I created this blog back in July and I was going to write something profound regularly but after 7 months there was just one post which I just deleted.
So here I am, back with good intentions. Seeing as how this was called the Wormhole Connection, I should really discuss things to do with wormholes here.
Let me see, what and where do we encounter wormholes? I think I entered one back in 1964.
Most predominantly the first time I heard about wormholes was in Star Trek. Captain Sisko, Captain Janeway and the Borg all used them to get around the galaxy and to cover unimaginable distances. I used them to get from a dull boring existence as a mediocre human on planet Earth, to reach the fantastic worlds of science fiction.
Star Trek was the first ever scifi TV show I saw. I was an impressionable child in my early teens and Star Trek - and more importantly Mr. Spock - took me where no genre had taken me before... into the wonderful universe of scifi. My parents hated it and thought it was rubbish. Because they hated it I rebelled and loved it even more. I did chores and anything that would get me an hour per week with my favorite TV show. When Star Trek was cancelled I was heartbroken. I couldn't imagine any studio could be so cruel. I joined the hordes of people from around the world who wrote to paramount protesting the cancellation. But nothing the fans said or did put Star Trek back on TV - until years later.
I turned to books. John Wyndham fueled my passion even more. I first read Day of the Triffids as a 15 year old and I was mesmerized. I read every other Wyndham book over and over, never tiring of the stories. I moved on to Asimov, Silverberg, Heinlen and many others. All of them carried me to galaxies far, far away. I relished TV shows like My Favorite Martian, The Jetsons, Space 1999, Thunderbirds, Lost in Space, Battlestar Gallactica (the original version), Earth 2, Alien Nation, Babylon 5, Earth Final Conflict, Andromeda and of course all the different Star Trek series. By the time these shows began to appear I was an adult and married. I had children of my own but the embers of scifi glowed in my soul. I looked to the heavens and imagined living on planets that circled the stars. I played with my children and built Leggo models of space ships and alien bases. One of the most special times I had with my 2 sons was a six month period in the early 80's when we spent hours and hours painting and putting together the Millenium Falcon. It is a time that I treasue like none other during their childhood and it was scifi that drew us together.
When STTNG (which IMHO awesome) came along I was hooked from the first episode. I loved the Enterprise, and was fascinated by Data although somewhat disappointed by the lack of real alien looking aliens. I eagerly watched reruns of anything that even hinted of being scifi. I think I am the only human on planet Earth who has detailed, scaled drawings of many of the decks of the starship Enterprise. These are not commercial drawings - oh no! This was my own imagination at work. Each deck was painstakingly drawn on a flip chart page. About the only thing I had trouble with was the turbolift. I could not work out how to render a transporter that moved in 2 planes. My kids thought I was nuts I'm sure. But that didn't deter me and eventually they chimed in with their own ideas of what would occupy a certain space.
Books were a hobby and a treasured pasttime. I loved the way authors controlled where the characters went, what they did and how they made them act. Their descriptive passages fired my imagination and many a time I would read into the small hours of the morning just to get to the end of the book. I love books like that and it is such a credit to the author to have that ability to carry the reader on the journey. I tried writing but always got bogged down in the minutia. I also found that although a writer takes the reader on a journey, the characters often take the writer where they want to go and not the other way round. That was definitely a surprise.
In the late 70's and early 80's along came great movies like Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Alien, Close Enounters and the Star Trek movies. The 70's 80's and 90's were great years for scifi movies. When I moved to the USA in 1989 I was excited to get my first satellite dish specifically so I could access the Sci-Fi channel. For a scifi fan in the 90's, it was an exciting channel to watch but after 2001 things changed. Sci-Fi Channel lost their way and forgot that their network was aimed at sci-fi fans. They wandered off into horror, the occult, reality series, animated porn and the worst offense - wrestling for pity's sake ... there was very little sci-fi at all and remains so today. Anything they got their hands on was dead within 2 years. About the only exception was The New Adventures of Superman - that held the prime time 6pm time slot for a number of years.
I am ever so thankful to the likes of Speilberg, Lucas and Henson. Without Star Wars we would never have had the miracle that is now Industrial Light and Magic. Things from out of this world improved dramatically with the advent of Star Wars and the Trek movies, Close Encounters and then along came Henson and Dark Crystal and Farscape. The Henson Creature Shop has done more in 5 years to advance the reality factor of alien costuming than anything and anyone in the past 20 years.
It is somewhat of an irony that I was one of the fans that wrote to Paramount from Australia in the late 1960s begging them to put Star Trek back on TV. Thirty years later I found myself involved in what was to become one of the most successful show revival campaigns in television history. I became lucky enough to be part of the save Farscape campaign in 2003. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine where a simple letter writing campaign would lead me. It ultimately led to Burbank, a meeting with the Farscape cast and producers and being given the distinct honor of presenting a lifetime achievement award to Brian Henson from all of the Farscape fans.
Farscape was over almost 4 years ago but the show still lives on the fans' imaginations, in syndication and in the many conventions that come around every year. The Farscape cast have remained as faithful to the fans as they are to them. It is a very unique bond that we (the fans) all share with these remarkable people - and remarkable they are, every one of them. Never in the history of Television or the Theater has there been this kind of bond between the cast, producers and fans. I have been a fan of many other shows - Stargate, Roswell, Babylon 5, Star Trek and Battlestar Gallactica (the original version - I hate the current BSG and will not watch it because it's been corrupted) ... none of these shows have the same type of relationship with the show's casts and producers and fandoms that Farscape has had and still has.
So here I am in the wormhole wondering where this will take me next. I must remain focused - as the wormhole aliens cautioned John Crichton when navigating wormholes - because if I am not, I may end up in an unrealized reality that has nothing to do with sci-fi..
