The Campaign Craze
Buffy, Star Trek, Roswell... The Sentinel? When fandoms attack.
      by Rachel Hyland

Star Trek: The Original Series

Some mock the Sixties. Some look back in perplexity at a time that allowed excessive facial hair, Gomer Pyle, and the musical stylings of Jan and Dean. Little do these self-same mockers realise just how grateful they should be to the Decade of Peace, Love and Mungbeans. Not for the facial hair, that idiot soldier or the surfer tunes, of course, but for a much higher, much nobler reason: protests. The sit-ins, the hunger strikes, the boycotts, they were everywhere. But while the hip, swingin' kids were protesting Vietnam and US involvement in Cuba -- and the quartet practiced in the Park -- there were others who were singing songs, not about answers blowing in the wind, but of answers somewhere out in the depths of space. And their rallying cry? "Save Star Trek."

It all began, so legend has it, with one woman who had a dream. Her name was Bjo Trimble, and she, together with her husband John, had a simple idea. Deluge the network executives that had decided to cancel the already-cult Star Trek, after a mere two seasons, and make 'em put it back on again, dammit! And, what do you know, Trimble's carefully orchestrated campaign worked. The show returned for a third season, enough to see it into reruns, and thence into a phenomenon. Now, almost twenty-five years, eight movies and three popular spin-offs later, with billions earned in merchandising and ticket-sales alone, Paramount should be figuratively worshipping at the feet of the woman who made it all possible.

Crusade for more hotties on TV.

And who made others dare to dream.

Where once a fan offensive of the sort that caused a NASA shuttle to be named Enterprise was rare, and only undertaken for the most extraordinary of TV shows, it is now, thanks to the Internet, becoming almost the norm. Yes, even in these cynical, Millennial times, the spirit of optimism that brought the Klingons out of retirement (with very different foreheads) lives on through a plethora of similar, though not nearly as revolutionary, campaigns. "Save Forever Knight." The redundantly-named "Crusade to Save Crusade." The just plain redundant "Support Our Sentinel." All were enthusiastically endorsed by stricken fans of these canceled shows, and all managed varying degrees of success. Forever Knight's main characters are all dead. Crusade is not only dead but way the hell and gone. And The Sentinel, story of a sense-enhanced cop who wears a lot of plaid shirts, was renewed by executives at the SciFi Channel as a mid-season replacement this year. The world is cruel.

Though not as cruel, some would suggest, as the copyright lawyers it is populated with. Despite the fact that they are just doing their jobs -- and all of the good press that Dylan McDermott and Gil Bellows have brought to the legal profession -- these Agents of Evil are considered Public Enemy Number... er... Fourteen or so. Just behind Barney, and a little ahead of the creator of Beanie Babies. Incensed Buffy fans, cranky about the continued shutdown of many of their favourite sites, have vowed to strike back against such mean-spirited tyranny. Meanwhile, Roswell fans conduct the world's first Condiment Campaign, bombarding WB executives with bottles of Tabasco sauce ('cause they like Bloody Marys) to stave off its disappearance, and in an alternate reality, Trekkies and -ers everywhere make a bid to rescue their beloved idols from the blackhole to which they have been relegated.

Cult show devotees everywhere have refused to go gently into that only-found-in-syndication night, and they rage, rage against the cancellation of their shows with untrammeled enthusiasm. And, as Bjo and her ilk so ably demonstrated, there is no power on this Earth stronger than the collective energy of thousands of rabid genre fans...

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