The internet is an odd thing indeed. It is at one and the same time the most wonderful depository of information ever known, and the biggest pile of shit ever to grace thee planet. This is it’s greatness; its why I spend hours on it; its why I add to it.

Nothing epitomised this paradox better than fanfic, or it’s most recent incarnation, the fan film. Yes, believe it or not, people have started making films of their favourite television programmes and posting them on the net. Predictably, with the demise of Enterprise, there are groups of people now making films based in the trek universe: I’d presume that one would need a fictional universe as detailed as the star trek one to facilitate such an endeavour. Either way, I came across such a phenomenon on Thursday night, and decided to find out more.

What I uncovered is, in a way, quite fascinating, both on the sociological level, and from the perspective of a student film interested in structuralism. Why would these people need to make such films: where do they get the resources, and for that matter the time, when they get no profit? Already, ‘hidden frontier’ has 7 seasons to it’s name, each with 6 half hour live action episodes. Admittedly, the cgi and production values aren’t up to cinema, or even television standards, but it’s still impressive. I watched season 6 last night, and it’s not as abysmal as you would expect.

The creators seem to be reading trek against the grain, as it were. We have a crew on a federation star base – DS12 – fighting a war against the ‘Grey’, but they seem to doubt Starfleet; that is Starfleet is portrayed as sanctimonious in it’s ‘holier and thou’ attitudes. It can be covert, too secretive; it wants other species to help it, but it keeps information from them.

No prises for putting two and two together! This is obviously a critique of the conduct of the united states in its war on terror. Both Starfleet and the US see themselves as having the moral high ground without actually having it. In hidden frontier, it is posited that the federation planted the evidence which brought the romulans into the dominion war on it’s side. Thus, the federation is shown to be fallible and duplicitous where once it was seen as the moral guardian of galactic piece.

You see now why I am interested? As people start to question America from within, the on-screen surrogates for America start to be questioned. This is why I can forgive the terrible dialogue and often abysmal acting. What we see in such series is a response, not only to star trek but contemporary society. Hence we have an openly gay couple in this series, something avoided in the mainstream.

I can already hear my brothers moaning, but I like it, and find it interesting. I’ll certainly continue to watch. Go take a look.