'Star Trek: The Next Generation' VR Enterprise Recreation Shut Down by Cease and Desist Letter

A project that would have recreated the iconic USS Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation in virtual reality has shut down, reportedly after receiving a cease and desist notice from CBS.

Eurogamer was the first to report that the project, titled Stage-9, had ceased work after two years of production. The project was created using the Unreal engine and available for platforms like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as on PC. Stage-9 allowed Star Trek: The Next Generation fans to roam free aboard the USS Enterprise visiting its various decks including the bridge and engineering and interacting with objects including phasers.

In a video update titled "All Good Things...", the Stage-9 project head Rob Bryan, aka Scragnog stated that they had "no choice" but to shut the project down after a phone conversation with a CBS lawyer failed to yield a compromise.

"We were just fans creating fan art," Scragnog said. "I thought we'd made that pretty clear."

Scragnog acknowledges that last year's release of Star Trek: Bridge Crew, the officially-licensed Star Trek virtual reality video game, did leave him and his team worrying that something like this could happen, though they hoped to push past those fears.

"Internally this was an exciting development, but at the same time it concerned us," Scragnog said. "Throughout all of this we knew it could end at any point."

Star Trek: Bridge Crew released its own Star Trek: The Next Generation-themed expansion earlier this year.

The Stage-9 team reportedly offered to make several concessions to show that it was not trying to invade Star Trek: Bridge Crew's space, including removing all virtual reality capabilities, changing the ship so that it would not specifically be the Enterprise, and even changing the name of the project, which is a reference to Paramount Stage 9, which was used in the filming of Star Trek: The Next Generation and several other Star Trek productions.

In 2016, following a legal fight with the creators of the Star Trek: Axanar fan film, CBS and Paramount released their official guidelines for fan-created Star Trek content. In retrospect, these guidelines, which were released after decades of non-involvement with the Star Trek fan content community, were likely drafted and released in preparation for the return of the Star Trek franchise on CBS All Access, beginning with Star Trek: Discovery.

Those guidelines state that "CBS and Paramount Pictures will not object to, or take legal action against, Star Trek fan productions that are non-professional and amateur." The Stage-9 team believes it fell under that protected banner, but it seems CBS disagrees.

What do you think of the shut down of Stage-9? Let us know in the comments!