Rating System
For a website called Star Trek Reviewed, you may have noticed that there aren't very many reviews here! When Barb started STR, her plan was to catalog all Star Trek fan films in existence, then review them each. Based on the most comprehensive listings of the time, she assumed there were only around 150, maybe 250 total Star Trek fan films.
That turned out to be... a bit of an underestimate. Barb spent the rest of her life cataloging fan films, and never really got around to reviewing them--although she did link to reviews on other websites wherever she found them.
Going forward, whenever we get the chance, the current STR Board members will review each film with our individual comments. Multiple STR Board members may review the same film with different comments, but we will sign each review individually.
Films or series that are particularly competent, entertaining, and/or capture the spirit of Star Trek earn a starred review. Starred productions typically have some combination of good writing, good acting, good sets or SFX, good direction, entertainment value, exploration of a scientific or social or political idea in the spirit of Star Trek (whether we agree with its conclusions or not!), good production values, and low demands on the viewer's suspension of disbelief (similar to official Star Trek), while maintaining a firm focus on Star Trek (as opposed to other material, such as Star Wars or Superman).
Films of exceptional quality, the best of the best, which (in the reviewer's judgment) display all of those qualities, earn an exemplary review.
A lot of very decent work is cataloged at Star Trek Reviewed, not all of it starred. We present it to you, the viewer, and leave it to you to form your own judgments. As Barb wrote many years ago, "The purpose of the ratings are to help the viewer, not to degrade the creators, all of whom have clearly worked hard and lovingly." A completed film, no matter how amateur, is still better than a mere trailer or announcement or review, and we thank creators for sharing them with the world.
There are extremely rare exceptions to this rule. They are sorted under Really, Really Bad Stuff -- material that is not merely hard to watch (as some items in our catalog are), but aggressively bad. They have no positive elements and are often actively insulting to the viewer. We note these not to degrade the creators, but to provide fair warning to the viewer.
A few films on STR were reviewed with Barb's original 5-point system, and we have left those original reviews in place. An exemplary review roughly corresponds to her 5/5 rating, and a starred review roughly corresponds to a 4/5 or 3.5/5 on Barb's scale.
