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

Star Trek's Hikaru Sulu (George Takei).

The Excelsior Campaign, which is attempting to get Trek's under-utilised Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) back into the captain's chair, is now underway, and has already gained itself a high profile. Behind the campaign is Russ Haslage, founder of The International Federation of Trekkers, a thousands-strong fan organisation whose delightfully Shockwave-y website details their plans to launch a new, more traditional Trek series. A "Roddenberry Trek series," as he and other adherents to the cause have deemed to call it.

"It was just something I was seeing in the last half of last year: The Death of Star Trek," says Haslage, fresh from picking up another batch of Excelsior Campaign T-shirts. "And that something that has - well, used to have -- a bright look on the future could be dead just seemed so wrong to me. George had been saying at conventions for years, 'Wouldn't it be neat to get some of us who were on the show back in the old days back on TV?' and I thought, yeah, that would be neat. So we started the Excelsior campaign, to bring back a more Roddenberry-style Star Trek."

So what is that Roddenberry-style show? "One that would show the future as a much brighter place where human greed and frailty have been overcome, and together we can accomplish wonderful things," Haslage proclaims, after a moment's thought. "With The Original Series and The Next Generation, you left an episode feeling good that the future's gonna be okay. But the later shows..." he trails off. "It's a big message of depression. I thought I was alone in thinking that, but then I started talking to other fans, and they felt the same way." Indeed. Haslage's gripe with the current regime is the tendency of producers to break the Prime Directive, such as in the last movie, Insurrection. "Roddenberry would have blown things up before he let that even get produced," he says in disgust.

James T. Kirk: The bad boy of Trek.

The assertion that Kirk himself was not above breaking the Federation's fabled non-interference law he meets with scorn. "Yeah, but you could learn something from it. I mean, he went to a planet where there was slavery, and he stopped the slavery. It made you think about slavery, or about greed, or, ya know, something." And what of Captain Kirk? Can Haslage see a role for ol' James T. in this new production, should it occur? "Well, no, I don't see any chance of that," he chuckles. "Ya know, when we were in LA," he continues, eagerly recounting a favourite tale, "George was signing autographs, and when Bill came in to the place... they wouldn't speak to each other. Bill just turned his head the other way and walked out of the room. So, no, we're probably not going to see Kirk on board." So, who would make up this intrepid crew of Excelsior-ites?

"Nichelle Nichols is definitely interested in the project," says Haslage excitedly. "She wants to be Ambassador Uhura, in a recurring role. Grace Lee Whitney [Yeoman Janice Rand from the original series] is involved, and George wants Walter [Koenig, who played Chekov] to be the First Officer. So he's in charge of getting Walter to sign on." Takei is not, however, in charge of anything else in the campaign, Haslage is quick to assure. "When George gets involved with the campaign, organises press conferences, or makes speeches to fans, it's because he's a nice guy. This thing is started by fans, controlled by fans, and if he gets involved, he does it as an outside person. He does it because he was asked to. In doing what we do we want to make it really clear to Paramount that this is a fan group running this, and not George. We don't want it to seem like Richard Hatch in the Battlestar Galactica campaign. With Richard Hatch, it looks like what it is: some star causing a stir to get himself a job. But in George's case, he's such a wonderful guy... the kind of guy who knows where his money comes from. He's made money from the fans of the show -- okay, probably not really from the show, but in the movies. The fans paid money to see the movies, and he really appreciates that. When fans have wanted autographs, no matter how long it took, I've seen him sit there for hours, just signing his name."

Sulu in his Original Series days.

And his grateful fans return the favour in kind. Thousands have joined the effort to bring back the U.S.S. Excelsior, and hundreds demonstrated outside Paramount studio lots and offices in a recent show of support for the project that was, perhaps, less than convincing. "Well, I'll be honest with you," says Haslage ruefully. "Before the rallies, Vegas was giving us 75% odds of success [at getting the new show on the air]. After the rallies, it's 60%." The reason for this is the lackluster showing in Los Angeles, the city expected to host at least a thousand fanatical Excelsior followers. "We had about thirty people show up at Los Angeles," Haslage reports. "LA was a disappointment. But we had 12 rallies all over the country, and we did some great regional rallies. Columbus, Ohio, was a particular success. What was interesting about the one in LA is that of the thirty people there, twenty-eight were from far away. Only two of them were from the LA area. LA has three million people! What that tells us is that our national campaign was great, but that promotion on the local level... well, let's just say, we're gonna give that guy a different job, next time."

And there will be a next time. "We only started in January. We're in Week 14 now, and we have over five thousand people on our mailing list. We aim to assemble twenty thousand fans, get them to tell Paramount that they want a more Roddenberry style of Star Trek, and that the most logical avenue for that is through Sulu and Excelsior. We're aiming to make another big push in August or September, really focus the letters all in a couple of weeks, get their attention. Although, they've been sent 2200 some-odd letters already, and they told reporters they'd received 'a stack.' I kept thinking: that's a pretty big stack. But," he continues philosophically, "it took Bjo ten years; we've only been at it three months."

The kind of stamina required to continue on with a campaign of this kind, despite the naysayers and against all the odds (from Vegas, no less!), is nothing if not extraordinary. But when their favourite genre show is on the line, then fans will pull out all the stops to make sure that their voices are heard. Or so that even a whisper of their pain might make it to the right people... especially if those people are at 20th Century Fox...

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