Avalon Universe: Ghost Ship

Watched in isolation, this is a TOS-era Star Trek fan film that is also a horror film spoof. But it is also the first in a family of interrelated films, the next one being Avalon Universe: Avalon Lost (2019).

The main protagonists are a trio of Starfleet officers currently stationed at Starbase 6.

Derek Mason is a typical Starfleet Captain of the TOS era, though not quite as extreme as Kirk or Pike.

Amanda Beck is a Starfleet scientist who values exploration and adventure more than her career. She and Mason are friends from their time at Starfleet Academy.

Jamie Archer is an engineer and a descendant of Captain Jonathan Archer of the first Enterprise. She is new to Starbase 6. I guess Victoria Archer was predestined for the role due to her surname, but she would probably have been more convincing as a security officer.

The three are sent on a three-man mission to salvage the heavy cruiser USS Excalibur (NCC-1705), which is drifting in space with its dead crew due to the events of The Ultimate Computer (1968). The three soon realize that there is a serious complication.

As of early 2022, Joshua Irwin and his team have produced 7 interrelated unlicensed Star Trek short films with a total running time of 2½ hours. They do not form a series in the usual sense of the word as that is not allowed by the restrictive Star Trek fan film guidelines. However, the films are tied together by mostly revolving around the fate of the Excalibur and its ever changing, though sometimes returning, crew members. This format makes it possible to give depth to the characters and the plots despite the runtime constraints, and to react flexibly to what actors are available for any given project. The films are best viewed in the order of publication.

In Star Trek, everything that can happen does happen in one of the many parallel universes that make up the multiverse. Regular Star Trek takes place in the Prime Universe, with occasional visits to and from the Mirror Universe. Only the Star Trek films since स्टार ट्रेक (2009) take place in the Kelvin Timeline (or Kelvin Universe), which branched off the Prime Universe as a result of time travel. The family of films to which the present one belongs takes place in yet another universe, the Avalon Universe. As was the case for the Kelvin Timeline, the main purpose of the new timeline is as an excuse to modify things like historical facts and aesthetics, while still staying close to the familiar Star Trek canon.

The Avalon Universe films are done very competently overall, although some elements make them clearly recognisable as fan films. The pacing is generally a bit slower, and action scenes are not dwelled on in the same way as in professional films. Also for obvious reasons the acting is often not to best professional standards, though still reasonable. Unfortunately the plots are also a bit convoluted, but that problem is not restricted to fan films. (Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery (2017) is so strongly affected by this, that I stopped watching at the beginning of that season and turned to fan films instead.)

On the plus side, the films have an optimistic, relatively bright, fresh aesthetic that reminds me of The Orville (2017); this includes a beautiful new style of Starfleet uniforms worn by the main protagonists. Perhaps more important is the fact that the ethics and tone of the films seem to be in complete accordance with the ideals of Gene Roddenberry, depicting the vision of a mostly harmonious future society rather than persisting factionalism as in Discovery. For me these factors outweigh the deficits. When I watch these films, I feel at home in the same way that I did in TOS and that I now do in The Orville.