Watch: IRS $60K Star Trek Video Earns Rebuke From Congress – Worst.Parody.Ever

This week a Star Trek controversy has been brewing – and it has nothing to do with Alice Eve’s undies. This scandal Star Trek scandal involves the IRS – yes the people that collect your taxes – spending $60,000 on a Star Trek parody video. Congress demanded to see the video and today the IRS released it. Watch the video below

 

$60,000 Star Trek Parody Gets IRS In Hot Water

On Wednesday Congressman Charles Boustany (Chairman of the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee) sent a letter to the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to "inquire about videos depicting television or movie parodies" produced by the IRS production studio. The goal was to "determine whether and to what extend taxpayer resources were devoted to activities unrelated" to the IRS "core functions." Of particular interest was a Star Trek parody video which the IRS had admitted cost $60,000 to produce.

And so late on Friday the IRS complied with the request and released the six-minute long parody video, which was created for a 2010 training and leadership conference. The agency also said (via AP) it was a mistake to make the video because it "does not appear to have any training value."

After watching the video where the "Starship Enterprise Y" visits "Planet Notax," you may not agree that was the only mistake they made. Here it is.

Even though the IRS admitted it was a mistake, the agency tells AP the "Star Trek" video "was a well-intentioned, light-hearted introduction to an important conference during a difficult period for the IRS."

However Boustany isn’t impressed, saying "There is nothing more infuriating to a taxpayer than to find out the government is using their hard-earned dollars in a way that is frivolous. The IRS admitted as much when it disclosed that it no longer produces such videos."

The controversey still hasn’t ended. There is another video with a "Gilligan’s Island" theme which the IRS has not released. In this case the agency is saying it was a "a legitimate training video" with "an island theme provided filing season training for 1,900 employees in our Taxpayer Assistance Centers in 400 locations." According to the IRS "using a video saved the agency $1.5 million each year compared to the costs of training the employees in person."

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Holy badness

That’s so terrible

$60,000 and they couldn’t get the uniform/bridge combination correct? TNG uniforms on the TOS bridge? THAT is what offends me.

This offends me deeply both as a taxpayer and a Star Trek fan

C’mon, they spent $60,000 on a cheap-looking set with bad plastic wigs and those awful poor-quality Ruby’s TNG uniforms???

WTF???

If they were going to waste SIXTY FRIGGIN’ THOUSAND DOLLARS, they should have just paid that money to James Cawley and borrow his set and costumes!!!

It’s not bad enought that a lot of money was wasted, but it happened be wasted in such an awful, awful fashion.

They could have done this on a couple hundred bucks at the most!

Heads need to roll (publicly, and on a giant screen at a Trek convention, no less) for what happened at the IRS.

Where to begin? Also, why?
It doesn’t matter who is in power. As long as gub-ment can spend without consequences, there will be waste on crap like this. Take this out of the salaries of the 6 highest-ranking beaurocraps who signed off on it.

enought=enough

DAMN TYPOS!!!

sorry, got worked up there…
“bureaucrap”

also, it’s still awful

HORRID!!!

Now that is REAL Star Trek! Not none of that J.J. Abrams hulabalah aiming at kids with their fancy boomboxes and their ADHD MTV Lowest Common Denominator crap!

/sarcasm

I think I’ll skip it … anytime I see a large gent with a plastic wig and ears playing Spock I’m just too, too offended

According to Starfleet Intelligence, the video originally contained lensflares but the cost would bump to $100,000. :P I guess we should at least be thankful. :D

I think for $60K I could have made 5 minutes of Trek that would blow your socks off. Seriously, how was this more than $600? Heh.

Still better than Star Trek 5.

Holy moly – where to begin. That was sooo bad. At least they could have got the uniforms right. Yikes.

Even the wrong uniforms were wrong.

#14.

Ouch! ;-)

Come on. Star Trek V at least had some fantastic character moments. I also like that the “bad guy” isn’t just plain evil bent on revenge. Just a misguided soul to takes his passion too far.

Just a misguided soul that takes his passion too far.*

I can’t figure out how a parody this bad cost the better part of $60,000 to make! LOL

#19.

One word: Stupidity.

LOL… i actually thought it was vaguely humorous… ive seen worse things that i suspected would have been possible fraud, waste & abuse items while in the Navy…

Nothing too different quality-wise from the Cawley stuff that so many people here fawn over all the time.

Next Gen uniforms on a TOS bridge??? DISASTER!

I demand a refund!

Wow, that was bad. From a Trek perspective there is a ton wrong, namely the uniforms. I wonder why the woman has the TOS and the others don’t. This is so poorly done in general, the lines are very badly delivered. And how on earth does this cost that much of Taxpayer money?

Holy smoke… that old KFC commercial with the TOS crew had better production values, and that was probably made with half that budget in 1990’s dollars!!

It is bad, but at least it has good music and sound effects!

What was the ship? Some kind of flying B?

I get the feeling some unscrupulous video production company jacked their rates up just a tad when they saw those IRS rubes coming. Real life Ferengi!

The TOS parody Saturday Night Live did in 1975 had a better bridge set. ;)

Holy heck, I’m off to poke out my mind’s eye.

Having carefully weighed up both this and the international trailer released this week, I’m going to have to say I peferred the trailer more. Indeed, I think I’d prefer never watching this ill conceived footage again. Yes, lets go with that.

I just can’t bring myself to click on the video link… Probably for the best.

24, I see what you did.

I really hope this won’t stir up or cause bad/negative publicity for Star Trek just as STID is about to come out.

This is probably the last thing the new movie needs.

@32
DON”T CLICK THAT LINK,MAN! FOR GOD’S SAKE, NO!
I have seen what it contains, and my mind is forever polluted by those images.

#5 Totally agree. If they were going to bother making this at all, they could have done it for a fraction of the cost. Any fan who’s made a low-budget video could tell them that. Also, the script was horrible. I’ve seen plenty of intro videos for training sessions. That dialog was not helpful at all. Ugh. Just ugh.

@19. This is the IRS we are talking about. It probably cost $6 million, and they under reported the cost.

I could go on, but don’t wish to earn the ire of AP…. :-)

The Rand character said there was a mixup with the dry cleaner. Doesn’t that explain everything?

At least they knew they had the uniforms wrong.

It would almost make sense if there was information in the video… But, do we really need a video to say “Money laundering is bad!” Really?? No poo, IRS.
Can’t wait to see what wisdom the Gilligan’s Island one offers. Maybe explaining that everyone who has ten coconuts must give 4 to Skipper so he can wage war on Muslims for a decade, then leave so they’ll never stop hating us.

Easy, guys…this is popping up on other hard news sites, so there are plenty of places to go to vent your spleen on the topic.

@ # 22, lol.

All things considered, I thought the captain owned it.

“a new fangled disease….”

Gotta appreciate the effort, well no,…maybe the sentiment. But yeah, I’ve done more for a lot less money.

Had anyone in government ever SEEN an episode of Star Trek, or were they working exclusively from stills and fuzzy memories? The “bridge” is terrible. I cannot BELIEVE a herd of accountants tried to build one instead of just greenscreening the bridge in. Everything is wrong. Everything. Just….EVERYTHING. I can’t wrap my brain around the level of badness. It couldn’t have been worse if it was an intentional attempt to make the most egregious, crapilicious parody imaginable.

Every individual little detail about this is just half-baked, poorly done, sloppy, offensive, amateurish, and wasteful. There is not one redeeming feature at all. Not. One. But then again, this IS the government we’re talking about.

So, that was “Star Trek: Into Darkness?”

CBS/Paramount needs to send the IRS a Cease and Desist order on this embarrassment for our government, country, planet and our beloved franchise!

@44. Well, it definitely went somewhere… Hope it ends up in the Darkness of a dumpster.

KICK-ASS NEW EMPIRE MAGAZINE COVER. KICK-ASS, I TELL YOU! KICK-ASS!!!1

http://i.imgur.com/xapK9Iv.jpg

I love it when for apparently no reason my comment gets deleted. I’m guessing its because I swore (its not like half the other people here do the same thing) or because someone though I was a troll, which I’m not. In case it was the first reason, I shall rephrase what I said.

I agree with earlier people. How this thing was created for more than 600 bucks is beyond me.

I want so much to believe that the “discovery” of this means that our leaders we charge with oversight are on top of things; unfortunately, the sad reality is that there is likely so much rampant wasteful spending that there isn’t enough oversight in the world to stop it all.

What a sad commentary on our government and it’s spending habits all the while, we’re “cutting back” by limiting White House tours for schoolchildren – something that actually HAS “training” value!

The only part I found slightly amusing was “Scotty” using a hair dryer on the engines. The dialogue was absolutely horrible, stiff, etc. not nearly enough real acting.