There is something uniquely frustrating about waiting 11 years for a movie, let alone – fan film and discovering that, despite all that time, the finished product still feels like it needed another rewrite, another round of costume fittings, and a much stronger cast. If someone said to me that the Axanar: The Gathering Storm was the “best Star Trek fan film ever” or “Paramount should have made this instead of the crap they have on the air now, I would ask them, “You’re kidding, right!?!”. This is one long-time Trek fan & fan film actor’s take on this latest chapter on Axanar.
As a Star Trek fan film, Axanar clearly had enormous ambitions. The project wanted to deliver a large-scale, cinematic interpretation of the Four Years War and capture the look and spirit of classic Star Trek while expanding the mythology surrounding the Federation and Klingon conflict. Unfortunately, ambition and execution are two very different things.
The biggest problem is the acting. Too many performances come across as wooden and overly rehearsed, making dramatic moments feel strangely lifeless. Rather than pulling me into the story, the performances repeatedly reminded me that I was watching a fan production in its infant stages. Even when the material calls for tension, emotion or urgency, the delivery often feels stiff.
That said, I have to give credit to some of the veteran performers who appear in the film. Patricia Tallman, Adrienne Wilkinson and J.G. Hertzler are all talented actors with substantial Star Trek and genre credentials, and honestly, I found myself wishing they had been given something better to work with. The problem isn’t necessarily their effort; it’s the material. They appear to be doing the best they can with dialogue and scenes that don’t always give them much to work with.
That’s particularly frustrating because these are performers who have demonstrated elsewhere that they can bring tremendous personality and dramatic weight to genre material. Give actors like these stronger dialogue and a more polished script, and you can see what might have been possible.
And then there is the script. For a movie that had more than a decade to put out to the world, the writing is surprisingly underwhelming. The dialogue doesn’t consistently have the snap or personality associated with Star Trek, and the story frequently struggles to generate the momentum necessary to sustain a great fan film. There are ideas here that could have made for a genuinely interesting exploration of Starfleet’s early history, but the execution never fully turns those ideas into compelling drama.
The costumes are another distraction. Some of them simply don’t fit the performers properly, which makes the production look cheaper than it needs to, despite the millions of dollars they raised through numerous crowd funding platforms. Costume design doesn’t have to be expensive to work, but it does need to look intentional. When clothing appears awkward or ill-fitting, it becomes difficult to take the characters seriously. That’s particularly unfortunate because Axanar time and time again demonstrates exactly what it could have been.
The CGI is easily the best thing about the movie. The visual effects are impressive and demonstrate the level of ambition behind the project. The space sequences and digital effects provide some of the film’s most convincing Star Trek moments and show that the filmmakers were capable of creating a much more polished-looking production. In some scenes, the visual effects are genuinely cinematic. Unfortunately, good CGI can only carry a movie so far.
A Tragic Passage of Time
The 11-year production history also takes on a much sadder dimension when you consider the members of the cast who are no longer with us. During those 11 years, Gary Graham, who played Ambassador Soval, and Richard Hatch, who played Kharn the Undying, both passed away. Both men had long, respected careers, and both brought considerable genre experience and talent to their roles. That makes watching their appearances here bittersweet.
If Axanar: The Gathering Storm ultimately serves as part of their final screen legacy, I can’t help but wish they had been given something better. Their careers deserved better material than this. I don’t place that criticism on them. They were performers doing their jobs, and they brought what they could to the production. Unfortunately, it was a turkey in otherwise stellar careers. And that is genuinely sad.
God bless Gary Graham and Richard Hatch. Whatever I think of Axanar, their contributions to science fiction and genre television deserve to be remembered far beyond one disappointing production.
Eleven Years Later…
What makes the movie even more disappointing is the 11-year production timeline. Eleven years is an extraordinary amount of time to wait for a fan film. During those 11 years, other Star Trek and science fiction fan productions managed to come and go—and some delivered considerably more entertaining experiences with far fewer resources and significantly shorter production schedules. That’s perhaps the most difficult thing for me to overlook.
I have seen better fan films released during the very same timeframe it took Axanar to finally reach the screen. Those productions may not have had the same resources, publicity or ambition, but they understood something important: a compelling story, believable performances and good characters matter more than spectacle and space battles alone.
Axanar seems to have gotten caught between trying to be a fan film and trying to look like a professional Star Trek feature. The result doesn’t completely succeed as either. The production values can be impressive one moment and noticeably amateurish the next. The CGI suggests a much larger production, while the performances, script and costumes frequently pull the viewer back down to earth.
I found myself wondering what this movie might have been if the filmmakers had spent less time chasing the grand vision and more time concentrating on the fundamentals. Tighten the script. Strengthen the dialogue. Rework the performances. Make sure every costume fits. Keep the story moving. Those changes wouldn’t have required a Hollywood budget. They would have required discipline.
For all the controversy and mythology surrounding the production, I ultimately judge Axanar by what is actually on the screen. And unfortunately, what’s on the screen isn’t nearly as impressive as the journey required to get there.
There is clearly talent behind the visual effects, and the filmmakers deserve credit for attempting something on this scale. But a Star Trek story needs more than convincing starships and impressive CGI. It needs characters worth caring about, dialogue worth remembering and a story that makes you want to see what happens next. Axanar: The Gathering Storm didn’t give me that.
After waiting so long a time, I expected to be blown away. Instead, I spent much of the movie wishing it had been better. I’ve seen better fan films made in less time, with considerably more heart. The CGI is impressive. The veteran actors tried their best. And given the amount of time that passed between the project’s beginning and its eventual release, the loss of Gary Graham and Richard Hatch makes the whole experience particularly bittersweet.
But ultimately, Axanar is a case where the production became more legendary than the movie itself. After 11 years of waiting, I wanted a Star Trek fan film worth celebrating. Instead, we got one that I was more than ready to put out of commission. And by the end, I couldn’t wait for the day when Axanar would finally be drydocked—and permanently.
FINAL GRADE: D-
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