Caution Advisory: The article may contain controversial opinions and observations.
From the Toronto Star
Can sci-fi fans face the future?
ROB SALEM
Mar. 6, 2005. 09:31 AM
From mailing bras to starting malicious Internet rumours, devoted viewers try all sorts of things to protect what they love.
Yesterday was her 30th birthday, but the celebration was likely somewhat muted ... because yesterday was also Jolene Blalock's last day in outer space.
Star Trek fans — Trekkies, as they are somewhat grudgingly known — predictably reacted with outrage and indignation to last month's announced cancellation of the current spinoff series, Enterprise.
On Friday, Feb. 25, a couple hundred of them gathered outside Paramount Studios in L.A., capping a week of sign-waving, banner-bearing protest, from New York to L.A. and as far away as Germany, Israel and the U.K.
Inside the studio gates, on the Enterprise soundstages, the mood was one more of subdued resignation, as the cast and crew — some of them Star Trek veterans of 18 years — prepared to start filming the series' final episode, which wrapped yesterday and is scheduled to air May 13.
"It is sad," related Blalock earlier that week. "I think most of us here are still in active denial. But you've got to know, going in, that these last few days are going to be highly emotional."
To the fans, perhaps a startling admission from the woman they have come to know as the ostensibly emotionless Vulcan, T'Pol.
But then, being a Star Trek fan has never been about having a firm grip on reality.
A strong sense of community, yes. Admirably utopian ideals of inclusion and tolerance and benevolent technology ... absolutely, yes. A smug, blindly righteous sense of entitlement when it comes to their shared obsession ... yes, of course. That's what makes them the acknowledged gold standard of cult and genre fandom.
But that isn't going to save their show. Not this time, anyway.
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Truth be told, not even the Trekkies have been particularly enthusiastic about Enterprise, a prequel series set during the formative days of Star Trek's galactic "Federation," a hundred years prior to the original adventures of Capt. James T. Kirk and his intrepid crew.
Even Bjo Trimble, the mother of all Trekkies, the original fan activist who "saved" the 1960s' Star Trek with a then-unprecedented letter campaign, and who then spearheaded the successful initiative to have the first NASA space shuttle officially dubbed "Enterprise" ... even she has gone on record as one of Enterprise's earliest and harshest critics.
"Get someone who knows Trek to write the scripts," she famously complained. "Get someone who knows Trek to direct ... but do you think Paramount has the good sense to see this? Nah!"
"I don't think you can just throw anything out there and expect people to swallow it," agrees Blalock. "There is Trek lore and Trek history to be followed and adhered to."
A former fan herself (her favourite character as a kid was, not surprisingly, Mr. Spock), the actress, despite her vested interest, has never been shy about dissing her own show.
"I mean, we started out with 13 million viewers on the pilot, and we somehow managed to drive 11 million of them away."
Ironically, things had improved dramatically — in terms of content, if not resultant ratings — in this fourth and final season, under the stewardship of producer and self-confessed Trek geek Manny Coto, who brought back a lot of the self-referencing retro continuity the hardcore fan just can't get enough of.
"That was a treat, a joy to do," Blalock enthuses. "It was an unexpected surprise to have the scripts that we did (this season). And I am grateful and thankful for that. It was fun to come to work again.
"And it was certainly much better than spending another season doing what we had been doing. It said a lot about the potential of the show."
There is an awkward silence when the subject of the final episode is broached. "I don't know where to begin with that one," she finally stammers. "The final episode is ... appalling."
She feels sorry for the fans. "I really am touched by their outpour of support, and their display of passion for the show. I was sort of caught off-guard. I didn't know that they were so adamant.
"But, you know, they really aren't saying anything new. They're just saying it louder."
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The Enterprise protests, however sincere and passionate, have fallen on deaf ears — even the pointy ones within the Trekkie community. The turnout for the Los Angeles rally was a mere fraction of the number of fans who will routinely line up for hours for an autograph from any anonymous alien actor at even the smallest Star Trek convention.
There have been full-page ads in showbiz trade papers, letter-writing and Internet campaigns, and an amusingly ambitious fundraising effort intent on raising the $36 million required to underwrite another season themselves (one fan organization claims to have already collected more than $60,000 U.S., with $3 million more promised from "anonymous sources" — all together not quite enough to keep the show going for even two more episodes).
The emphasis has been placed on the hopes of a pickup by the Sci Fi Channel, the genre-dedicated American cable service analogous to our own Space: The Imagination Station. And indeed Sci Fi would appear to be the logical second home of an extended Enterprise run — until one takes into account the fact that, historically, the channel has run only the syndicated original episodes of the 1960s Star Trek, and none of its subsequent spinoffs.
Fans tend to gloss over the realities of the business, like the fact that the four Star Trek franchise series are produced and owned by Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS and several cable services ... none of which is the Sci Fi Channel, which is in fact part of the GE-owned NBC Universal conglomerate.
So a deal would be in nobody's corporate interests. The bottom-line decision has already been made to focus on the moribund Star Trek movie franchise. A script has been commissioned (from Band Of Brothers scribe Eric Jendresen) for an 11th Star Trek film, also a prequel, supposedly set between the Enterprise era and the original adventures of Capt. Kirk.
The idea being, one can fairly safely deduce, to re-purpose expensive existing props and sets while hiring an all-new cast of unknowns, rather than pay the inflated fees routinely demanded by established series actors.
Enterprise itself will survive, on DVD — the initial release is cannily scheduled days before the final episode's air date — and also in television syndication, where it has already been pre-sold in 49 of 50 major U.S. markets, and here in Canada on Space.
As for the Sci Fi Channel, well, whatever money they have is being spent on shows in which they have an active interest, such as the Farscape miniseries and the reborn Battlestar Galactica ...
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Genre television has a long history of proactive protest. Following in the fannish footsteps of Bjo Trimble, there have been several similar, if smaller successes since: the restoration of Quantum Leap (soon to be revived yet again as an all-new series); UPN's adoption of Buffy The Vampire Slayer; the feature-film resurrection of creator Joss Whedon's also-cancelled Firefly (the film, Serenity, premieres Sept. 30), the dramatic re-invention of Battlestar Galactica ... though to be fair, in most of these latter cases, fan action was really only partly responsible.
Not so the rebirth of the fan-favourite Farscape, which was axed abruptly in 2002 by the originating Sci Fi Channel, also at the end of its fourth season — and, much to viewers' chagrin, at the point of a very provocative cliff-hanger plot turn.
The series makes a miraculous return (to Canada — it has already aired in the States) two weeks from now, March 25 and 26, on Space. A two-part miniseries, Peacekeeper Wars, will answer all the unanswered questions and give the fans some well-earned closure.
"This special television event would not be a reality were it not for the tireless, unwavering efforts of the Farscape fans," acknowledges director and executive producer Brian Henson. "They believed that the epic story we were telling was something special and deserved a proper ending."
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`The person who sits there on the Internet attacking you is the first person to come up to you at a convention and love you.'
Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff, on sci-fi fans
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