TheAlmanac wrote:
If all we get for the foreseeable future are Abramsverse movies, that shift will probably continue, but that sort of...I don't know, archaeological impetus just doesn't define ST fandom the way it does DW fandom, and as a big fan of both franchises, I'd say the difference in approach seems pretty evident.
|
The differences between the two fandoms are interesting, and I've long wondered
why the two fandoms are so vastly different. The conclusions I've come to:
1)
Doctor Who has no Roddenberry-like figure. Yes,
Who fans can talk about different producers and different script editors, but
Star Trek is, somewhat inaccurately, seen as Roddenberry's baby, and fandom has long assigned him credit for things he had little, if any, involvement in.
Who fandom recognizes the differences between the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era and the Graham Williams era and would never assign the strengths and failures of one to the other, for instance, but many
Star Trek fans are confused as to the extent of Roddenberry's involvement in the Animated Series and the films, and Roddenberry's own historical revisionism over the years muddied the waters. As an example, I just read an article about how Roddenberry insisted that the computer used in
Star Trek IV be a Macintosh
because Roddenberry owned one of the first Mac Pluses, yet the problem with that is that Roddenberry's involvement in the film was nil, and Roddenberry could insist all he wanted, but the decision was ultimately up to Nimoy and Bennett. The end result --
Who fans have tended to be more engaged with the history of their series, because their series
has a history, while
Trek fans aren't as engaged with the history of their series.
2) The keepers of the
Who flame during the Interregnums were fans, and from those keepers the creators of new
Who were drawn -- Paul Cornell, Russell T. Davies, Steven Moffatt -- which gives
Who a broader link to its past because, going back to the first point,
Who fandom is more aware of its past.
Trek doesn't have that same connection between the professionals and the fandom, the lines aren't as blurred. And until recently, the people producing
Trek have shown very little awareness for anything going on outside their boxes. The ancillary products seem to be of more value in
Who, while in
Trek there's a feeling of disposability.
2A) As a corollary... Ian Levine was never in a position to say that
Doctor Who Magazine didn't count, while Richard Arnold was empowered to be narrow-minded and fundamentalist about what counted and what didn't. The different perceptions of canon between the two fandoms has some effect on the
shape of fandom. If, as is the case in
Star Trek, you know that some things don't count officially, there's an unspoken message that it's not
important, or it can be skipped.
3)
Doctor Who fans start at an earlier age, so there's a childhood nostalgia factor attached to
Doctor Who in the minds of many fans, which
Star Trek, by and large, seems not to have. Also,
Doctor Who is a family program, while
Star Trek is ghettoized into the science-fiction genre. Thus,
Who fandom is more socially acceptable, while
Star Trek fandom is niche.
I, personally, would prefer a
Star Trek fandom that were more like
Doctor Who fandom. I wonder where
Star Trek's Lance Parkin or Paul Cornell is. Or, for that matter, where its Lawrence Miles is. We do have our Craig Hintons, though. (Mollmann, I'm looking at you.) But I also accept that
Star Trek fandom is a vastly different beast than
Who fandom. There's a lot of inertia in
Star Trek fandom, a lot of institutionalization.
Vive la difference.
TheAlmanac wrote:
Christopher wrote:
^There have been plenty of Trek novels and comics filling in gaps between episodes and/or movies.
|
Of course there are, but Doctor Who squeezes them in everywhere--even taking televised stories which seem to lead directly into each other and interpreting them so that additional stories can still be shoved in between. |
Oh, yeah. Like the fifth Doctor/Peri non-gap. If you take the novels and the audios, there's roughly ten years for the Doctor and Peri between "Planet of Fire" and "The Caves of Androzani."
Warmonger itself spans about five years, and
The Kingmaker spans two. Which means that Peri must be in her early-30s by "Mindwarp."
|
I don't think of Star Trek tie-ins as getting to that level of narrative insertion.
|
I used to think that
Prime Directive was a little problematic. That's probably the worst-case scenario, though.