Fan bid to save ”Enterprise” fails

To some “Star Trek” fans, Tim Brazeal is an intergalactic hero – a burly, tattooed Tennessee systems administrator who has spent the past two months in a quixotic bid to save UPN’s “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

His Web site, www.trekunited.com, claims to have raised $3.1 million to fund a fifth season of the science fiction series, even if Paramount Network Television, which makes the show, can’t or won’t.

His only motive, Brazeal said, was to save a franchise he loved: “I’ve been a ‘Star Trek’ fan since the early ‘70s.”

And then, like a malfunctioning phaser, it all went bad.

Paramount declined the funding offer. Skeptics accused Brazeal of running a scam – an allegation he vigorously denies – and heaped ridicule on his closest associates, such as “the Lobster Guy,” a part-time Maryland seafood vendor who works as TrekUnited’s pro bono attorney.

On Internet message boards, some are comparing TrekUnited to a cult and saying it doesn’t represent the majority of Trek fans.

Now Brazeal sounds like someone who wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.

“I’ve been taking a bashing personally on all of this,” he said in a recent phone interview.

TrekUnited has started refunding the donations, and Brazeal has conceded defeat.

“Game over,” he said. “We lost.”

How one fan’s dream ended up in this mess is a story stranger than many “Trek” episodes.

Some say the situation shows how the Internet can help divide as well as unite those with shared interests.

“It’s very clear there are quite a few different factions” among Trek fans, said Bonnie Malmat, manager of the fan site www.trekbbs.com, who described herself as neutral in the battle over TrekUnited.

Equally important, the fate of “Enterprise” also shows how a world-famous entertainment brand can lose its cultural potency over nearly 40 years and five television series, 10 feature films that have grossed more than $1 billion and more than 650 books.

Some fans don’t understand that the franchise has worn thin over time, said Brannon Braga, the executive producer of “Enterprise,” who has worked on various “Trek” series for 15 years.

“It’s just been around awhile, and all good things need a rest and wear out their welcome for a while,” Braga said.

Brazeal’s fund-raising campaign started in early February, after UPN announced that it would cancel the program at the end of the season.

He began assembling volunteers, many of whom he had met in online fan forums. The group’s idea was to raise enough money to cover Paramount’s cost of producing new episodes for a fifth season. (TrekUnited estimates the studio spent about $1.6 million for each episode, although one source close to the production says the figure is closer to $2 million.)

According to the group’s Web site, more than 8,000 fans sent cash contributions totaling $144,173. TrekUnited also said it received $3 million in pledges from unidentified “investors in (the) space-flight industry.”

Brazeal seemed on his way to becoming a grassroots hero along the lines of Bjo Trimble – a sci-fi enthusiast revered to this day for helping persuade NBC executives to give the original “Star Trek” more time to build an audience back in the late 1960s.

But then opposing fans began to attack TrekUnited, and especially Brazeal, for a number of perceived missteps.

One key complaint was that Brazeal initially failed to tell followers or the media about a March 15 fax from Paramount executive vice president John Wentworth saying that “the recent decision to conclude the show’s run on UPN is final. We cannot and will not be able to accept funds from viewers to produce ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ or any other series.”

After Paramount posted the letter on its www.startrek.com Web site earlier this month, Brazeal tried to explain to his fans that he hadn’t mentioned it because he had made “personal promises” that he wouldn’t reveal any information about the negotiations.

That unleashed a torrent of abuse on various “Trek”-related online forums, where insult and invective are fairly common.

Critics poked fun at some of TrekUnited’s colorful leaders, including Andrew Beardall – the attorney and sometime seafood purveyor who is perhaps best-known around Bethesda, Md., as “the Lobster Guy” – and Al Vinci, a mysterious Canadian producer and publisher who claimed to be spearheading talks with an unidentified executive at the studio.

Brazeal insisted that he was not raising the money for his personal enrichment. But as the attacks continued, he admitted in an online posting that he had been arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession in 1979 and served probation for an auto theft charge in 1983. He also confirmed that he filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

He now says that he just wants his life back.

“You reach a point where you have to say, ‘Reality’s reality.’ … Paramount is just unwilling to bring (the show) back,” Brazeal said.

UPN will air the “Enterprise” finale May 13.

Some supporters are refusing to give up, vowing to take their complaints to the board of Viacom – which owns both Paramount and UPN – at its next meeting May 26.

But for all the conflict TrekUnited has stirred up, most fans are in accord on one point: “Star Trek” is unlikely to disappear for long.

The franchise will live on in repeats and books devoted to the brand. And it’s only a matter of time before Paramount will decide to resuscitate the series, veteran “Trek” watchers believe.

“It will return,” said “Enterprise” producer Braga. “I just don’t know in what way.”