Vultural said:
Have not watched Renegades yet.
From reviews, I gather it is favored more by Trekkies - who will take anything, anything, at this point - and less by the average.
I don't think I would agree 100% with that statement.
While I think many passionate Trekkies/Trekkers may be more forgiving towards fan productions shortcomings than a professional studio production, I do not think they will blindly accept anything with a Trek label slapped on it.
In fact, in many instances, Trek lovers are some of the most picky, cruelest critics. I have been following the Renegades discussion on the Trek BBS, and even I have been stunned by some of the harshness of the criticisms posted there. They are equally critical of well respected fan series such as New Voyages and ST Continues. I mean, if you give a Trek devotee the time, we can nit-pick and tear apart our beloved episodes, movies, books and fan productions better than the non-fan.
I think the two biggest immediate problems with Renegades before it even begun production, was one, the producers were heavily promoting it as a television pilot and two, that it was crowd funded. These two things immediately raise fan expectations for a higher than normal level of quality (compared to other known fan productions) and opens the doors to a wider range of criticisms since it being paid for by the fans. Both of which are completely reasonable imo.
If the Renegade team has instead promoted the fan film as a "proof of concept" or as just another Trek fan series, would it have fared better? I dunno, maybe...
I have watched it three times now, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. At first glance, the greatest obvious weakness is the under developed script. Or is it? The script is written like a pilot, not like a movie with a definite beginning, middle and end. The whole idea is to introduce ideas, concepts and characters and then develop these things in further episodes. So yes, the script could use more polish, but the concept presented basically works. The Renegades team claims to have enough budget for two more episodes, so maybe when viewed as a whole, the story will play better? I mean many successful tv shows had weak or terrible pilot episodes. I keep thinking of Babylon 5 and what a mess it's pilot The Gathering was... and it went on to great success.
Much like The Gathering, the problems with Renegades is not one single big thing, just lots of little things that collectively affect the final viewer experience. It has so much in it's favour from a decent budget (though no where near what is needed for tv sci-fi pilot), good writers experienced in Trek and seasoned professional actors. But it fails to fully succeed due to mostly poor directing and editing choices.
As I stated before in the Renegades thread, in terms of final production, other fan series like ST Continues and New Voyages feel and look more polished, but Renegades has a slightly more intriguing concept for new Trek. And I hope they learn from their pilot experience and get to make their next two episodes to flesh out their narrative.
But back to Axanar, I too have very high hopes based on what has been shown so far and the comments/interviews posted by the production. And while their are many similarities between this fan production and Renegades, it's advantage and strength is it only trying to tell one story, not a continuing saga. Though that puts even greater pressure on making certain the script is fully developed, because no matter how good your actors are, they can only elevate weak material so far before it collapses from its own inadequacies.
But we know all this... lol. It is why we fan edit.;-)
Anyway, here is an interesting post about a recent meeting between the Axanar team and CBS which owns Star Trek....
http://www.axanarproductions.com/axanar-and-cbs/