10 Times Star Trek Refused To Give Fans What They Wanted

Star Trek fan films have long been beloved by the community. Because of this, the fan film Star Trek: Axanar was able to raise over $630,000 USD on Kickstarter (with a goal of only $100,000 USD). The team released a short introduction called Prelude To Axanar, and planned a full-length movie.

Unfortunately for the creators of this and other fan productions, CBS and Paramount noticed the popularity of Axanar and weren't happy with the community using their property to create such high-budget films, so, after a lengthy legal battle, they released a list of guidelines that all Star Trek fan films must follow in order to avoid a lawsuit.

Some of the rules made sense, such as prohibiting the words 'Star Trek' in the title, and requiring a subtitle with the phrase 'A STAR TREK FAN PRODUCTION', but others on their list were extremely harsh, and seemed to be designed to make fan films fail, like limiting their runtime to one or two 15-minute episodes, banning the inclusion of any actors or crew who've worked on Trek, and limiting crowdfunding to only $50,000 USD (you can read through the rest of the rules here).

The studio was well within their rights to enforce these rules, but it rubbed many fans the wrong way. Some believed that the only reason they chose to enforce these rules right as Prelude To Axanar came out was because Axanar was so well-funded and professional that the studio feared it would make official Star Trek look bad in comparison. There's also the fact that Axanar was a prequel and dealt heavily with the Klingons, something also done by Discovery years later. Axanar is still in production, but many changes had to be made to appease the copyright holders.