Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)
We'll have to disagree on the quality of these fan productions, but the issue wasn't that the fan stuff endangered their new property; it was the fan stuff was being used to make money with absolutely no licensing agreement whatsoever. And they have every right to take issue with 1.1 million dollars being used to make a STAR TREK fan film without authorization, the same way you probably would not tolerate strangers using your house as a brewery without your permission and compensation. We can debate whether Paramount and CBS are being extreme, but they have every right to permit some fan films or no fan films. STAR TREK is their house.
**
Hmm. One iffy thing regarding SLIDERS REBORN, now that I think on it -- I offered SLIDERS fanfic genius Nigel Mitchell money for his services on the project. Not being a history buff or a world-builder, I asked Nigel to take my one-sentence concepts and give me an alt-history as well as visual details of daily life to work into the scripts.
I wanted to pay him for each Earth, but Nigel declined and pointed me to his Amazon page, where I bought every novel he's published and will buy every novel he ever releases, partially because I want to read them and partially to pay him something.
I wonder what kind of trouble we'd have been in if I'd paid Nigel about $500 for what I imagine would have been a couple hours of writing bullet points of whatever came to mind for the four Earths. I guess I could have written it off as a one-time gift? And what about the hotel room I rented? The hotel made money off me doing SLIDERS REBORN. But I guess they made money off me wanting a room as opposed SLIDERS REBORN.
I imagine that NBCUniversal wouldn't see the point of litigating over a matter of $680, but crowdsourcing over a million dollars raises all sorts of alerts and red flags.