But before either of those comes InAlienable. Koenig wrote this non-Trek science fiction drama, and is its Executive Producer as well as a principal actor in it. On December 15 it will become available as an Internet pay-per-view on the Renegade website, at the low admission price net users are fond of ($2.99.) This experiment is, as Koenig has quipped, where no movie has gone before.

Yet it may well be where a lot more storytellers will go. When I talked last month with Sky Conway, producer of InAlienable as well as of Of Gods and Men, he was excited by the news that Intel had developed a chip that would enable high definition television to be transmitted across the Internet. He made it sound like that pretty much sealed the deal: the Internet was going to be the future, and very soon.

For the present this is one of the opportunities that new technologies provide for more of a direct connection between creators and audience. Everything from cheaper cameras and digital effects mean that making a movie no longer requires kowtowing to the whims of big studios, and now the Internet opens the way to more direct marketing and distribution, so those movies don’t need to follow dubious formulas for mass market acceptance. In the Trek world as elsewhere, the pioneers may have been younger enthusiasts, but these veterans have jumped in to help take it all to the next level.