Star Trek: Of Gods and Men

This Star Trek movie is the best fan produced Star Trek feature that I have seen. Others have lacked such great acting and screen writing. This picture has a marvelous script and a truly exciting plot. It brings back lot's of memories of the original show. The movie may lack sophisticated CGI but, instead of being a downside, it actually adds a certain flavor to this movie. I found this very refreshing and actually pretty cool.

I especially liked the performance of Nichelle Nichols, which brought enormous depth to the Star Trek adventure. Also Walter Koenig's performance was superb! A nice treat was also the appearance of Tuvor as played by Tim Russ, who is also a very good director. He can really play the good and bad guy at once. The story of family and the idea of interracial marriage was what made Star Trek so unique in the first place. This is a great tribute to the creator of the Star Trek universe Gene Roddenberry.

A significant part of the Star Trek phenomenon is "fan fiction." The movie Star Trek of Gods and Men, jumps the fan fic phenomenon up a few notches from the more common zines or home movies. In addition to high quality sets and effects, the movie includes various people who have worked on the multiple Trek series, most notably Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and Walter Koenig (Chekov) both from classic Trek.

Seeing this movie I was again inspired to wonder again why the recent theatre release movie didn't opt for a Star Trek movie with original Star Trek actors, instead of the 'tribute band' movie they went for.

During the production of the original series, Nichelle Nichols almost left Star Trek as it seemed that every time a scene needed to be cut from a script, to keep the episode from going over time, that it was a scene of Uhura that was cut. I expect that she was quite happy to be a part of Of Gods and Men, which features Uhura quite prominently.

Tim Russ similarly seemed happy to appear next to Nichols and Koenig, revising his role as Tuvok, from Star Trek Voyager. Tim Russ directed Of Gods and Men as well.

Numerous other actors from the various Trek series appear in this movies, some as brief cameos, and some with more substantial parts.

The original Trek series lacked the detailed episodic constancy and multi-episode story arcs of later series such as Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of Gods and Men by contrast used the events of the earlier Trek episodes as back ground material, and tied a number of things together from the series. Fans of the minutiae of the Trek series will thus likely get extra enjoyment out of the movie.

I'm surprised that the premise behind this thing never occurred to the producers of any recent Star Trek series. Nevertheless, I'm pleased to see actors from The Original Series, The Movies, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and Enterprise.

I am also pleased to see William Wellman, Jr. take over the character created by Robert Walker, Jr in the Original Series Episode "Charley X" Although the acting is kind of wooden, the story holds up to any DC Fontana standards, although elements of the story are heavily borrowed from episodes of The Original Series and Star Trek: Generations.

Scotty is mentioned as being "Missing" - Which is in continuity with the Next Generation episode "Relics" where Scotty is rescued from a Dyson Sphere. Spock is mentioned as if he is readily available - A nice trick in case Leonard Nimoy decides to make any cameos in parts II or III of this little production.

This story uses elements from the original series stories "Charlie X," "Mirror, Mirror" and "The City on the Edge of Forever" - Including a clever reproduction of the Guardian of Forever.

The set pieces in this thing all look great, but where this fan film staggers is that the special effects all look like Effects from Pre-Windows computer games- The Enterprise "M" starts and stops in the establishing shots of "Synchronous Orbit" - As if the rendering had defects in it.

This is unforgivable since Star Wars episode III used store-bought A.M.D. Opteron computers to do some of post production, and that work was done in some living room right at Skywalker Ranch. So I will accept no excuses about the special effects and CGI shots, I have seen much better work from people who have much less. These are incredibly lousy shots. The computer models are alright, but the movement and rendering is just horrible- I am hoping that the project gains a technician that can re-create the vomitably horrendous outer space and effects shots- And while they are at it, they can work on the colour palette and make it more consistent. Vulcan looks like any East LA Backyard!

Finally, as far as continuity, I accept most of the story like I would accept any Next Generation story, except for the Guardian of Forever would have kept the three principals on the planet instead of ejecting them into the alternate universe.

But even with this huge continuity flaw, the story moves fine, and I can't wait to see the next II episodes.

I like this film a lot more than "The New Voyages" - Which have hardly any redeeming value beyond the costumes and sets that were recreated with great detail: Making Trek is much more than how good the set looks or how well the costumes fit the principals... The trick of Trek is to make the viewer BELIEVE in this future. I believe this story, whereas "The New Voyages" were only good for a belly laugh.

Seeing the trailer, it's obvious that the direction is lacking but other elements could be entertaining. Even as the film is ongoing the special effects isn't up to mainstream features but still enjoyable if you consider that most people couldn't do any better. The acting was good but the bad direction had a toll on it. I thought it deserved 7 by then.

What drew the line is the story: It's bad at best and confusing most of the time. One shouldn't have to connect the dots through any other thing than than the current story. If there's references to anther story, there should be a hint or flashback to it. But most importantly, the story should be a journey for the viewer either in emotions or knowledge (albeit some is only useful in fandom). In this production, it seem various short stories were put together ; some relating to the film progress while others are filling time and would need reference to be more than the most basic of entertainment.

Overall the non-cohesive story blew it. I thought the film deserved 5, maybe 4, but I felt sympathy toward their attempt at the great Star Trek franchise.

I had expected something really bad, with cardboard sets and ridiculous dialogue. You know, like the original Star Trek. The production values were very low, with inferior computer graphics, bad montage, actors that looked like they were volunteers, but the dialogue was not that bad, the story was OK and the people working were clearly enjoying themselves.

So, in fact, this was exactly what I didn't expect: a good movie! I can easily overlook low budget constraints when the story is nice enough and the actors are making the effort.

Bottom line: this is more related to Star Trek the original series than with other Star Trek movies or incarnations and therefore must be seen as a continuation of TOS and not something to rival Next Generation. The plot was not brilliant, but it did the job and was consistent with what one would expect from a Star Trek movie. Overall I was pleasantly surprised and I enjoyed watching it.