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Ya know I really enjoyed this. Production design, costumes, VFX all original takes with ties to Enterprise and US Navy.........story was good and I am looking forward to seeing the final part next month. Instead of recreating TOS or TNG look they just created their own vibe. Congrats to them.
I'm not going to critique the acting other than to say it's a rare Trek fanfilm that's got uniformly good acting, so that's par for the course.
I like the look overall even if the footage of the actors frequently looks overbright in the greenscreen scenes.
The space and vehicle VFX are nice. The ships look good. But I'm rather sick of clouds in space.
I have to say I'm not super sold on the script. The framing device feels unnecessary and one hopes there will be some point to it in Part 2. In Part 1 it just chews up time; like the scene at the waterfront is a pointless. Cutting it would make the film better. I was bored by the time she sat down for the interview. It's 4:36 before we see the Pacific and it's prefaced by a line about the effects of the warp drive...which doesn't matter because we see the effects a few minutes later. The film would have played better if we'd gotten to the ship faster.
Hopefully the second half picks up the pace.
Nitpicks
The outdoor scenes sound very....indoors.
Why the hell does the pilot take off before the hatch is closed? Why does no one yell at him about this or the person hanging outside?
The climb into the ship is completely lacking in tension. She falls, hanging on outside the hatch. Then she's at the bottom of the ladder. Then she's inexplicably back up at the hatch. C'mon, shoot some inserts of hands struggling to get up to the next rung.
"Point our nose into the debris." Why? Is there a reason? If not, this kind of stuff is just filler that doesn't mean anything.
Lots of technobabble. It's one aspect of TNG-forwards Trek that I wish fanfilms would not ape so closely.
Science. "The warp drive accelerates the planet's breakup." Nnnnnope. The amount of energy to blow a planet to pieces would be literally astronomical, like on the order of hundreds of billions of kilograms of antimatter to overcome the gravitational binding energy holding it all together. That's like thousands of TOS Enterprises made of 100% antimatter slamming into the planet at the same time. So there'd better be some crazy upcoming explanation to why this planet goes boom.
Totally agree about the sequence with the shuttle fleeing the planet. The planet is literally breaking apart and there's a person hanging on for dear life outside an open hatch while the ship climbs into space and there's . . . just no tension at all. And that's a failure of directing and editing.
have to say I'm not super sold on the script. The framing device feels unnecessary and one hopes there will be some point to it in Part 2. In Part 1 it just chews up time; like the scene at the waterfront is a pointless. Cutting it would make the film better. I was bored by the time she sat down for the interview. It's 4:36 before we see the Pacific and it's prefaced by a line about the effects of the warp drive...which doesn't matter because we see the effects a few minutes later. The film would have played better if we'd gotten to the ship faster.
I don't want to come across as too negative here. It's in many ways a handsome production, and you can see a lot of work was put into it. So kudos to them for that. And I suspect some of the VFX defects are due to trying to get the thing done and not wanting to fiddle with it forever.
I just wish the scripts for these things were a little tighter and better focused. Screenwriting is hard, and I'm the first to admit that, and I couldn't write as well as I do now back when I wrote for Exeter, that's for sure.
Science. "The warp drive accelerates the planet's breakup." Nnnnnope. The amount of energy to blow a planet to pieces would be literally astronomical, like on the order of hundreds of billions of kilograms of antimatter to overcome the gravitational binding energy holding it all together. That's like thousands of TOS Enterprises made of 100% antimatter slamming into the planet at the same time. So there'd better be some crazy upcoming explanation to why this planet goes boom.
There was no rationale given for why it was necessary to turn the warp drive on to keep them in orbit. Given that there was no indication visible out the window or with other VFX that they were falling out of orbit, and given how no one seemed to think that the ship was in immediate peril from crashing into the planet, I assume that it was still at this point a small order effect. But if it was a small effect, why couldn't the impulse drive have been used to compensate?
Without any reason given for why impulse wouldn't have sufficed to compensate for the unknown force, it seems like the answer is just to contrive a problem involving the warp drive. And, if impulse wouldn't have sufficed, then they were in immediate peril and they should have known it.
There was no rationale given for why it was necessary to turn the warp drive on to keep them in orbit. Given that there was no indication visible out the window or with other VFX that they were falling out of orbit, and given how no one seemed to think that the ship was in immediate peril from crashing into the planet, I assume that at that it was still at this point a small order effect. But if it was a small effect, why couldn't the impulse drive have been used to compensate?
Without any reason given for why impulse wouldn't have sufficed to compensate for the unknown force, it seems like the answer is just to contrive a problem involving the warp drive. And, if impulse wouldn't have sufficed, then they were in immediate peril and they should have known it.
The issue is, of course, that the science... isn't. I blame the "tech the tech" approach taken up in TNG and thereafter wherein writers come up with they want to happen and then just throw around faux technical terms to rationalize it and wave it away. At that point it ceases to be science fiction and it's basically straight up fantasy, where the technobabble is effectively a magical incantation of nonsense words.
The issue is, of course, that the science... isn't. I blame the "tech the tech" approach taken up in TNG and thereafter wherein writers come up with they want to happen and then just throw around faux technical terms to rationalize it and wave it away. At that point it ceases to be science fiction and it's basically straight up fantasy, where the technobabble is effectively a magical incantation of nonsense words.
The issue is, of course, that the science... isn't. I blame the "tech the tech" approach taken up in TNG and thereafter wherein writers come up with they want to happen and then just throw around faux technical terms to rationalize it and wave it away. At that point it ceases to be science fiction and it's basically straight up fantasy, where the technobabble is effectively a magical incantation of nonsense words.
I remember reading an article many years ago, I forget during what series this was, if it was DS9 or Voyager or whatever, but it said apparently that a writer was on staff expressly to write technobabble. I read this and I said: they should SHOOT that guy, AND the producer who wanted this!
IIRC the writers would write "tech tech tech" and Okuda and Sternbach would suggest stuff. They tried to make it believable where possible, but it was an uphill battle.
It was definitely a fan film, pros and cons alike. I found myself liking it quite a bit more than most fan films I've watched, though there are of course frustrations. It's grading on such a specific curve, except in the places where we know EC Henry is a proven, skilled artist, which makes those technical lapses somewhat more confounding. I'll say it this way: I like the flavor they are going for, and while it takes a bit of imagination to push it to the finish line, I don't regret engaging with this material.
Faint praise? Perhaps. But it got me to venture into the Fan Production page of TrekBBS, so it did something right.
It was definitely a fan film, pros and cons alike. I found myself liking it quite a bit more than most fan films I've watched, though there are of course frustrations. It's grading on such a specific curve, except in the places where we know EC Henry is a proven, skilled artist, which makes those technical lapses somewhat more confounding. I'll say it this way: I like the flavor they are going for, and while it takes a bit of imagination to push it to the finish line, I don't regret engaging with this material.
Faint praise? Perhaps. But it got me to venture into the Fan Production page of TrekBBS, so it did something right.
It was definitely a fan film, pros and cons alike. I found myself liking it quite a bit more than most fan films I've watched, though there are of course frustrations. It's grading on such a specific curve, except in the places where we know EC Henry is a proven, skilled artist, which makes those technical lapses somewhat more confounding. I'll say it this way: I like the flavor they are going for, and while it takes a bit of imagination to push it to the finish line, I don't regret engaging with this material.
Faint praise? Perhaps. But it got me to venture into the Fan Production page of TrekBBS, so it did something right.
You very eloquently put what I was trying to say. It’s most successful aspect is that it really had its own voice in terms of the style of the Trek universe it was trying to show, Unfortunately those technical lapses hold it back, and its regrettable because I think they are lapses that could be fixed.
In terms of those aspects, I would be inclined to say yes. The whole "Starfleet Intelligence" angle was just OK, but not as smooth as it could have been.
In terms of those aspects, I would be inclined to say yes. The whole "Starfleet Intelligence" angle was just OK, but not as smooth as it could have been.
Wraparound storytelling is especially hit or miss, but mostly miss. There must be a very strong and well-executed purpose to the framing device, and I'm just not seeing that here. If you're going to break simple linear storytelling structure, you gotta have a good reason and you gotta do it well. Works best with mystery/suspense type stories, and that seems to be the intent here, yet it isn't mysterious or suspenseful*, and actively works against our engagement with the characters on the ship. That said, part 2 could mayyyybe make a clearer justification for this format.
*yes, there are "mysteries" of what's up with the planet, why the warp drive had that impact, what's going on with cute glasses person, what the Romulans are up to, etc. But the story isn't a mystery just because it has mysterious elements.
Then again, how could there be? Nothing much happened.
but I'll say that passion projects like this are generally born out of the filmmaker's desire to tell a certain story. Like The Room, for example. It has distinct characters, and a very specific story that Tommy Wiseau wanted to tell. It's not a good story. The characters come across like the creations of an alien creature who got all his knowledge of human behavior from soap operas he had on in the background while he did something else. But there's a heart in that movie that's totally missing here.
Michael Piller once said he didn't have any interest in making a show about spaceships, but he did want to make a show about the people on the spaceships. Judging by this movie and his other videos, EC Henry really wanted to make a movie about spaceships. The ships and the gadgets and the costumes are far and away the best-realized part of Pacific 201. And they're really great. I love Henry's slightly harder-SF take on Star Trek tech, and it's something I dearly wish the CBS productions would adopt. (Is it too much to ask for some Newtonian physics?) But in the end, the characters are only there to populate the starships, wear the costumes, and use the tech.
A certain segment of the fandom really hates Discovery's storytelling that focuses on big emotional moments, often to the detriment of intelligent science fiction. This is an interesting counterpoint to that. Which one you ultimately prefer is up to you.
