From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
Like Neil, Blake's 7 is the only thing of which I'd call myself a fan. In my case I think there are two major elements:
(1) the impressionable age at which I first saw the series (under 10)
(2) the believable nastiness of the background, and its relevance to the here and now
I was 14 when I first saw it, when the first episode was broadcast. 2nd January 1978 - I was there! And hooked from the start. I was devising possible plots by the end of the 3rd Season (I spent my school lunch hour birwatching walks mapping out an entire 4th season, which was absolutely nothing like the real 4th Season we eventually got) and I was writing my first fanfic while the 4th Season was being broadcast. I was also heavily into Dr Who at the time, but never had any inclination to devise any fanfic for that. Nor had I any comparable leanings in that direction for Star Trek, though I would usually watch it whenever it was on.
I did construct (in my horrible teenaged mind) a space opera fantasy which owed a lot to Star Wars and Flash Gordon and freely pillaged both, though it was never written down, and I entertained some possible plot ideas for Grange Hill (I can't believe I'm confessing to this!) but not with the actual characters in the series. Again, never comitted to paper.
I can't really say what made B7 so special. The 'believable nastiness' was probably a factor, but that was just one element of realism in a lot of blatantly unrealistic stuff (like the Top Security gate in Seek-Locate-Destroy that couldn't keep out a stray sheep). The series seemed to offer a lot of plot possibilities, but then so did other SF shows. Thinking about it, it may have been the violence that tipped the balance. Killing people is intrinsic to B7 in a way that it isn't to Who or Trek (or Grange Hill). B7 almost justifies violence as a legitimate means to an end. It presumes conflict to be the underlying basis of virtually all interpersonal relations. That rings just as true to me now as it did back then.
What a belligerent little sod I am...
Neil
(For those who are wondering, Grange Hill was a BBC series set in a bog standard comprehensive school. There was a lot of unrealistic and boring stuff about a load of kids, and a bit of very unrealistic but somehow gripping stuff in the staff room. If nothing else I could sit and drool over the art teacher.)
What I most like about the series is the characters, but there are plenty of series with similar believably mixed characters, and they haven't drawn me in in the same way.
Why write fanfiction? In my case, purely because I saw good fanfiction on the web last April/May, and thought 'hey, I can do that!' and 'that looks like fun'. Probably nothing to do with the series at all, except that
(IMO)
it appears to spawn better fanfic, on average, than other series. I've not come up with an explanation for this observation.
Tavia