pro-Axanar and some very much against. And because of our wondrous Internet, thousands upon thousands of people were speaking up to contribute their opinion. Things got very messy very quickly.
Now there are a lot of minute aspects of the
lawsuit debacle that I could delve into, but they’re pretty trivial at this juncture and doing so is not the main purpose of this article. The last pertinent piece of information that needs to be discussed in order for us to finally move on is that just last week, JJ Abrams announced to the public that CBS and Paramount had agreed to seek a settlement with the producers of Axanar and that as part of that settlement, a list of officially endorsed fan film guidelines would be drawn up and published for the world to see. This should have been a moment of great rejoicing for Trekkies the world over, and indeed there was a lot of rejoicing. I myself let out a sigh of relief, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. In the few days following that announcement, certain producers of other Star Trek related fan productions started speaking their minds about the impending settlement situation. One in particular expressed that it was folly on the parts of CBS and Paramount to simply give up on the lawsuit and that the crew of Axanar got off far too easily. The same individual implied that the failure of one of his own projects was due to the lawsuit, which it was indirectly, and then tried to lay some blame at the feet of the fans over his non-Trek project failing to reach it’s funding goal, citing a lack of fan support as one of the primary reasons for the failure.

What does all this have to do with my point? I know I’ve taken a roundabout path getting to said point, but there is a reason. See, this entire fiasco has brought lo light just how fractured Trek fandom has become over the years. I should know, I’ve taken a bad attitude towards certain productions that I have found fault with in the past, but it’s gotten especially bad since there haven’t been any more shows on TV, but the question is, should it really be this fractured? Sure, there are going to be versions of Star Trek released that aren’t going to be entertaining to so some fans and that will be very much so for others. It’s the nature of entertainment, everything is constantly trying to evolve in order to stay fresh. How does the lawsuit play into this? Well, once the final iteration of Star Trek was cancelled, Enterprise, fans no longer had that weekly fix to look forward. That’s where these fan productions stepped in to fill a gap. They made episodes and full-length movies as labors of love to give the fans something to satiate their cravings for new Star Trek stories. I’m not personally associated with any of the individuals involved in a lot of these recent incidents, but I’m sure at their core, their only real desire is to make good and entertaining Trek, and to pay homage in their own way to the show(s) that sparked their own imagination and that got their creative side fired up in the first place.

My point is, shouldn’t that be the attitude of all Trekkies? Call it a little naive, but at the end of the day, shouldn’t we support, at least in attitude, those who have dared to gamble making a product that brings most of us joy and entertainment? Sure there are going to be some fan productions that we don’t enjoy for one reason, or another, but that’s the nature of the entertainment business. There are a lot of fan productions being made and as fans shop around, they’re able to find those ones that they enjoy. The fan film model is an extremely stressful and uncertain one, and I believe that we should appreciate the efforts of those trying to enrich our lives through their efforts, not tear them down. The Trek fandom needs solidarity, especially in these critical times as CBS and Paramount seek to figure out exactly how to allow fans to wield this unique creative outlet. I’m not saying that this change in attitude will, or even can happen overnight, but I think it’s something that Trekkies need to work toward. If Trekkies present a united front of fandom, then the powers that control that beloved property are more likely to listen to what they have to say. So next time you might find yourself in a discussion about Trek fan films, especially with me, try to keep in mind that we’re all just imperfect beings trying to make it in an imperfect world, and at least pay respect to those who are attempting, in their own way, to make that world a little better for others.