A quote from a conversation I had this morning with a STARFLEET member in the UK.
“Our problem is that we have feast or famine with Trek. Aside from the JJ films it’s been a lean decade for Star Trek fandom. What do you fill that time with?“
You mean aside from the three films that have been so popular that they’ve made over 1.2 billion dollars and were consistently better-received by audiences than previous Star Trek movies by a significant factor? Well, alright then.
It’s been quite a lean decade, that’s true.
It feels like we didn’t even get six Starfleet Corps of Engineers books, the three-book Destiny series, all eight Typhon Pact novels, all five books of The Fall, the three-book Prey series, five books of the Department of Temporal Investigations. Five more Lost Era books. Seven Vanguard books. Four Seekers books. Three Cold Equations books. Oh, and the anthologies, like all three Mirror Universe anthologies. And the three Myriad Universes anthologies. Or the four Starfleet Academy books for the Young Adult crowd.
Or even books like ‘How To Speak Klingon,’ featuring a very handsome audio engineer.
Or the comic books that IDW has been putting out like Star Trek, Starfleet Academy and New Visions. And the crossover titles that bring the Star Trek universe together with Green Lantern, Planet of the Apes and Doctor Who. And cool trade paperback versions of each.
Board games that we almost didn’t see in the past decade include Star Trek: Expeditions, Star Trek: Fleet Captains, Star Trek Catan, Star Trek: Attack Wing or Star Trek: Ascendancy. And video games like Star Trek: DAC, Star Trek and the incredibly popular Star Trek Online. Also mobile games like Star Trek: Timelines, Star Trek: Trexels, Star Trek: Rivals, Convoy Raider 2013, Romulan 2014 and Starfleet 2014.
See?
This is why I’m crazy.
A STARFLEET member should know about these things. A STARFLEET member in the UK should absolutely know about the incredible Rachael Stott, the artist who drew that awesome dress-uniform Spock sketch above — She’s from London, draws Star Trek comics and is so good that she’s gotten hand-painted fan letters from Peter Capaldi.
If you’re a STARFLEET member and you’re not aware of the stuff I’ve mentioned here, STARFLEET has failed you. I’m not saying you have to know everything that’s coming out or that has come out, but you should probably know more. If you think the last decade has been ‘lean,’ I honestly don’t even know where to begin. The statement is abject nonsense.
Even all the stuff listed above isn’t everything! There are all kinds of new Star Trek shirts and clothing and Eaglemoss models and Mega Blox kits and new RPG beta-tests and listing every Star Trek thing that’s come out in the past decade would probably take an entire day to write up, and I type very quickly.
Okay, so that makes me crazy. But what’s worse?
Man, look at what this ignorance has wrought. We’ve got Star Trek hooks into fiction readers, comic book fans, tabletop gamers, video game fans, mobile gaming fans, role-playing game fans… and if we’re not informed about this stuff we can’t engage on these topics.
The idea that a Star Trek fan club can’t thrive in this environment is totally crazy. It can. They do! SFI isn’t thriving. Why are STARFLEET members buying these ridiculous excuses? A lean decade? Good lord.
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NOTE: Yes, I’ve done a lot of work for CBS on Star Trek but it’s not like they give me information about this stuff. I wish they would! I’d be happy to tell more people about it, but licensing is a strange beast with a lot of arms (and twice as many heads). The only stuff they talk to me about is stuff that I can’t talk about. I have almost zero advantage over anyone else on gathering this information. I ain’t special.