Fan production Star Trek: Renegades has released a new 2 minute preview video. Renegades is from the same group that made the incredibly popular TOS-era fan film Of Gods and Men. The production has multiple Trek alums involved as well as other familiar names from Sci-Fi TV and movies. Walter Koenig, Tim Russ (also directing), Robert Picardo, Gary Graham (Soval in ENT), Sean Young (Blade Runner), Manu Intiraymi (Icheb in VOY) and quite a few more. It is expected to be completed by Summer 2014.
It is ten years after Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant, and the Federation is in a crisis. The Federation’s main suppliers of dilithium crystals are disappearing. Space and time have folded around several planets, effectively isolating them from any contact with outside worlds. And this phenomenon is not natural – someone or something is causing this to happen. This necessitates drastic measures; some of which are outside the Federation’s normal jurisdiction. For this, Admiral Pavel Chekov, head of Starfleet Intelligence, turns to Commander Tuvok, Voyager’s former security officer and current head of the newly reorganized Section 31. Tuvok must put together a new covert, renegade crew – mostly outcasts and rogues – even criminals. This new crew is tasked with finding out what is causing the folding of time and space, and stopping it – at all costs. But will they be able to put aside their differences and stop trying to kill one another in time to accomplish their mission?
Click on to see the new trailer
The new trailer
First teaser trailer
Full details of the Renegades project and information about donating to help with post-production can be found at:
Looks interesting. I’ll be checking it out. It would be nice to have a Star Trek series again…..in whatever form that may take. Is this that form? We’ll see. It sure appears to have some of the right elements. We’ll see this summer! LLAP
The good and the bad
Good:
-Looks like they used proper HD cameras
-Lighting is great for the look they’re going for
-Make up is top-notch
-Great to see so many Trek actors in it
-Good music in the beginning and end of trailer
Bad:
-Trailer editing is awful
-someone needs to learn how to use Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Premiere to make better text effects.
-Didn’t care for the Transformers text change at the end.
I didn’t see a whole lot of starships in there. This is Star Trek after all
I do film making for a living and these are my thoughts.
Looks promising! Sounds like a good story with interesting new characters and old favorites. What new Trek should be!
Pretty sad to see the old Trek actors reduced to starring in second-rate fan films. This one just looks like run-of-the-mill and uninteresting.
Looks Good,
Mr Russ , you have my thanks Sir!
I’ve been trying to figure out for some time what in the world the opening lines mean. Does anyone know?
I think this has the potential to be something very interesting – and serves as proof that you can have a “darker” and different take on Star Trek without losing sight of what made the franchise great in the first place, something I wish Abrams could have done.
And I would certainly not call this film a “second-rate fan film.” Not by any stretch of imagination.
This looks to be as crappy and amateurish as “Of Gods and Men.” It’s cringe-inducing to see so many Trek actors desperate for work that they keep taking fanfic gigs.
Looks really interesting. Actually I find the shorter trailer better than the longer one. I’m looking forward to see what comes out of this and when it comes out. Also the quality looks much better then in Of Gods and Men
i would very much like to see this however this trailer is not hooking me in. Hoping another trailer/final product will change that.
Defiantly has the look and feel of yet another fan rub out ejaculation.
With the quickly growing tiresome preconceived expectations that by attaching former actors from various series and movies that this will make it better then the rest “cliche”
The only thing it might have going for it is that it doesn’t have Bumbling Bob Orci writing it.
If this takes place 10 years after Voyager, shouldn’t Chekov be a lot older or even dead by now? And Tuvok, a Vulcan, got grey hair in just 10 years? Also, anyone catch the “Khan” reference in the second trailer.
Great, true star trek again made by true trekkers…
Can’t wait…
They have posted pictures of the ships on their Facebook page. They said the next trailer would have some footage. The pictures of the Klingon and Starfleet ship look pretty cool. Their weapons look awesome too.
@ 11 OSCAR
Uh, the show is about a bunch of criminals who want to kill each other and the Federation is about to collapse. That doesn’t sound like true Star Trek to me. It could end up being great but right now it sounds more like Stargate Universe than Star Trek.
Wait- HOW is Chekov still around in this time period?? You’ve got to be kidding!
“Great, true star trek again made by true trekkers…
Can’t wait…”
I really hope that is sarcasm.
13 —- Viagra perhaps?
But seriously, this would make him almost 150 years old.
And he doesn’t look a day past 135….
#11: You’re joking, right?
@5: The writing on the wall is a poem called ‘Invictus’, which is Latin for ‘Unconquered’.
It has been the inspiration for many great people who believed in peace and fought against tyranny and oppression. To read the history of the poem… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invictus
#11, 14: Personally, I’m much more excited by this than I am by the prospect of another movie from Bad Robot. And that’s *not* sarcasm in the least.
#10 – “If this takes place 10 years after Voyager, shouldn’t Chekov be a lot older or even dead by now?”
Chekov would be about 142 or so. Even today, medical science is starting to see hints that we could live out to 150+, so could it be possible 400 years from now? I don’t see why not. Meanwhile, in the Trekverse, Chekov was an active duty admiral in 2377, as established in the “Vulcan’s Soul” trilogy, and even Elias Vaughn was a ship captain at the age of 100 in the post-TV series DS9 stories. Could Chekov still be active at 142? Well, I’m sure that his days of beaming down to every rough-and-tumble planet might be a little past him, but as a desk officer at StarFleet Command? Why not?
“And Tuvok, a Vulcan, got grey hair in just 10 years?”
Considering what Tuvok experienced on both the Voyager and Titan, and at an age of 111, it’s hardly inconceivable
“Also, anyone catch the “Khan” reference in the second trailer.”
Captain Singh is a descendent of Khan, we’re told, though I’m not sure how the familial line runs, i.e., is it from Earth post the Eugenics Wars or from Khan after “Space Seed” in some way.
It’s got a serious case of fanboyitis. The purple junk in McCoy’s hypo might help. Meantime… I wish them luck, but the trailer really isn’t that interesting.
Hello? Anyone remember “The Cage”? Let’ s cut these people some slack. They didn’t have the full financial backing from Paramount as in the old days to cut a pilot and people tend to forget that the “Cage” pilot was crap in its day which was why it was originally UN-aired.
This new organization had to have Kickstarter and indiegogo campaigns to fund the Renegades project. Tim Russ seems to have done an excellent job directing from what little I’ve seen, but it’s real intention is to show the CBS execs the POTENTIAL for such a new series.
There have been comparisons made to the fan-made “Of Gods and Men” which I think actually hurts the credibility of this newer project. If “Renegades” is accepted by the execs as a series pilot, from what I’ve seen it has much potential. There’s any number of different directions that an actual series can go. However, historically, CBS doesn’t give series much chance to evolve. So, let’s hope the production staff has some viable back-up plans in place.
Personally, I can’t wait to see the finished product.
@Matt Wright,
Thanks for posting the article.
Will watch St: Renegades when it come out next year but did it really needed to be dark & edgy …? sigh
Like others, my first thought was “How can Chekov be alive in a post Voyager story?” Even if medicine has allowed him to still be alive, I can’t really see the oldest human in existence still maintaining a senior position at Starfleet.
#11 I hope that is sarcasm.
@23: Hear, hear.
In my opinion, this is a dark time to be a die-hard Star Trek fan. Back in the mid-1970’s, the Star Trek flame was kept burning only by crappy fan fiction and a short-lived cartoon series. By the time we got ourselves a big-budget motion picture to wake up the franchise, it was a critical dud.
Today we still have crappy fan fiction and a short-lived cartoon series, which is the JJ-verse, which also landed us a critical dud (Into Darkness, which I think of as “2 Star 2 Trek”).
Maybe “Star Tr3k: Tokyo Drift” will deliver the goods in a few years?
@27 – you’re kidding me! STID is the highest grossing film in the franchise with an 87 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s simply erroneous to say that the last film was a ‘critical dud’. You and plenty of others didn’t like it, but the majority of critics and indeed the cinema going public did.
These sort of fan made productions don’t really do it for me, but hey, who are they hurting? It’s not canon and if Paramount didn’t want Trekkies playing in the sandbox, they’d put a stop to it.
Sadly, for me at least, this trailer just seems wrong. It looked like B5.
Horrible…It makes me embarrased to be a Trek fan. \
Acting…over the top
Editing…so many screams in the trailer
Acting…horrible
Oh ya…lets add a Green Light to the prison cell…that makes it look alien.
Initial thoughts: Really? In prison all that time with full makeup and false eyelashes? Stopping to pose in the passageway?
Including a superannuated Chekov [is this supposed to draw fans who can’t do without at least one TOS character]?
The alien makeup that makes it appear a tooth-laden mouth can’t open far enough for the alien to speak? Doesn’t follow – a mouth that full of teeth was designed at the very least for biting.
In the very last shot there’s a woman wearing black-framed eyeglasses?!
PAGING PRODUCTION DESIGNER
At least Tim Russ looks authentic.
BTW they got this much right: re the grey hair on a 111-y/o Vulcan — Sarek in “Journey to Babel” was grey-haired at age 103.
In what universe does someone where eyeglasses in Star Trek
@29. Marja
“In the very last shot there’s a woman wearing black-framed eyeglasses?!”
@30. ados – December 28, 2013
“In what universe does someone where eyeglasses in Star Trek”
Kirk has an eyeglasses in WOK
http://borgdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/shatner-birthday-present-from-kelley.jpg
Shouldn’t a teaser trailer…actually tease something? Besides…
A 24th century Bart Simpson scribbling something on the chalkboard
The Transformer title sequence at the end….
Gee…yet another unstoppable terror threatening to rip the Federation asunder…
More gratuitous Trek name dropping
Chekov. Great, another time travel, they don’t age, or hologram story..
Just another fan film…
Yes, Ahmed, Kirk does have eyeglasses in TWOK, I cannot forget that, and it’s only b/c he’s allergic to Retinax.
But this Renegades story happens about 180 years later. Surely they’d have come up with something by then. It was visually jarring. As were the false eyelashes on the prisoner. If she’s beautiful, she can be beautiful without them in a prison scene, for the sake of “realism” within the fiction.
The lead actress seems to have been chosen for looks and ‘strut’ vice acting chops, but on that I’ll wait and see. A preview doesn’t tell a lot.
Phil, copying “Invictus” over and over is probably mind- and will-sustaining stuff [the poem sustained Mandela for all his years in Robben Island prison], but I can see your point about visual things harkening to other unintended things.
And I agree the title business, yecch. Unnecessary, visually distracting. “Renegades,” maybe a flame wipeout of the “Star Trek” into “Renegades” but … sort of cliched either way.
Being that this is a preview and a “taste” for CBS to see if they want to pick it up and further develop it production-values and story-wise, perhaps it’ll be good enough. Certainly I’d replace the lead actress with someone who has a little more gravitas, just going by the 2-minute preview.
Looks good!
Especially for a fan film!
More info from the producers:
==================================
Several new fans have joined and liked us recently and we have been getting quite a few questions about this project. Soooo….here are the answers to the top 10 frequently asked questions:
1. Chekov is 147 and that life span is not uncommon in the future.
2. This is the Prime Universe and takes place 10 years after Voyager returns to Earth.
3. We finished filming on October 16th and anticipate having it completed June/July 2014.
4. CBS owns the rights to Star Trek and we will pitch it to them in the summer. Our hope is that it will get picked up as a network or online series. If not, the pilot will eventually be available for download on you tube.
5. We raised the funds through Kinckstarter and Indigogo and we are still accepting donations for post production at http://www.startrekrenegades.com.
6. Our first teaser trailer was released on November 19th and can be viewed at …
7. We are the team behind Star Trek of Gods and Men and Roddenberry on Patrol which can be downloaded on you tube for free.
8. Several Star Trek alumni and sci-fi icons are in Renegades; click on link for full details. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt262144….
9. Our Captain Lexxa Singh is a descendant of Khan.
10. Star Trek fans are the greatest fans in the world and without their support, Renegades would not have been possible.
http://observationdeck.io9.com/star-trek-renegades-the-producers-answer-some-of-y-1482883504
==========================
#9 .. Seriously ??? Is there no one else but Khannnnnnnnnn & his family in the whole Trek universe ??
Chekhov would still be alive since a citizens average life span in the trek universe is 140. He was only 17 when he first signed on to the crew. And the STTNG only took place about 75 years in the future. Uhura and Sulu wrre at the christening of The Enterprise D. Since Chekhov was the youngest crew member he would still be around. Any person who says ” Of Gods and Men was a crappy remake is not a true Trekkie or fan.
Part of me is very sad to see the universe of Star Trek reduced to a “Terminator 2” lookalike, even on a fan basis. Not only that, but there’s a hint of “Predator” in the trailer. It’s depressing.
Yes, I wish this film well, but … well, there it is.
I wish them well and hope this is does well online but to be honest, nothing in that trailer says Star Trek to me. Say what you will but New Voyages, ST Continues, and JJ’s films all at least feel like Trek or look like Trek. You know you’re watching Trek. Everything form the uniforms to well all of what I saw in this trailer made it feel much more like a B5/SGU crossover fan film. Star Trek Phoenix felt more like the fan series for future Trek but I dont know what happened to that one. It never got off the ground after that first episode that you can find online. Trek fan series definitely needs something that comes after the Hobus star exploding, something in the future. If it’s done well like Continues or New Voyages, I have no doubt you could get Marina Sirits, or Will Weaton or Levar or Michael Dorn to do a special guest spot. There are so many possibilities for what you could do but this felt like they took certain film styles from JJ’s movies and then ran with it for their own idea. The plot at least from what they’ve released as the plot doesn’t seem to call for a group of renegades to be put together. Seems like something they’d send the Enterprise out to deal with, with a team of scientists onboard or something to that nature. But the plot could and probably is much deeper than what’s been put out there. Again, I wish them well with this, it’s great to see some of the older actors. I just feel like it’s a missed opportunity, especially from Tim Russ who was vocal about JJ’s movies to begin with (while this seems darker than Into Darkness, and less traditional Trek than what purists have cried for).
I’d have to say that there is a spark of creativity here that is quite admirable. But the first scene of the trailer subconsciously reminds me of Sarah Connor in “Terminator 2,” both in the psych ward scene and in the “There Is No Fate But What We Make” scribbling she scratched on a table later on in that movie. And then there is the mood lighting, which suits the Terminator universe, the Predator universe, and maybe as someone said, the B5 or StarGate universes quite well, but just doesn’t seem very Trekkian to me.
I do think that this might work well as an exploration of what would happen if the Federation did break down, but in this day and age, when it seems that the world is less equitable than ever before, and with so many millions in dire economic straits, I don’t know if this is the kind of film we really want to see, even if it does have a Hollywood ending.
The James Cameron movie “Avatar” had elements of darkness and grittiness in it, but also a very colorful, spiritual side that spoke to a lot of the audience. I think Cameron foresaw that we were tiring of the “dark universe” tableau that struck one more and more as cliche’, and hungered for something weird and wonderful, and uplifting.
I’m looking for something uplifting in Trek, not a pale version of “Event Horizon.”
And here’s the question that strikes me in the end: Who are the heroes in this film, anyway? Are there any?
@38. Hat Rick
“The James Cameron movie “Avatar” had elements of darkness and grittiness in it, but also a very colorful, spiritual side that spoke to a lot of the audience. I think Cameron foresaw that we were tiring of the “dark universe” tableau that struck one more and more as cliche’, and hungered for something weird and wonderful, and uplifting.”
Agreed, hope that Bob & co will write something uplifting next time.
Fat fan actors kissing, aliens mumbling like the Godfather, old Trek actors mailing in their roles….
I can hardly NOT wait.
PS: And it looks more like a Stargate Atlantis fan movie than anything related to Star Trek.
PS2: That Chase Masterson scifi thing looked a million times better than this.
Why are so many people so outwardly hostile and rude?
This production might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you’d think taking the time to read and comment on a Star Trek website means you’re a fan.
“Fat fan actors kissing”…..
Just another one of several anonymous cowards posting. If you had to reveal your identity or attach your IP address publicly to your comments, you’d be singing a different tune.
Lots of people on this forum clearly brimming with anger and rage.
Meanwhile, whether it’s good or bad… I embrace that soon in 2014 I’ll get to see another Trek production that a group of people were motivated to go out and produce.
As opposed to the useless trollers here who produce NUUUH-THING (read it the way DeNiro would say it)
F*ck the negativity here. Jesus f**king Christ.
And Trek doesn’t need to be uplifting — what TOS episodes were uplifting? It’s a movie — there needs to be conflict and drama for Pete’s sake.
@43
Go ahead and post your full name, IP address and phone number then, tough guy. Come on, I’m waiting?
The truth is, you wouldn’t respond in the manner your are responding here to mine and other posts if you were not anonymous as well.
But feel free to prove me wrong and post your real name, ID and phone number here if you want to show us all that you are really sincere in your vitriol here?
My opinion is that this production just looks horrid, and doesn’t look like the Star Trek that I know and love.
That is my opinion. Sorry if some find it offensive.
^44:
Please, even if you do not believe yourself, do not take the name of *my* God in vain. It hurts – a lot. Seriously, IDIC.
Peace.
Thank you @48! Well said.
@46
Is there a way I can contact you directly without publicly committing my info to every search engine on the internet?
Then I’ll be very happy to get directly involved in your life, on my terms.