10 Star Trek Fan Concepts That Became Real

10. Axanar - The Klingon War

Axanar was the fan production that was produced by Alec Peters and his team. It was unfortunately swiftly issued with a summons letter from CBS studios once the 21-minute Prelude to Axanar hit YouTube. The quality of the piece was excellent, with many Star Trek alumni appearing in different roles. The late, great Richard Hatch appeared as Kharn the Undying, who led the Klingons in their war against Starfleet.

Axanar was built around the conflict between the Empire and the Federation. This conflict would dominate much of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, which is certainly interesting to see, particularly as Discovery was produced after Axanar was released and the Axanar team offered the production to CBS free of charge, which was rejected.

A short scene was released online in advance of Prelude, which featured Gary Graham returning as Soval. The scene, set on Vulcan, was visually very similar to what would appear in Discovery as well. The full story of CBS v Axanar is detailed in our previous article here - it is a fascinating example of a possibly overzealous approach to dealing with this production by CBS studios. The ill-will that arose from the case certainly made the similar plot-points a little more suspect.