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ellarienMy stray package was waiting for me when I got back from lunch; the first sixteen episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in a slim package of three double-sided DVDs.
It's hard to explain why I love this show so much; I admit it's corny, and relies heavily on stock footage, and is generally regarded as strictly kids' stuff. I first encountered it when I was in my mid-twenties, living alone for the first time with a tiny old B+W TV that had no channel presets at all, just a tuning knob on the side. Channel 4 showed it at 1pm on Sundays, and I got adept at cooking my Sunday lunch in the commercial breaks. It was a fairly stressful time in my life, and the show -- silliness and all -- was my joy and delight. It had an adventure hero who was a scientist! It had characters who cared about and respected each other, without getting gooey about it. (That made a nice change from the endless squabbling and permanent annoying characters on Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, which had preceded Voyage in the same time slot.) And cool toys! And sea monsters!
It was also the only show that ever inspired me to fanfic, which meant that the characters stayed in my head for years after that Channel 4 run ended.
I got cable in London so I could see it again on the Sci-Fi Channel. Sadly, they cut it to pieces to fit in more empty commercial breaks -- they weren't actually selling much advertizing at the time, but the holes had to be there -- and the version on the US Sci-Fi channel that I taped when I moved to Tucson was even worse. It always seemed to be the little bits of character development that got snipped, not the endless stock shots or fights in the missile room. I've been waiting and hoping for these DVDs for a long, long time.
It's hard to explain why I love this show so much; I admit it's corny, and relies heavily on stock footage, and is generally regarded as strictly kids' stuff. I first encountered it when I was in my mid-twenties, living alone for the first time with a tiny old B+W TV that had no channel presets at all, just a tuning knob on the side. Channel 4 showed it at 1pm on Sundays, and I got adept at cooking my Sunday lunch in the commercial breaks. It was a fairly stressful time in my life, and the show -- silliness and all -- was my joy and delight. It had an adventure hero who was a scientist! It had characters who cared about and respected each other, without getting gooey about it. (That made a nice change from the endless squabbling and permanent annoying characters on Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, which had preceded Voyage in the same time slot.) And cool toys! And sea monsters!
It was also the only show that ever inspired me to fanfic, which meant that the characters stayed in my head for years after that Channel 4 run ended.
I got cable in London so I could see it again on the Sci-Fi Channel. Sadly, they cut it to pieces to fit in more empty commercial breaks -- they weren't actually selling much advertizing at the time, but the holes had to be there -- and the version on the US Sci-Fi channel that I taped when I moved to Tucson was even worse. It always seemed to be the little bits of character development that got snipped, not the endless stock shots or fights in the missile room. I've been waiting and hoping for these DVDs for a long, long time.
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Date: 2006-03-02 09:46 am (UTC)I've never been closely involved with 'Voyage' fandom, though I know some British fans. ('Blake's Seven' and 'Professionals' fandom, yes, because my mates were running them in the early days.) For my sins I even helped run a fanzine review zine (confusingly called 'Critical Mass') back in the early 80s. My mate Jean (aka Ina McAllan, aka Oriole Alma Throckmorton) and I published 'Blake's Seven', 'The Professionals' and most recently 'Garrison's Gorillas' fiction fanzines over a 20 year period. However, stuff we didn't publish mainly went into multi-fandom zines - and that was where I published some 'Voyage' (comic stuff from 2nd,3rd and 4th season) and 'UFO' and 'Captain Scarlet' and even, lord help me, 'V'. Some of it was straight and some of it was slash. (We set what was probably a precedent by publishing 'Gorilla Warfare' - a Garrison's Gorillas fanzine in a long slash version and a shorter straight one.) I'm afraid we were and are terribly picky about fanfic - demanding decent English, a plot, and characterisation that does not do too much damage to the originals...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-03 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-03 09:29 am (UTC)I've always found that the best way to deal with this is to publish only really good stories. At that point the good writers start sending stories to you - and the good writers will take criticism, though sometimes there are people with really good ideas but so many niggly faults you don't know where to start. ("Ann, you use too many adjectives." "What's an adjective." "It's a word that describes a noun." "What's a noun?")
I haven't had time to explore the website yet, but will definitely do so. I always like to read decent fan fiction.