“I have no love for Paramount,” said Harlan Ellison, in an interview with Maggie Thompson, printed in Sci-Fi Universe in June 1995. “Paramount is not a studio…steeped in ethical behavior...The fanatics who feed off that whole money-making Trek franchise, who live it and breathe it, who don't merely watch the show, are to me the most pathetic creatures in the world; suckers being mulcted by venal Paramount, publishers of garbage novels with stock characters, hustlers and inheritors of Roddenberry's scam, and cult-like gurus who prey on Star Trek obsessives and Trekkies and Trekkers and Treksters and Trekoids and Treknoids and Trekiloids and Diploids and Dippies. They're like those sad couch potatoes who worship at the TV altars of The 700 Club and Home Shopping Channel, which are one and the same, whether the viewers are being fleeced in the name of Consumerism or Jesus. They are…absolutely the most pathetic creatures in the world. I mean, they talk about a TV series as if it were real life. They wear damned Star Trek uniforms. People change their names so they have the same names as the characters. Doesn't anyone else see the resemblance this all bears to the Branch Davidians or the Jonestown cults?”
