Duet
http://www.christopherandrews.com/
Pre-Stone Age Film; Series (Drama) — Garden Grove, Ca, USA
A fan-project based on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Duet" and the stage play "The Man in the Glass Booth," this fourteen-episode series follows Kristina Bischoff -- a Jewish woman and former resistance soldier from World War II -- whose visit to a friend's medical clinic sparks a quagmire of unexpected and traumatic events.
DUET was shot entirely with green screens and virtually no budget, using a borrowed DV camera and edited with consumer-level equipment. Adapted by award-winning author Christopher Andrews, and starring Kristin Elliott, Christopher Andrews, Michael J. Searing, Kathryn Brayton, Carl Wawrina, and Marcus Alexander Hart. IMDB .
[Barb Reader's comments on this production]
This is a remake of a Deep Space 9 Episode, but set in post-World War II Germany. It is not very 'Trek.' I'm not sure it belongs in this collection. It has apparently been included in an Israeli film festival on holocaust films. It raises the issue of how far away from Trek is a film before it's not a fan film. The connection here is explicit, but I am still not sure that this belongs on this website of Trek fan films. Comments below are welcome.
My own issues with this are simple. The value of discussing issues such as war, massacres, strife between species and peoples, in Sci Fi instead of in the real world are that it frees people from their personal involvement and allows them to look at such issues as abstractions. It also frees the writer of doing the hard work of serious research required of historical fiction. Setting a story in a real place limited the writer to reality. And that's how the trouble starts. A well written bit of sci fi can get past the overwhelming issues of harm and loss and bring the reader, or watcher, to issues of looking forward to a better tomorrow. So much of recent writing about Nazi Germany and its aftermath is wildly unrelated to historical reality. The Nazis were very proud that they were going to be the people who rid the world of Jews, and kept careful documentation of their extermination. That has not stopped Iran, and like nations from claiming it didn't happen. Likewise, many recent films have a fantasy notion of escape, or ability to rise above the situation in the camps without the individual compromising their integrity as copos or prostitutes. It is easy to forget the Nazi notion that the ideal man committed violence with no conscience or regret.
My family was not a victim of Nazi Germany, save the way every other American family was during World War II. Like all young men in the 1940s, my father fought in the war, as did my uncles, and my mother and aunts worked in the war factories. I have relatives, direct and by marriage, who were involved in the assault on Germany and who witnessed what occurred there when they entered upon liberation. And I grew up in New York, where many survivors of those camps settled after World War II. So, while in no way a victim, the distortions offend me. I have not yet watched this, so I cannot say if this is one of the bizarre flights of fancy or not. Having said all that, whether good or bad, this film falls squarely within my guidelines, and is therefore included in my collection unless and until I come up with a different defination of a fan film. I have not reviewed this film, and do not expect to review it for a long time. However, I consider it ready to be reviewed. Mr. Andrews has told me he may create an additional Star Trek Fan film, but I don't know if it would be on this order, or a more traditional fan film.
Mr. Andrews has been kind enough to say that the running time is almost exactly an hour, 59 minutes 42 seconds. When I add up the You Tube Total I get a running time: 59 minutes, 45 Seconds. That includes 14 introductions and 14 sets of credits, so the actual film is clearly shorter.
News, Reviews, & Links
Article on Starbase 972 "Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2009 - Adaptation of the Duet episode from "Deep Space Nine". Review in Hebrew no longer on current website but available on the Internet Archive, can be translated into English. Worth a read for the interesting details.: https://web.archive.org/web/20121122041400/http://www.starbase972.com:80/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=409 (16 Apr 2010)
Episodes Unformatted Blogspot Notes (The original STR website included many notes, not all of which have been migrated to our new database yet. Here are additional notes about this series that have not yet been completely processed.)
