USS Angeles: The Price of Duty

The history of this Star Trek fan-film began in 1995 when the USS Angeles Star Trek fan club was established in southern California by trekkers and started recruiting members, some of whom worked in Hollywood and others who didn't.

In 1998, a young member, Rob Caves proposed to club members that they make a Star Trek fan-film. He proposed using some cheap film equipment and video editing software on Amiga computers to make a full length Star Trek film which might possibly be followed by a series of shorter 20-30 minute episodes called Voyages of the USS Angeles. He took a story written by a fellow club member, Jason Muñoz, and wrote a screenplay adaptation with the help of Muñoz, Janice Willcocks the chapter President and her friend Jennifer Cole. Rob and Janice were to be the producers and Rob was to be the director. They then invited fellow trekkers to come over to Rob's parents house to film the movie they called "USS Angeles: The Price of Duty" in front of green screens in his parent's living room. Rob would then use the editing software to composite the actors with backgrounds taken from a "Captain's Chair" CD-ROM that contained set photos. By keeping the camera angle from moving, they effectively had a whole starship set to act in. Some outdoor scenes were also filmed near Los Angeles in the San Gabriel mountains and Vasquez Rocks.

The film is not remarkable for its technical quality. In fact, the film was not even meant originally to be distributed outside of the cast and crew for fear of being sued for copyright infringement by the Star Trek franchise owners, Viacom and Paramount Pictures in those days. It was just to be a home-grown film with a script designed to provide fun for as many chapter members as possible including kids and older people. The sound quality was dubious, and the low-resolution image quality has been frequently criticized for a halo effect often seen around the actors due to the compositing effects. The film was little more than a bunch of Trekkie fans having fun filming a Star Trek film over a number of weekends. Back in 1998, how many fan clubs produced their own 1 hour and 11 minute full-length movie complete with special effects and music all on virtual sets and with almost no-budget except their own pocket money and the use of cheap hand-made or inexpensively bought costumes and props.

Initially only crew and cast members got a DVD or VHS copy of their production. Eventually though, after James Cawley from Star Trek: New Voyages, another Star Trek fan produced series released online, was given a list of conditions from Paramount to govern fan-based works based on the copyrighted Star Trek franchise in 2003, clarity about what could or could not be done made the situation for fan-based Star Trek production clearer. In 2012 the USS Angeles: The Price of Duty film's DVD was remastered and released free-of-charge online for the first time.

What is remarkable is that it was the first complete full-length Star Trek fan-film to be made and it gave rise not only to a series of episodes but also gave rise to another independent effort by Rob Caves called the Star Trek: Hidden Frontiers which produced an amazing 50 episodes released online for free and which also gave rise to another three to five series of Star Trek fan films. This is why this film is referred to as the Star Trek fan film that started it all.

What was important to these early fan film productions was just for trekkers to have fun and at the same time avoid trampling on the toes of Paramount and the Star Trek franchise copyright owner's business. Everything was on a non-profit free to distribute basis. That all came to a head in 2016 when Paramount sued another "fan-group" called Axanar Productions for among other things selling merchandise for their Star Trek based "fan-made" $1 million Kickstarted crowd-funded high quality full-length movie production. Newly published restrictions limited fan films to 15 minutes and no more than two episodes to the story to be at most 30 minutes in length. Funding was to be limited and no professional actors or crew, especially those who had ever worked for a commercial Star Trek franchise production, were to be allowed to contribute to fan films. It is unlikely under the present conditions for another full-length fan-made Star Trek film ever to see the light of day.

I was impressed with an AI upscale of this show, The CGI animation was much better than I had seen previously but unfortunately there was problems with syncing the green screen during the scenes on-ship.

There are some things that are pretty good in this, there are other things that are rather cheesy. But when you realize that this was a show made entirely by fans, some of them did fairly well. Some of them were funny, some of them just kind of barely were able to play their parts.

But where this is good, it is very good.

There is one scene involving a shape shifter and the captain of a ship called the Orion, which I believe is played by Director of this fan film, which is rather alarming but also very funny at the same time.

There are little chasers between the Jem Ha'dar and a Starfleet runabout in some very convincing looking astroids. Also a couple of full-scale space battle involving triple-nacelle Galaxy class ships.

There is even a federation bar which has Klingons working in it, and also one of those guys from "let that be your last battlefield" from TOS.

So they have their Star Trek continuity intact. The funniest thing are the representations of aliens like Zencathy and Jem Ha'dar soldiers and cardassians. It's like they all used the same 3-D printed masks, although they didn't have 3-D printing back then.

The thing that is amazing is the quality of the CGI performed with lightwave software. It is just as good as the CGI from shows that were on television at the time.

They have the AI upscale version of this on YouTube right now, it turned out rather well except for that problem with the green screen.

Some other Reviewer was talking about the problems that arose during the production of "Star Trek Axenar".

Although it is true that CBS has insisted on some new restrictions, some new fan productions have decided to ignore them. Case in point: "Star Trek Continues" which was started before the Axenar debacle, and continued production well beyond the new guidelines incident, providing about 12 full-length episodes of 50 minutes each, even including professional acting talent: for example the original actor who played Apollo in "Who mourns for Adonis?", as well as both Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis as well as other actors that have been in Star Trek, including the daughter of the woman who played the Romulan commander in the enterprise incident. And Gigi Edgley from Farscape and Rekha Sharma from BSG and Discovery. And, the guy who was the pilot of the Riconante in "The Expanse".

And although other shows, like "Star Trek Renegades" unfortunately opted to drop the Star Trek references from their show, other shows have not, and most of the fan films that I have seen recently have kind of ignored the guidelines set by CBS. Most of these fan films are available in totality on YouTube.