Yesterday Tim Brazeal, founder of “Save Enterprise” and Trek United, announced to the fan base at Trek Fans United that the campaign for the continuation of STAR TREK will continue with a coordinated worldwide campaign.
Brazeal revealed that Trek United has teamed up with 15 Fan Film productions from Las Vegas, Nevada USA to Darmstadt Germany and as far away as Australia.
The effort is an attempt by this new alliance of interested parties to flood the offices of Paramount with ‘Fan Film’ mailer postcards, envelopes and leaflets brandishing the slogan, ‘Franchise Fatique? Fans Worldwide Still Support STAR TREK.’
“This campaign,” said Brazeal, “is not in anyway designed to be anti-Paramount, but is in fact pro-fans.”
Developed over a number of months by Trek United – Australia, the Trek United Staff and 15 Fan Film Production groups, the christened ‘Fan Film Mailer Campaign’ will run for 5 weeks beginning yesterday, October 3, 2005. Postcards and mailers are to be sent to Paramount offices worldwide.
“The fan film production groups are an integral component of this campaign,” says Brazeal. “They are true ambassadors of STAR TREK fandom and are keeping the dream alive!”
Over the past several months Trek United has slowly, but wisely, been refocussing their strategies to include the entire STAR TREK fan-base and not just those dedicated to the STAR TREK: Enterprise segment of the franchise. This massive mailer campaign is further evidence of this widening effort.
More information, including mailing addresses and which Fan Film Production Groups are involved can be had at the Trek United Home Page.
Huh? says
Isnt this like sticking a fork in Paramounts eye? Any fan film site that gets involved with this will be in same Paramount crosshairs that have been trained on Trekunited for the past six months. Isnt Trekunited the same site that has a forum full of nasty threats against Les Moonves for canceling Enterprise? Didnt they stage that weak rally in front of Paramount Studios that only got 100 people? Why would anyone get involved with them?
Eric "Renderking" Fisk says
“Why would anyone get involved with them?”
Good question – One I don’t have an answer to. I enjoy the forum because there are some great people with good ideas outside of the campaign and there’s great conversation. Yet some of the campaigns are a bit off the wall and might do little more then alienate the people they want to bring Trek back.
For a long time to come, The Brazeal’s and everyone else at “Camp Trek Die-Hard” [Trek United] are going to have a hard time living down the reputation that was given to them because of some “TU Fundamentalists,” the ones who were cyber-screaming “If you’re not a fan of ENTERPRISE – Then you were never a real Trek Fan.”[SIC]
Many members of TU have done a lot to fracture the fan base, and haven’t done much to repair the damage. Now they want to turn their mission into promoting all franchise fan-films? Not a statement of fact, rather an observation: This could do more to split the fan-base and alienate the aforementioned Fan-Film makers by bringing on unwanted attention from Paramount. Before they were just under-the-radar, now TU wants to bring these groups to the forefront to prove “Franchise Fatigue” is a myth? There are a few people here and there who are making “New Episodes,” and a few thousand people (I’m guessing that’s on the high side) who are watching them, but that doesn’t translate to millions of viewers who could sustain a new commercial venture or the rational to revive a failed one.
Already there are some people who are posting on some of the other Trek Forums (The Official Star Trek Forum, for example) that this is just a way for TU to put their fingers in other people’s pies… that this isn’t about helping to promote other fan films but instead to be a hub for which THEY (Those at Trek United) become the focus. Unfair criticism and pure cynicism, perhaps, but an observation made by some none the less.
Again: As to this being “like sticking a fork in Paramounts eye…” What’s the worst that can happen? Paramount seeing these groups doing fund raisers so they can make more trek of their own? As I already wrote – That’s going to bring a lot of negative attention to these groups and I wouldn’t be surprised if TPTP at Paramount tried to shut some of them down for Copyright infringement.
The logic that “Paramount won’t dare shut these fan films down, it would be a PR nightmare” is flawed because Trek United already perpetuates the thought that Moonves and Company are “Evil” and worked hard to bury “ENTERPRISE” before they canceled it. Using that logic, what’s to keep Paramount from shutting down the fan films when they already demonstrated they don’t care what the fans think or how popular Trek is?
Electricbolt says
I’ll have to admit that I was one of those early members of SE (pre-TrekUnited) and I was happy to be a part of that community. It was great to see support for Enterprise when it was on the air, but I think its gone too far now. Lately, it seems that this “campaign” of theirs is just an obsession. People are spending too much time on a franchise that won’t be brought back for awhile and trying to get Paramount to listen when they won’t. The Execs at Paramount will bring it back when they feel the time is right and that isn’t now. I can only hope that the people over there will conquer their fears of a world without Trek and do something instead of bothering Paramount.