Go ahead, oust me from the Geek Community with pitchforks and torches. I don’t care. This is the final nail in the coffin.

First it was the 2016 San Diego Comic Con Star Trek Panel that was nothing more than a boring Social Justice tirade by Producer Bryan Fuller. I watched it online, but everyone who was there that I know, told me that it was boring as hell and if you didn’t agree with their politics, it was painful.

Then Trek Against Trump reared it’s ugly head, spewing falsehoods, hyperbole, and talking about a path to the future… while shilling for Hillary Clinton… do you see the irony?

But I’ve already given them enough exposure on my blog… moving on…

Then they blunder into identity politics by making Sulu gay in the latest movie… which would be fine… had he been gay all along. Even George Takei, one of the biggest Gay spokespeople out there, took issue with this…

“I’m delighted that there’s a gay character…Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate.” 

… So basically Star Trek has gone the way of Marvel.

Now we have the new show, Star Trek Discovery. Which honestly… what tidbits we’ve seen so far look like crap, the ship is based on a design that was flatly rejected by Gene, and the makers of it seem more interested in talking about how there’s going to be an LGBT character, and the star is a non-white first officer instead of talking about the FREAKEN STORY!!! So you can kind of see where the focus is going to be…

Agenda > Story.

This falls under my rule about people not liking being preached at when they sit down to read, listen, or watch a story! They want enjoyment and the people who would enjoy that kind of thing are too busy out protesting Trump or hiding in their racially exclusive safe spaces (God I can’t believe those exist in this day and age) to give a care!

Again, I don’t care about the inclusion of these characters, but if they plan on focusing on them for the shallow point of pushing an agenda, the story will suffer. I will admit in the last Star Trek movie yes Sulu was gay, but it wasn’t a major plot point or point of contention. It was there, they showed it, and they moved on. That’s fine, I didn’t take issue with that. I thought it was kind of silly, but whatever.

I may watch an episode or two simply to see just how bad the show is.

Okay, now honestly, I could get past all of this, ALL of it, and continue to watch new movies coming out, and maybe attend conventions where Star Trek is present… if it weren’t for this last piece.

Star Trek Axanar’s lawsuit…

Now I’ve talked to a lot of people on either side of the line on this….

“Alec Peters went too far, he dug his own grave when he gave himself a salary, funded a studio, and said Axanar would be professional….”

That’s fine. Those people have great points and I don’t disagree with them. My issue comes with the settlement with CBS:

“Terms of the settlement agreement include an agreement to allow Axanar Productions to continue showing PRELUDE TO AXANAR commercial-free on YouTube and to allow Axanar Productions to produce the AXANAR feature film as two fifteen-minute segments that can be distributed on YouTube (also without ads).”

So basically CBS and Paramount are sticking to their guns on their fan film guidelines.

Which means no actors that have previously worked with Star Trek, no ability to raise enough funds to produce anything more than something set in someone’s basement, no longer than two 15 minute segments… it just gets worse and worse…

Essentially the fans are getting screwed over in every way. The fans that donated to Axanar will now not get the full length movie they wanted and will have to dream of what ‘could have been,’ future fan films is extremely bleak. They’ve stomped out things like Renegades, The New Voyages, among others…

People… this is not how you do it. If fans love your IP so much, that should be celebrated! Say what you will, Lucasfilms did it right. They put a few, nonrestrictive guidelines out there, and even offer rewards for the best fan films made every year. As a result, we have a plethora of fan films that look almost professional, they add immersion to the Star Wars Universe, and give fans a little something to enjoy between the official stuff. It’s simply an unspoken rule that everything produced by fans is NON-CANON and not recognized by Lucasfilms.

Has the Star Wars Franchise suffered because of this? Given that the toy stores continue to sell out of the figures I’m collecting on a regular basis (Grrr….), the movies set records when they hit the box office, and a continuous fan base that enjoys Star Wars from an almost religious standpoint.

Does Star Trek have that?

… … .. well put it this way if there is one constant at every convention I go to, it’s that for every 1 person that comes dressed as a Star Trek character, there are at least 15 people dressed as Star Wars characters.

CBS and Paramount has completely handled this the wrong way, their movies are met with uncertainty and they’ve completely overrun their IP with identity politics, which no one is going to tolerate for long.

So… I’m not replacing my copies of the Star Trek movies I own as the DVDs wear out. My collection of Star Trek items has been reduced to three model ships, and pretty much the only movie I watch from them is Star Trek II Wrath of Khan. My wife loves Voyager, but that’s another issue. Maybe that’s extreme, but I’m not putting money into the pockets of the people I view as ‘The Wrong People.’

Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments! I’m curious to hear the thoughts of other nerds/geeks.

Seriously Jim, it’s their IP. They own Star Trek, they have a right to decide how people use it, and how they want to use it. You’re really criticizing them for that?

Yes, they have every right to do with their IP as they see fit… that is their right by law. However it is also MY RIGHT to decide that I don’t like what they’re doing, that I don’t like how they’ve handled it, and not give them my business.

If they decide to steer their ship towards an iceberg, I’m not going to run into the pilot house, start yelling at the crew, and grab the wheel to turn it away. Nope, I’m going to jump into a lifeboat, yell ‘F#&% this ship,’ and row away shaking my head as I watch it sink. That’s my right, plain and simple. They can do what they want and so ca I.