About Those ‘Necessary’ Guidelines…

I’d like to follow up yesterday’s post about Trek fan film guidelines by pointing out a little something that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. About those guidelines…

Since when have they been necessary?  Many productions have asked for some, thinking they might step over a line, and that is understandable. But was there any other problem with the way things were, other than not knowing, for certain, where ‘the line’ was?

Those standing with Axanar are buying into this narrative that Trek fan film guidelines will make things better than they were, and therefore are necessary.

No. Nope. They are not necessary, and they could not possibly make things better because

EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT BEFORE PETERS WROTE HIMSELF A CHECK

And, they were perfect without officially sanctioned written guidelines.

Perfect.

For many years Trek fan filmmakers had been using the unwritten guidelines with nary a peep from Paramount or CBS. 

If you followed the unofficial ‘unwritten guidelines’ you could crowdfund tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, hire actors, promote to your hearts content, deal with stories or situations that even the real show side-stepped (like homosexuality), create new species and characters, use practically any existing IP, build set upon set as accurate as you wish…etc.

Before Axanar, other than one script, just what was the problem of not having written guidelines? What were fan films missing, exactly? Nothing. Not a thing, because

THINGS WERE PERFECT

So, tell me why we need these guidelines? How are things going to be ‘better’ with them? Please, be explicit in explaining, in the comments below, just how you can do better than perfect, better than it was/has been/will hopefully remain.

Seems to me like everything was just fine before the Burt and Ernie show came to town and did their thing. Everything was clear ‘enough’, unless you were really, really curious how far you could go before getting a C&D…or unless you wanted to personally pay taxes on monies donated to your ‘fan film’. With those two exceptions

EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT

So tell me again how things are going to get any better WITH official guidelines, please. Tell us all.