Since the new Star Trek feature film that comes out this week is arguably a mega-budget fan film, Fan Cinema Today turned to longtime Trek author Glenn Greenberg (at right) to review it.

This marks the first time FCT has had a guest blogger, and boy, we couldn’t ask for someone more qualified when it comes to all matters Trek-related. Greenberg wrote Marvel Comics’ celebrated, five-issue Star Trek: Untold Voyages limited series, which covered the second five-year mission of the USS Enterprise, and also scribed a pair of e-books—The Art of the Deal and its sequel, The Art of the Comeback—for Simon and Schuster’s Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers series. Take it away, Glenn:

SEE THE REVIEW AFTER THE JUMP

This may well be the most challenging movie review I’ve ever written, because I have so much to say about this movie, but I can’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t seen it yet (which, as of this writing, means just about everybody).

I’ll say right off the bat: I give Star Trek a thumbs-up, but with a few reservations.

I totally get what J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are trying to do here, and I support it. Without giving too much away, they’re trying to restart the Star Trek franchise by going back and focusing on the iconic, beloved, original characters who put Star Trek on the cultural map in the first place. And they want to do it without being locked in to what was established so definitively in the 79 episodes of The Original Series (TOS), six movies, and even in the spin-off TV shows The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine (DS9), Voyager (VOY), and Enterprise (ENT).

It makes sense to go back to the original crew. With the TNG crew played out after 2002′s execrable Star Trek: Nemesis and none of the other spin-off shows warranting a promotion to the big screen, Abrams and company really had only two choices: create an entirely new crew and concept and risk audience apathy, or go back to the familiar but put a whole new coat of paint on it. Let’s face it: it was not that difficult a choice to make. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov are still the best-known characters of the franchise. It’s been many years since anything significant has been done with them on screen. And it would be very difficult to pass up the chance to tackle these classic characters and put a fresh new spin on them and the universe they inhabit.

In taking this approach, Abrams and company did neither a total reboot, a la the Sci-Fi Channel’s recently completed Battlestar Galactica TV series, nor a proper prequel that ties in directly and adheres faithfully to the established continuity. It’s a little of both—the filmmakers try to have it both ways. And for the most part, they succeed.

They manage to show respect and to incorporate everything that came before, but they also manage to make a break from the past and take things in a new direction-one in which the futures of these characters are not set in stone. Yes, we saw Kirk promoted to Admiral and reunited with his entire crew aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Yes, we saw Spock die in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan and be resurrected in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. And we saw Kirk die in Star Trek Generations.

But none of that applies anymore. The fates of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest are now unwritten. Anything can happen to them. Some can die, or leave Starfleet in a huff, or lose a limb. This adds a tremendous amount of suspense and drama to the proceedings, because you can’t rely on prior knowledge-what you know from the TV series and the movies is no longer applicable.

So this movie is not really a prequel in that it doesn’t set the stage for TOS. It simply can’t. You won’t be able to walk out of this movie and then sit down and start watching the original TV series and the original-cast movies and have it feel like a seamless fit.

And that doesn’t bother me, really. Why bother going back to Kirk and his crew and making new movies about them if we already know exactly how their lives are going to play out over time?

What I DO have a quibble about—and this is the kind of thing that could only come from a longtime Star Trek fan who’s very familiar with the material—is the way in which Abrams and his team get to where they want to go.

Again, without giving too much away, this movie treads on some of the same ground that we saw in TOS episodes like “City on the Edge of Forever” and “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” as well as the classic TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and even the movie First Contact, which featured the TNG crew. Yet in those previous stories, the challenge for the Enterprise crew was to try to undo the damage and set things right again. In this film, however, it’s accepted that what’s done is done, and that a new reality now exists as a result—a new reality in which we will now move forward. Instead of trying to undo the damage inflicted by the villain, Captain Nero (played by Eric Bana), the challenge for our heroes is to stop Nero from causing any further damage.

That’s fine—but why wasn’t that the case in any of the previous stories? What makes this new history-changing incident different from, say, when Dr. McCoy changed the past in “City on the Edge of Forever,” or when the Enterprise-C was thrust forward in time and suddenly appeared in the era of the Enterprise-D in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”? Why in those cases was it imperative to restore things to the way they were, but here, an alternate timeline is created to exist alongside the original one?

Like I said—I get what Abrams and Co. are trying to do, and I endorse it. I’m just pointing out a discrepancy between how this subject matter was handled consistently in Star Trek in the past, and how it’s handled now in the new film.

But I’m confident that unless you’re a longtime Star Trek fan, you won’t think twice about this. You’ll just accept what the film tells you and move on—and that’s probably for the best.

The good news for longtime fans is that this movie doesn’t negate or wipe out what has come before. Abrams and Co. make it fairly clear that the original timeline is still in place, still intact, and if you want to revisit it, just pop in your DVDs of TOS, TNG, DS9, etc. It’s all still there. We even get a new detail about Kirk’s personal backstory as it exists in the original timeline.

But if you want to follow the new adventures, you’d better go in with an open mind. Because Abrams and Co. don’t pull their punches. They are not afraid to upset the apple cart and depict sweeping, drastic, and, quite frankly, shocking events that bring significant changes to the Star Trek universe as a whole. That alone sets this movie apart from just about anything that’s been done with Star Trek since writer/director Nicholas Meyer last worked on the franchise in 1991. Let me put it this way: even this longtime viewer—who has written Star Trek professionally on numerous occasions—found his jaw hanging open at one point while watching the movie.

I must admit to a lack of enthusiasm about the look of the new Starship Enterprise. It lacks the grace and beauty of the TOS version—and especially the revamped version of the ship as seen in the first six movies, which remains my all-time favorite spaceship design. And the interiors of the new Enterprise did not particularly impress me either. The bridge is too busy. There are too many people working on it, and too many duty stations and consoles. The previous versions of the bridge were much simpler, much easier to comprehend, and it was easier to figure out where everything was and where everyone was stationed. With the new bridge, aside from the captain’s chair and the helm/navigation console, I get no real sense of where the science and communications stations are.

Also, the new engine room is, shall we say, quite a departure from what we’ve seen in the past. Not a deal-breaker for me, but I certainly didn’t love it.

The musical score is effective enough, but not particularly memorable. It’s tough to follow in the footsteps of composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, whose remarkable work on the original series of films (especially the first two) remain with me to this day.

With all that out of the way, I’ll get to the fun stuff.

First of all, the first third of the movie is damn near perfect. I leaned over to my friend several times during this section and we whispered to each other, “So far, so good!” The opening scene, which essentially acts as a teaser, is one of the most gripping and powerful sequences in Star Trek history—no exaggeration.

Screenwriters Orci and Kurtzman definitely did their homework and what was a very pleasant surprise to me was how much stuff they actually kept, in terms of the details about the characters’ lives. For example, McCoy’s personal backstory, developed for TOS back in the 1960s but never dealt with onscreen, is finally addressed—and very effectively, I might add. We also learn a couple of new things about Uhura—one that won’t be too shocking to anyone who’s read the novels published by Simon and Schuster over the last 25 years-and one that’s going to blow a lot of people’s minds.

As for the cast, by and large, they’re terrific.

Chris Pine shows us a somewhat different James Kirk from what we’re used to, which is only natural given the nature of the film, but by the end, you can see him settling in to being the Kirk we know and love. Pine also carries himself well during the action and fight scenes, and he’s good at portraying a rough-around-the-edges Kirk who’s developing his notorious magic with the ladies. He is also good during the more comedic moments. And during his scenes with Leonard Nimoy as the elderly Spock, he more than holds his own. What I would like to see in future films is Kirk portrayed as a bit more intelligent, more thoughtful, more cultured, and more strategic than he’s shown here. We get to see plenty of Kirk as a rough-and-tumble man of action in this movie, but there’s a lot more to him than that.

As the young Spock, Zachary Quinto doesn’t quite capture the essence of Nimoy—I found his delivery to be a bit on the robotic side on occasion, and even arrogant at times. It’s not a bad performance by any means, just a different interpretation of the character. In the future, though, I would like to see Quinto try to incorporate more of the wisdom, the dignified demeanor, and the gentle wit that Nimoy brought to Spock.

Karl Urban is wonderful as Leonard McCoy, from start to finish. He captures the spirit of the late great DeForest Kelly marvelously. The irascible nature, the sarcasm, the irreverence, the nervous raise of his eyebrow-it’s all there. One thing is certain: Urban must have a bigger, more central role in future films.

My prediction is that the breakout character in this movie will be Zoe Saldana’s Uhura. She’s absolutely gorgeous—you can’t take your eyes off of her. She carries herself extremely well, projects an air of confidence and ability, has a lovely speaking voice, and has good chemistry with both Pine and Quinto. It’s a really strong performance, and I think she’s given more to do and more of a characterization than Nichelle Nichols was given in all six original movies combined—and maybe even the TV series, as well.

Anton Yelchin is very endearing as Chekov and has a great scene where he really shines. He’s a bit more childlike and eager than Walter Koenig was in the role—but it works, because this is a younger Chekov.

As Sulu, John Cho gets less of a chance to make a strong impression but has a few very nice moments and gets to take part in one of the film’s most thrilling sequences.

Simon Pegg’s Scotty is more playful, manic, and mischievous than James Doohan’s. He’s played mostly for comic relief here. My main criticism with regard to Scotty is that he falls into his familiar place just a little too quickly and easily, given the circumstances surrounding his arrival aboard the Enterprise. The establishment of his relationship with Kirk-right down to Kirk calling him “Scotty”-came off, at least to me, as just a wee bit rushed.

Bruce Greenwood is very effective and likable as Captain Christopher Pike. His performance is more or less consistent with Jeffrey Hunter’s, and I wouldn’t mind at all if he returned in a future film. His relationship with Kirk, as portrayed in this film, shows lots of potential for further exploration.

Eric Bana’s obsessed Captain Nero does not rank among the best-developed or most compelling antagonists we’ve ever seen in Star Trek. He’s certainly no Khan, who without a doubt remains the most memorable and dramatic villain ever faced by an Enterprise crew. But I wouldn’t place Nero among the utterly forgettable and inadequate bad guys from the last couple of Next Generation movies, either. He’s okay. Nothing more, nothing less.

As for Leonard Nimoy… it almost would have been enough just to see him back on the screen as Spock after 18 years. But to see him play such an important role—one that doesn’t give him a lot of screen time but is nonetheless absolutely essential to the story (unlike Shatner’s return as Kirk in the ill-conceived mess Star Trek Generations)—makes it all the more special and essential. It’s clear that Nimoy had a good time playing Spock again. There’s a warmth, a sense of comfort, and a level of gravitas in his performance that I don’t think we’ve really seen since Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Nimoy’s Spock (referred to in the end credits as “Spock Prime”) is shown the utmost respect and treated with dignity—again, unlike Kirk in Generations. And there are two moments—one between Nimoy and Pine and one between Nimoy and another cast member—that are really quite touching.

Overall, I found Star Trek to be a high-octane, fast-paced, exciting, funny, and even poignant adventure. It does what it set out to do, which is make Star Trek accessible to a new audience and forge a new direction without being constrained by the franchise’s history—while respecting and acknowledging everything that came before

As the movie ended, I commented to my friend, “It’s Star Trek filtered through a Star Wars mentality.” A movie reviewer sitting in front of me overheard that and got all excited and turned to me and said, “Exactly! That’s exactly what it is!” So if you see that line in a movie review, you’ll know where it came from!

I’ll be interested in seeing where Abrams and his team take the series from here, assuming they get the chance to move forward. It’s clear that they understand Star Trek well enough. They just mustn’t lose sight of the fact that at its best, Star Trek has something to say. Action, spectacle, and special effects are all well and good, but for it to be good Star Trek, there must always be a human factor, a moral, and people of diverse backgrounds working together to solve the seemingly unsolvable.

There are some rough spots here, to be sure, but I think Star Trek has gotten the shot in the arm that it’s needed for quite some time.

I say, bring on the sequel—and don’t stop taking chances!

Thanks again to Glenn Greenberg for his guest review; sounds like this is gonna be a fun flick!

Republibot, a sci-fi fan site that describes itself as “the Science Fiction Site for people who aren’t Drooling Kneejerk Liberals,” recently interviewed sci-fi legend John Varley, one of the most accomplished authors in the genre. How accomplished? He’s the proud owner of two Nebulas, three Hugos, and 10 Locus awards. However, he’s also the owner of some rather dismissive thoughts about the emergence of fan film culture—the man was none too pleased:

I am vaguely aware of it, and as far as the infringing stuff, I think it’s bizarre, and basically, it sucks. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to use somebody else’s characters to make a story or a film. I’d sooner use somebody else’s toothbrush. This stuff goes way back to the pre-computer, pre-digital-camera days to something truly bizarre: Kirk-Spock homosexual pornography. Oddly, it was mostly written by women. Captain Kirk sucking on Spock’s logical Vulcan cock is not something I’ll ever understand.

However, this business of people making their own movies cheaply is exciting, and not just for SF. Sturgeon’s Law applies, naturally, so 90 percent of it will be crap, but I’m sure some of it will be good. I recently went to a screening of the 5 short animated films nominated for Academy Awards and saw some amazing stuff that would have cost millions to produce only a few years ago. The technology is now available to the people, and I think that’s a good thing. Seen some dynamite stuff on YouTube, too, among the 90 percent crap.

You can catch the whole interview HERE, but what do you make of Varley’s comments? Smart? Dumb? Provocative? Uninformed? Share your views in the comments section!

There’s a lot to be said for the high-profile Star Trek fan films of recent years; between Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II, Starship Farragut, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men and the others, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to see. As an increasing number of ex-Trek professionals have gotten involved on both sides of the camera, the quality of these productions has skyrocketed.

The downside, however, is that arguably they’ve raised the bar too high, surely making more than a few potential fan-filmmakers throw up their hands in a “why should I even bother” fit of disgust. If you don’t have $100,000 lying around to build your Bridge set with, cheer up. Here’s a new option—and it’s free.

Set a course for GoAnimate.Com, where people can create their own Flash-based animations and turn them into small movies, even if they don’t have coding or animating experience. At the site, you can create your own original shorts based on characters you develop, or make flicks based on licensed characters like Underdog or thugs from the Street Fighter video game series. Alternately, you can animate new adventures with Captain Kirk and the gang.

Here’s their demo on how to do it:

The only real drawbacks are that the movies are silent and littered with those word balloons. Maybe a cool way around those problems would be to make a movie without words, convert the resulting file into a format that can go into a video editing program, then slice and dice it while adding your…own…uncanny…Trek impersonations. Just picture the shenanigans you could get them into—it’s enough to make you say “Oh my!”

Star Trek is a massive universe (even if it’s supposed to be our own) and the legions of fans that support it are just as huge. As a result, there’s always enough going on within Trek fandom that any given week, there’s bound to be a few fan film news stories to tell. To whit:

• Over at the illustrious TrekWeb.com, Gustavo Leao recently interviewed Rob Caves on his fan films plans for 2009; suffice it to say, he has a lot on his agenda, from mini-series to audio-only productions to other good stuff. For those unfamiliar with Caves, he’s the producer of the post-Nemesis fan production series Star Trek: The Helena Chronicles, Star Trek Odyssey and Star Trek: Federation One, and head of Hidden Frontier Productions.

• Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II has broken lots of boundaries over the years, but it’s likely best known for the fact that it got legendary Trek actors to resume their roles, most noticably George “Sulu” Takei. If you want to get the complete inside story of making Takei’s episode, “World Enough and Time,” keep an eye out for the latest issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, which will have a Twenty-One page article on just that topic. Here’s a preview of the first page.

• And finally, if you’re planning to make your own Trek flick, perhaps you need a little decorative help; here’s one of the nuttiest collectibles I’ve heard of yet: A full-size replica of Captain Kirk’s chair. Action-figure.com noted:

With the sci-fi status and geek grandeur of Captain Kirk’s command chair in their collection, Trekfans of every generation can boldly go where no one has gone before! This full- size recreation of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s Captain’s Chair delivers all the accents and details from the historic prop, along with modern lighting with sound effects and phrases designed to thrill any Star Trek enthusiast!

The most recent episode of Star Trek: Phase II, “Blood & Fire: Part One,” has been making waves for its portrayal of gay crew members on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Since its release on December 20, the show has been eliciting reactions online ranging from kudos to cries of exploitation to declarations that it’s an affront to the family values traditionally associated with the original Trek.

Written and directed by David Gerrold—the writer behind the most famous Trek episode ever, “The Trouble With Tribbles,”—”Blood & Fire” is based on a script he wrote decades ago for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was shelved because of the mention of a gay crewman aboard the Enterprise.

Most of the controversy surrounding “Blood & Fire” centers around an unflinching intimate scene between Kirk’s nephew Peter and a boyfriend (basically picture the typical Trek tryst and replace the green-skinned babe with another guy). Michael Hinman covers the tempest in a teapot over at Syfyportal.com with his article, “Did Fan-Produced Star Trek Go To Far?” (sic). Reactions to Hinman’s reaction can be found in the site’s forums.

I’d be the last to say that I know the Phase II crew well, even though I interviewed executive producer/”Captain Kirk” James Cawley extensively about Phase II for my fan film book, Homemade Hollywood. Still, I strongly doubt that they were specifically looking to court controversy; instead, I expect they were just looking to tell a compelling story and it happened to include gay themes—end of story.

Nonetheless, each viewer should decide for him- or herself their thoughts on the episode (and that said, my take? I’m fine with it, but I ain’t passing a DVD of it on to my Trek-obsessed father-in-law). What do you think? Throw in your two cents below in the comments section.

Well, today’s October 15—the big day when Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera hits the shelves! A full 10 years after I first had the idea for this baby, it’s finally out of my head and into the real world.

Here’s a goofy idea: If you see a copy of the book out in the wild, whip out your camera phone, take a shot of yourself with it and send the photo my way. I’ll collect up the best ones (i.e. funniest, coolest, cutest, hottest, ugliest, etc-est) and run them here on the blog sometime as a set. So if you ever wanted zillions of people around the world to see your smiling/snarling face, here’s your big chance.

In the meantime, in honor of this being the official publication date, here’s the equally official press release explaining what the book is about:

FAN FILMS: FUN, FREE AND TOTALLY ILLEGAL!

Who would swing off a six-story building for a homemade Spider-Man movie? Why would newlyweds with a baby spend $20,000 on a Star Wars film from which they can never profit? How did three nobodies blow Steven Spielberg’s mind with an Indiana Jones flick they made as teens in the Eighties? They’re all part of the Fan Film revolution—an underground movement where amateur filmmakers are creating illegal movies starring world-famous characters, from Batman to Captain Kirk to Harry Potter.

Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera follows their stories and more as it traces fan films from the 1920s—when con men made fake Little Rascals movies—to the YouTube videos of today. Regular people are using camcorders, computers and classic characters to make movies that fans want to see—and which lawyers, copyrights and common sense would never allow.

Blending pop culture history with guerilla filmmaking tales and an exploration of Big Media’s changing attitude towards its audience, Homemade Hollywood gains insights from the filmmakers themselves, while Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, director Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever), punk icon Tommy Ramone, fandom scholar Henry Jenkins (Convergence Culture), Don Glut (The Empire Strikes Back), Andrea Richards (Girl Director) and many others discuss their roles in the history of fan films. A foreword from Chris Gore, founder of Film Threat and movie expert on G4TV’s Attack of the Show, sets the tone. Homemade Hollywood is a fascinating and highly entertaining study of this overlooked corner of the filmmaking world.

ISBN: 978-0826-42922-3 / paperback US $19.95 / 308 pages / Continuum Books

Available at Amazon.Com and bookstores everywhere.

Zach Smith of Pinback

Few franchises would appear rail harder against the values of early Punk than Star Trek, and not just ’cause Spock gave the mohawk dude a Vulcan neck pinch in Star Trek 4 (the one where they save the whales in 1980s San Francisco). There’s a basic disconnect all along the line: Order (military life in a Federation Starship) vs. Disorder (tour life in a crappy van); Aliens (hot chicks with green skin) vs. Groupies (hot chicks with green hair); Spock’s high-class harp vs. a decal-emblazoned Fender Squier electric; and so forth.

At the end of the day though, you like what you like and cretinous scenemakers be damned—which (conjecturing here) may be why Zach Smith, bassist for Touch & Go label stalwarts Pinback, loves Star Trek, so much so that he once even made a fan film, as revealed in an article, “Let Your Geek Flags Fly,” that ran in the San Diego CityBeat paper last week.

For Zach Smith, bassist of the local band Pinback, Star Trek is a pastime enjoyed mostly at home. Smith says he started watching when he was 4 years old. He’d hang out with some older neighborhood boys who loved the show, and the interest just stuck.

“There’s no better sleep remedy than the hum of a smoothly calibrated warp-drive engine,” Smith jokes.

Actually, his wife Rachel Ehlin says, his comment is spot-on. She falls asleep to Star Trek Voyager (the mid-’90s series) every night, even when she joins Smith on the band’s tour bus—but not because the show is boring, mind you.
“It’s like a lullaby, or like being read to at night,” she explains.

Ehlin was a late convert. She recalls with a giggle that her dad used to punish her with episodes of Star Trek: Next Generation. She learned to appreciate the show while dating her future husband. Now, she boasts, she’s a bigger fan than he is.

“I don’t know why you’re asking Zach about this,” Ehlin says mischievously. “I know way more than he does.”

That may be true, but Ehlin didn’t star in a homemade Star Trek fan film like her husband did some 15 years ago. Smith played a Klingon, while longtime friends (and Three Mile Pilot bandmates) Pall Jenkins and Tom Zinser played Spock and Scotty, respectively. (Will somebody please post this on YouTube?)

“Pall put Silly Putty on his ears,” says their friend Michael Zimmerman, who donned black pants and a yellow shirt to portray Captain Kirk. “We all liked the show, and when they called me, I wanted to do it. They had video equipment and cool sound effects from the original series.”

Zimmerman was in kindergarten when he started watching with his older brother. “He was way into it,” he recalls. “My mom made us Star Trek costumes.”

“Will somebody please post this on YouTube?” Agreed—this I wanna see.

The most memorable scene in Stand By Me, at least for me, is the one where the kids argue as to who would win in a fight: Superman or Mighty Mouse? We’ve all had that kind of conversation at some point or another. Once you get a bit older, the questions change to “Ginger or Mary Ann” (Mary Ann) or “Wilma or Betty” (Betty) or “Bass Vs. Guinness” (Bass). Probably there’s some geezers out there arguing about “Matlock or Ironsides” (Rockford Files) and I’m sure that my 2-year-old daughter would be very into “Little People or Jack’s Big Music Show“…if she could speak in full sentences, that is.

In Logansport, IN, I can only presume that Christopher Allen and Michael Yheulon got into a similar conversation about 1960s TV shows—specifically Batman or Star Trek—and it was enough to make Allen take the story they developed and turn it into the sprawling, 51-minute, three-part fan film…er, episode appropriately titled Star Trek Vs. Batman.

On the surface, before you even see a second of the show, it just seems like a bad idea. People take Trek very seriously, and others take The Dark Knight pretty seriously, too, but folks take the old ’60s Batman series about as seriously as the show’s producers did—which is to say, not at all. Mixing the two together, then, would seem to be a recipe for disaster—a guarantee that the flick would annoy or even offend most fans while satisfying virtually no one.

Director/Producer/Writer Allen and his crew, to their credit, went ahead with the idea anyway and the results, if not consistently good, are never bad or boring and are always interesting—all of which still puts it ahead of most fan productions. The most curious thing the show does is that it inverts the unwritten rule of fan films—that is, ‘All fan films must pretend as much as possible to be a “real” film.’ By that way of thinking, the higher quality the props or special effects, the “better” the production, even if the acting or story isn’t up to snuff. Allen’s production, however, has good costumes, great props (the Batmobile!), respectable Trek sets, varied acting and a surprisingly decent script—and yet, it gleefully rolls around in its own absurdity. It knows it’s a fan film, and it has no other agenda than to be a goofy “what if?”

Part One is simple enough: After the Enterprise accidentally winds up in the 20th Century, Kirk and Spock beam down to Gotham City for no particular reason at all. They’re immediately captured by the Joker and Catwoman, and soon after, have their brains stolen, reducing them to zombies with but one thought: Kill Batman and Robin. Part Two finds everyone involved back aboard the Enterprise, saving the day but not before some serious damage gets done to the infamous time/space continuum. In Part Three, the heroes…nah, you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Would this make for a so-so episode of Trek? Sure. A great episode of Batman? Double sure. The odd thing is that while it’s done in the Batman style, complete with narrator, the spinning Bat Logo interstitials, and the requisite Bams, Pows and Ooofs during fights, the main characters are definitely the Trek crew. Batman and Robin are practically guest stars on their own show.

The acting tends to sell the flick. Joshua Ramsey as Kirk nails Shatner’s inflections without lapsing into a cheap stand-up comedian parody, Victoria Florio’s Catwoman is on target, and Gavin Rulon is a scene-stealer with his wildly over-the-top Joker; whether his take on the character is a send-up of Caesar Romero’s portrayal in the original series, or just a sincere attempt to be nuts, it just works. As proof, in a scene from Part Two, Sulu (Apollo Bacala) desperately tries not to crack up laughing while the Joker cackles away in the Captain’s Chair; his expression is priceless. Truthfully, even the actors whose abilities leave something to be desired have at least a few moments where they hit the mark. Likewise, the camerawork never fails to at least capture the scene and frequently achieves more. The characters’ lines, too, usually sound like something they’d say, barring a few clinkers from Spock while trapped in Part One.

All in all, Star Trek Vs. Batman is as good as one could hope for, given the outlandish concept. So long as you’re not going to get all purist on it, BVST is a fairly amusing way to see the Caped Crusader go where no (Bat)man has gone before.

Star Trek Vs. Batman

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