The Great Blake's 7 Fannish Outrage Game!

[aeshna_uk]

There has, of late, been a fair amount of fannish wailing and rending of garments over certain developments in Torchwood: Children of Earth, protests that certain things Should Not Be Done on TV shows where people might have some sort of emotional investment in the characters. Things that, frankly, I have absolutely no problem with whatsoever! But then I thought that, actually, that might have something to do with my early exposure to genre shows, back in the days when spoilers meant reading the Radio Times (which we didn't get). I can remember being upset when Adric died (hey, I was 11!), and then there was the great and glorious (see previous age disclaimer) Blake's 7....

So, here's a fun game! Imagine, if you will, that the same level of fannish entitlement computer and internet access existed back in the days when B7 was first airing. What online reactions and campaigns could we expect to see to each character death? Each replacement character? The destruction of familiar sets? Separations? Solo stories? Random blondes? Never mind the way it all ended! I'll admit to having only hazy memories of much of it, but I know there are folks out there who are much more familiar with it than I am.

Thoughts, rants, wails, rended garments (any of which may, or may not, bear a passing resemblance to certain more recent fannish storms), etc in comments, please. Go on, you know you want to. ;)

(Please feel free to pass on.... :))

Comments

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

Or we can go all Star Trek and decry the loss of a strong female figure in Tasha Yar and go on about how it proves that Trek is misogynistic. And send knickers or something.

Funny thing about Adric dying was that I was more shocked that a companion was killed, rather than upset about it being Adric (who was annoying - I was 14). I remember being gobsmacked to hell and then having the 'silent' credits after that was just like OMG they really did that!

Then there was B5; Marcus and Kosh and a whole host of others went out in a blaze of - well nothing really. And don't even get me started on Highlander! I suppose I can't really count that as fandom on t'interwebs had taken off by then, albeit on a lot smaller scale. Seeing the state of some of the batshit TW fans makes me all nostalgic for Clan Denial and the outcry about Richie - in comparison Clan Denial was full of very sensible and sane people. *snicker* Oh yeah, I was a member...

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

Marcus Is Not Dead. He's just... very chilly. ;)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

...and he wants to get out of this *box*! =:o>

(Has anyone rediscovered the tape of that yet? Put it up on YouTube, perchance? [GOES HUNTING] )

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

My favourite recent example was the penultimate episode of Sarah Connor Chronicles where Derek just walks into the same room as a Terminator and it just shoots him through the head before he has a chance to react and carries on without missing a beat. Brutal, casual and so plausible.

[aeshna_uk]

Hee! I have the nasty feeling that sending knickers to Roddenberry might have given him entirely the wrong idea.... ;)

B5 and HL were both internet-era, though on a much smaller scale - I was never one of the B5 mega-fans but I can remember all the fuss when, after months of the American fans chucking spoilers around with abandon, British TV overtook them for a few episodes and things got a tad messy! ;) Was never into HL but while I've heard of the ructions over Richie, it sounds as though things were saner than with Ianto. Mind you, I guess there were other major slash pairings in that fandom, and there are few who wouldn't appear sane compared to some of the nutters currently running around!

[parmanya.livejournal.com]

Actually, if we're talking about internet-era fandoms, I think a better equivalent would be "La Femme Nikita"'s 6th season.
This was a fandom where some of the writing staff actually hung out on the alt.fan.* newsgroup, and literally would put in small things that the fans had requested (I kid you not, and was confirmed).
And then, the final season made a "lie" out of all the things fans had invested in during the previous 5, killed off several loved characters, made you hate others, and also had plot-points that were *directly contradicted* by previous episodes (camera-POV-omniscient, so it wasn't just character-perspective issues). They left scorched earth behind, while destroying the aspects that fans had loved - and I think that's how people are feeling in regards to COE. Just my $0.02; ymmv and all that.
Thank you for this thought-provoking thread!

[aeshna_uk]

Not a show I'm familiar with at all, but it sounds like a good example of why the writing and the fan sides of a show really should be kept utterly separate - which is, I think, one of the great strengths of TW/DW, that they're aware of fandom but deliberately choose to ignore it. Which makes sense (and is certainly what I'd do in their situation!) - the current creative teams are long-time fans themselves and likely well aware of some of the mindsets involved. They're not going to get flattered by the attention!

It sounds like LFM had a messy ending there and was rightly loathed for it, but CoE followed on quite nicely from previous series, for me. And it's not as if it was hated by everybody in fandom - I'm a TW fan, always have been, saw the cinematic previews for s1 and s3, was writing fanfic for the show 6 months before there was a show, and I bloody loved it: no scorched earth issues there! :) Some fans like some aspects, some like others, but for me, at least, the fundamentals are still there and the show is now in a position to change and evolve to suit its new audience. And the non-fannish viewers - who are, after all, the vast majority and the target audience - seemed to love it!

(Note: I like both slash and het, though I usually write gen. For me, the show is about Jack and his immortality, about Gwen and her (and Rhys) becoming a part of his world, and about the Institute itself over time - I adore the underlying sense of history to it, the fact that the 'team' is a fluid and ever-changing thing. And just as it has the history, it has a future, and I'd quite like to see it evolve away from the "five people in a Cardiff basement" format (much as I loved the first two series) into something bigger and more BBC1-friendly. And new fans will come and some old ones go and that's just the way it should be... :))

Thank you for this thought-provoking thread!

You're welcome. :) It just seems so odd to me that a lot of what I found so exciting about the shows I grew up with - the real sense of danger, the fact that things did change and characters die - are now considered such utter no-nos by some online. But if everything always remains the same, it just makes the show dull and the characters uninvolving.