July 19 2019
Axanar fascinates me, there’s something going on that goes beyond what is said to be a very expensive fan film.
Prelude to Axanar, Axanar, Axanar Comics, Axanar Gaming, Axanar Confidential, Axanar: The Movement, Axanar podcasts, Ares Studios and more.
There’s also Interlude which is a continuation to Prelude to Axanar but it almost has an entirely different bunch of stars and behind the scenes crew behind it.
To put simply, Axanar is a franchise within a franchise.
It’s not a franchise for profit because you got to be really stupid to try and make a profit from it these days now that CBS knows what is out there.
Think about it, has there been any other fan production in fan production history that has multiple avenues of options like Axanar has?
Perhaps it is actually an ‘alternative franchise’, everyone knows that Star Trek fans are divided over the current offerings by CBS and Paramount so why not offer an alternative?
This alternative is not related to CBS and Paramount and they can attempt to tailor a story to fans desires by selling the message that whatever is made is for the fans and by the fans.
There’s little to no financial risk to the creators should they choose to make fans shoulder the majority of the financial load because people will be sold on the history of Prelude to Axanar and maybe Interlude.
Perhaps the biggest weapons Axanar has is that they can portray themselves as fighting the big corporations and that they are not Discovery or Picard or the last three Star Trek movies.
The big risk supporting the ‘alternative franchise’ is that you’ll be donating in something that you have no idea what the final product is going to be and you have absolutely zero say in what will happen in that franchise.
You give money and they make something totaling no less than 30 minutes apiece, simple as that.
Maybe when the orange is squeezed dry, the Axanar universe will change to a different ‘universe’ and start the party all over again.
It’s clever, those who have a slice of Axanar can be kept busy for years and maintain a small yet comfortable profile in the Sci-Fi world which could lead to better offers, you never know.
What do you think?
Until next time, be good to each other.
Mentioning Trekkie Mentions 
I think labelling it a franchise of any sort is incredibly flattering to Axanar and exactly the sort of faux-ethos Alec Peters wants. It’s more the suggestion of a franchise because the examples you list are one-off events from years ago, incomplete efforts, maybe-one-days and YouTube broadcasts that pretty much anybody could put out there. But put all the castles in the sky (note to self – must watch The Cloud Minders later. Did you know Season 5 of Enterprise would’ve visited the construction of Stratos? Shame it never happened) together and it suggests a larger-that-it-is concern that, hey, may be worth sending some of your hard earned sheckles their way.
And it isn’t.
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The construction of Stratos is seen in the fan made Save Enterprise/TrekUnited campaign video, Skippy2k was a genius.
To me it appears that Axanar is some sort of alternative franchise and while it sounds flattering, the foundations are there particularly the comics side of things and if somebody doesn’t look deeply enough at the structure, it will impress them enough to spend money on the big ticket stuff like Axanar and Interlude.
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