My panel, my table, my stuff —just a corner of Trekland in the HUGE Star Trek year at Comic-Con San Diego

Wow.  Maybe it's because this is Comic-Con NUMBER 47?

San Diego Comic-Con has never been about Star Trek; it's always been about, well, comic books. And manga. Superheroes. And, for the past 20 or so years, the blockbusters derived therefrom. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror and anime, you get to come too.  

"Oh well, see you in Vegas" has been the cry among Trekfolk at SDCC the past decade or so, since I started going in 2006.  I've always felt badly that Star Trek's golden age and its incredible casts and creators came too soon for the bigtime, Hall H Comic-Con treatment.

UNTIL NOW. And good on CBS Consumer Products, and CBS and Paramount in general, for finally corralling an historically huge, Dyson Sphere-sized year for Trek. Having both the new mpovie AND the new series AND the 50th anniversary to play off is about as natural an opening as you're going to get, and they have not disappointed. Starting with a Comic-Con program cover featuring Leonard Nimoy's Spock (at right)!

Of course if you don't have a way in by now, you ain't gettin' in ... but if you're among the 150,000 plus on business and/or pleasure in San Diego his week...Here's a huge list of all things official Trek and licensees here. Huge! The MAC Trek cosmetics line and the 50 on 50 art exhibit with artist signings and that cover Spock image are among the panels and products.

And I'd just add to that, the first Trek pin collectibles from my old buddy Dan Madsen's FanSets (too new to get its own booth) will be at Comikaze and StylnOnline booths—and an even bigger hit now that folks can see "augmented reality" with the PokemonGO craze.

Now for my little corner of Trekland, here's my deets—and THANKS AGAIN to Cat Roberts, our Lt. Palmer of Star Trek Continues et al, and John for hosting our "Dr. Trek" crowdfunder again on Friday night!

—WEDNESDAYMaybe I'll see you before or after the 8 p.m. IMAX World Premiere of Star Trek Beyond?

—THURSDAY:
8-9 pm, 29AB: "Trekland's Between the Cracks Show: The How We Got To 50 Edition" PANEL — Our annual updated look at all things Trek in-perspective and in-jokey will also this year hopefully have a brand-new sneak-footage reel for The Con of Wrath! Plus we'll have a lightning PORTAL 47 beam-aboard bonus for this night only!

I'm up against some good folks in this slot, sadly, but you can click here in to the SDCC event site/app scheduler here as well. Please do!

—FRIDAY:

2:30-5:30 pm, AA23: Autograph Alley table— Easiest place to catch me! I'll have photos, On Speaker CDs, Portal 47 info, maybe even a book or two--and get into the Portal 47 prize drawing.  Oh and opinions and news on all things hot. Click here to save on your SDCC site/app scheduler.

Just be advised I must leave sooner than the normal 7:00 ending time because of ...

First SDCC doc crowdfunder, in 2012!

6:30-8:30 pm, Dr. Trek Show crowdfunder for The Con of Wrath, adjoining Petco Field*—The annual event supporting my doc wherever I am a live con guest—now wrapping up its final year of filming: as usual $20 not only gets you a screen credit but here live it's access to prize trivia, rare Trek footage and newest sneak-peek footage for the doc—including the latest, of Nichelle Nichols and Laura Banks.
*Check out the Facebook event page for the exact address and arrival directions. Share it if you can! 

—SATURDAY:

4:30-7 pm, AA23: Autograph Alley table—Ditto as above! But note I will be delayed past the 2:30 start time due to covering the big Hall H panel 2-3 and media afterward. Still, it's the last, easiest place to catch me—photos, On Speaker CDs, Portal 47 info, maybe even a book or two--and last chance for the Portal 47 prize drawing. Late news punditry, too. Click here to save on your SDCC site/app scheduler.
This schedule means, sadly, I will be timed out of Ben Robinson's Star Trek Ships panel immediately afterward with Rick Sternbach and Dan Curry...but again, it's all Treklanders all long overdue for a little Comic-Con love.



Here's hoping we all survive the Comic-Con crazy.... Especially me, because Tuesday starts our incredible #LA2Vegas / #SFx2  50th anniversary expanded edition of the Trek Film Sites Tour. And then right into sold-out, five-day #STLV.

Trek well!

From the fan-film guidelines to Rihanna, and Beyond — My take on all those Trek headlines, in one fell swoop

 
Wow. I picked the wrong week to go off-the-grid into bad wi-fi back home in Soonerland...!

I have so much to get done with "5-0 Fever" con summer and the Trek tour bearing down, plus a new On Speaker archival CD edition to get out ... and a nice website redesign for Trekland, finally, and Portal 47 both in the works...

But I have to say a few things about the crazy going down in Trekland the last few days—starting with the fan film guidelines came out the day I traveled to SoonerCon. (Of course. Oh, and the reaction.)
 
So take an extra 4.7 minutes and I'll wrap it all up for now in one subspace blast and say...

REALLY, Trekland? So much hate and trolling and boycotting...and, right NOW?

Take a breath and step back a sec. Let's put it on the main viewer, shall we?

It's July, 2016. We have a Star Trek feature film that is not only looking more like Star Trek to the hardcore than its two priors... but an exciting episodic series under an award-winning Trek vet with a mix of both Trek alumni and newer voices ...on a platform that will not be ruled by ratings numbers or even note-popping censors ... and, in Rihanna's "Sledgehammer," a Bond-like music hit and video mix from an actual fangirl superstar that will cross generations, continents and media to bring all-new eyeballs to all things movie-Trek and start the pipeline of fresh cadets and warriors and drones all over again.

Rihanna's "Sledgehammer" video w alt-Enterprise: Anyone else see a "The Doomsday Machine" homage here?

PLUS an awesome 50th anniversary that *is* living up to far more than just party hype—with major conventions around the globe, concerts and museum /science tours and the return of the 1960s original 11-footer Big E to its rightful place of inspiring honor in the Smithsonian, complete with a highly researched paint and detail restoration. I just missed seeing the 1701 in 1976, saw it in 1986, was disappointed in 1992... and can't wait to glimpse her return to glory in a couple weeks, right before Shore Leave.

And this is all grabbing mainstream media attention ...smack in the middle of the Big Bang Theory Era. That's what they used to call "synergy."

How people can be poking holes in all that positive, franchise-refreshing force for good is just beyond me. Really. But hey, don't misunderstand: I'm not saying go vanilla—I'm just saying go smart.

What I really refuse to do is get too sucked into the time and negativity sink over the Axanar lawsuit and all the tangent spinoffs from it—while still avoiding any "deer in the headlights" blindsiding.  While you might be feeling a bit down that the Golden Age of Fan Films seems to be over, let me just suggest that it might simply be ...evolving. For I remember all the prior times "Paramount" was decried by fans— from the marketing study and boycott over Spock's death threatened for The Wrath of Khan, to the upset over the "new" upstart TNG without Kirk/Spock/McCoy... and the yell over every new iteration of series to come. And somehow, it all came out in the end just fine. I even hear Star Trek AND its fandom hung around and pressed on.

Look, my low-key friend John van Citters of CBS licensing is now an unlikely Internet star front-and-center over the "fan film guidelines" (thanks to Jordan Hoffman's new official podcast Engage)—but that's the same JVC who used to point out to me years ago, at the clamor for embracing such "rules," how "a Lucasfilms model of 5-minute festival entries would never fly with Trek fans so let's just leave it in the gray area to avoid getting those lawyers involved"--the guys who care less about promotion and brand-building, and more about fiduciary duty and legal precedent. As is their oath. 

That's how I know what a huge leap these guidelines were, for the corporate machinery to agree to as much as they did—even as, to some fans, that 15/30-minute limit may seem restrictive...which is inevitable. There will be a bit of customizing in reaction, on a case-by-case basis ... but look, guys: For nearly two years, I've been worried. I mean, I've been soooo proud to have acted in, and remain a part of the think thank, for Continues; I appeared in New Voyages early on, and have supported Starbase Studios back home in OKC plus any other project that asked for it, on principal.  And yet, sadly, the boom does seem unsustainable in some ways: Today's zooming crowdfunding and temptations mean it was increasingly likely this ever-more-overloaded plane was going to have a rough landing on the choppy sea of expectations sometime— and becoming more apparent every month to many of us.


And face it: As I've said for a couple years now, I was also expecting a lot of the fan-film fire to go out—by fan producers, if not backers and attention spans in general—once a Trek series got going again, sucking all the air out of the room with new canon content to follow and fathom. That's right around the corner, now.

Question is, when and where and how rough would that landing be, who'd take charge in the crisis (if anyone), and who would get hurt in the crash? And would the "owner" CBS/Paramount get blamed, no matter what?

The post-guidelines world will not be this way forever—just ask the website owners who freely post scene clip frames today, unlike in 1996 when C&D's by Paramount went out as frame-grabbing exploded ... or the "official" editors like me four years later who could not mention actors' non-Trek crossover projects in depth—until we could. (Professor X in a Trek mag, anyone?) Or the idea of limiting later-generation Trek cast and crew to only licensed conventions (ca 2001).

The truth is, things in any pop culture franchise "poppish" enough to be alive are always the edgiest on the cutting edge—the fun frontier where no attorneys or rights-protectors have gone before. Until everyone does go there, at least, and things settle down....and then start up again in another paradigm. That's just the world we live it. It's unsettled, but it's ever-fresh: And it's the price you pay for having an incredibly attractive, thought-provoking little space show that keeps attracting new fans, new iterations, new business ...and refuses to die after 50 years.

The other truth is this: For all the meme meltdowns online past and present, fan film fandom... con-going regulars  ....hell, all Internet Trek fandom... are just a drop in the bucket among all the armchair fans out there. You know: the folks who watch the shows, buy the books and toys, and raise their kids with Trek?

And now... a boycott? Really? Aside from the basic math, consider the timing.

Because Vulcan's Forge was never like this: We are FINALLY emerging from wandering the Trek desert of the last 12 years, and have now a transition time from what *was* to what *is*—whether it's fan film parameters or a hit music/movie video or a for-pay streaming platform in the fast-changing media landscape. Same as 1979, 1982, 1987, 2001 ...and 2006.

Thank the Prophets it's happened again. It means we're still alive... and that a 100th anniversary Trektennial in 2066 is a pretty sure bet.

Oh—and beyond our selfish fun? Star Trek remains a good bet for a wracked world that could really use some hope and intelligent futurism in its free time right about now. 

Just like in 1966.