"It All Started With a Big... Borg?"

Did today's Geek Revolution really all stem from Locutus and "Fire!"?



This was my most recent guest blog over at startrek.com, on June 20 — (with new mashup art!) and I just wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to see it. It elaborates on a thread I got into on a podcast brainstorm recently... and really stuck with me.

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All right— I have a theory to propose. See what you think. It’s pretty deep, so hang with me:

Ahem.

For the current “geek revolution” that permeates our culture and brought all things “genre” to the mainstream of America ….

... we can thank Next Generation showrunner Michael Piller. And his insecurities.

Yep, I think it was the late, great executive producer of TNG (left) who set in motion events that led to all the fan-love that’s sweeping the country (and a lot of corporate board rooms to boot).  After the last round of CBS’s incredible TNG Blu-ray remasters and their Fathom Events theater showcase, well… my mind started to put 2 and 2 together one night while I was yakking away as a guest on a Trek podcast.

And it hit me like a ton of thermoconcrete. Here, just follow along:

It’s obvious that we live amidst a “Geeks Rule the World” vibe these days, right? For a lot of us over a certain age, it’s incredible that Star Trek fans and every other nerd nirvanist of all ages are allowed—nay, encouraged—to wear their con badge of honor openly, their heart on their sleeve, as it were…in full uncloseted view of everyone! The “geek girl” explosion, the cool-kids cosplay club… football Trekkies... the designers of cell phones, iPads, even a Vulcan-loving President —yep, it’s an amazing time, when you think about it.

What lit the fuse on such an explosion? Well, network TV can play a big role in changing the culture, reaching millions easily and putting new memes and ideas into play almost overnight —and there’s the clue. We have more than anecdotal evidence of this, of course: What better old-guard metric to check than your friendly A.C. Nielsens, the same TV audience ratings that ironically once doomed the original Star Trek (using, by the way, only raw numbers, not targeted demographics). Yes, check out the runaway No. 1 comedy on the list for forever, and—duh— you’ll come up with The Big Bang Theory. (For that matter, you could also check out the top syndicated-rerun package in every local TV market, and just about get the same answer. TBBT rules.)

Sheldon and Leonard’s excellent adventures (with constant Trek references and guest stars in the mix) have been a hit ever since their debut, and come from the great comedy bloodline of creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. But there are never guarantees in show biz, and TV series are an expensive gamble for a network —which is why few survive the process to be written, green-lit, filmed as a pilot episode, and then picked up to be risked in a high-pressure prime-time slot to deliver ratings and pay back the investment, with dividends. Now, what might have helped convinced CBS to take such a chance on an offbeat premise back in the spring of 2007?

(Okay, stay with me— it’s about to get thick and fast:)

I remember it well: 2007 was the year that everything melted down at San Diego Comic-Con, the granddaddy of what we now know as the new generation of megacons . This and every other “comic con” are hardly about just comics, writers and artists anymore, right?  It’s the stars who have the magnetism, and those tens of thousands of fans who swelled attendance numbers in the Aughts were there because of stars brought in by Hollywood—the Hollywood  that had begun to put those blockbusters on the big screens in a big way never seen before. The “day trip” vibe down to San Diego, for one thing, and the fertile audience of hard-core fantasy, sci-fi and comics fans just ripe to test-market: it was too much for studios to resist, and the mutual love affair bloomed big-time. That shockwave of numbers and the pop-culture headlines couldn’t help but put an obvious “new” hot audience on the radar of any network savvy enough to jump on it in a smart way.

But what had happened to Hollywood in the first place, going all-out on summer blockbusters and epic franchise flicks? I mean, comics-borne movies and fantasy epics have always been around, but this many? And with this attitude? And with this much respect—usually!—for the source material? (Oh, and cue the return of even the Star Wars saga by the late 1990s.) And—why the merger of studios and comics lines landing front-page in the Wall Street Journal as well as Variety?

Probably, in turn, because the small screen just couldn’t hold it all anymore. Yes, in many ways those big genre movies of the Nineties and Aughts were a no-brainer after all the sci-fi, swords and superheroes making inroads on network TV—like Buffy, Angel, Firefly… Lois and Clark, that begat Smallville … not to mention X-Files and the new quirk of humorous paranoia, plus Voyager and Enterprise, of course. It was also a time when, with the coming of CSI and all it inspired, a typical police procedural drama suddenly had more CGI “real science” visual effects each week than any ol’ space opera ever dreamed of.

The Big 4 networks, in turn, were just passing along the spillover from the genre explosion they saw on lower-risk cable nets, and even non-network syndication—like Babylon 5, Hercules, Xena, Farscape, Andromeda: Where did they and the wanna-bes suddenly come from? In fact, where the heck did syndication come up with anything but talk shows and game shows, anyway ?

You got it—you can “blame” it all on the riskiest gamble of all, The Next Generation (with Deep Space Nine the original second-wave series). As executive producer Rick Berman has noted, the TV world of 1986 gave TNG little chance to survive its triple knock as sci-fi, as a sequel and as a syndicated show.  The first two seasons were rocky—but eventually the show not only settled, but skyrocketed in quality and viewers ... and did, indeed, set off that sci-fi boom of the Nineties. All of which, of course, became competition for the Trek franchise itself.

So where did TNG’s turnaround occur? Remember—the show was budgeted to last seven years, yes, but a full yet mediocre run would never have sparked a revolution in anyone’s entertainment universe. In the long run, we can all pretty much agree it was that amazing, rags-to-riches third season when Piller came aboard —with “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Sins of the Father,” “The Offspring,” “The Defector,” “The Price,” “Hollow Pursuits,” “Captain’s Holiday”… But even with that list, we know what really put TNG on the map with the masses in one fell swoop.

That amazing cliffhanger, “The Best of Both Worlds,” the Borgification of Picard… Riker’s one word, “Fire!”… and then a blackout, a slamming music cue, and the simple but excruciating words “To Be Continued."

That epic moment, borne of head writer Piller’s angst about returning to the series or not, was his way of painting the conclusion writer into a horrible corner—before he knew that writer would be himself, after all.  

Of course, you could argue there’d be no TNG at all without the original Star Trek… and no Star Trek without Gene Roddenberry’s inspiration from The Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel and Forbidden Planet, for starters. Yes, you could take this back even further, if you wanted.

But for now, I like this cause and effect. Without Michael, Locutus and “The Best of Both Worlds”… there’d be no Evil Wil Wheaton,  snark, and the verbification of “cosplay.”  We owe today’s sweeping freedom of geek pride to a Borg wash-out and a last-minute red laser unit.

I mean, isn’t it obvious to you?

Boomin' SoonerCon: Homies ridin' that Big Bang wave

You know something is really going right when your local sci-fi/comics con in the great
FLYOVER part of the country—a term as despised as "Okie" used to be, in its day—gets a full-page splash across the weekend newspaper front. And three stories in all. Online also, of course.

And this is Oklahoma we're talkin' about—and the ultra-conservative Daily Oklahoman doing the splashing.

In fact, it's so right, it's another example of what I'm going to start calling "The Big Bang Theory Era of Fandom"— as in, you get *It* (not just publicity, but respect) without even having to ask for it. As in, The Geeks Rule The World and never had to fire a shot: they just fixed the servers and wrote the code. (I recently opined abut this in my latest guest blog at startrek.com—and how it really All Started With A Big Borg.)

But there it was, from theory to reality in the reddest of states: the Ok's WeekendLook cover (above) dominated by a story and a montage of art of a classic Prime-film-era Enterprise,  native Sooner sci-fi great CJ Cherryh and fellow OK SpecFic Hall of Fame inductee James "Count Gregore" Ferguson, my bud Kevin Hopkins' SC22 poster art ...and an icon of even Star Trek Continues' lead faces in 2009 style. I made the news!

And what a shock at that. In MY day, in my con PR  trenches (that's my local fan production cred, kiddies), we had to fight for every scrap of space and airtime and legitimacy we could get—especially when we had no Trek actors to headline, with an old-school pure litcon. Even when we did have actors at ThunderCon, it was no picnic: even news column-inches and airtime-minutes do not buzz and turnout make.

It helps when the culture overalls just turns with you, and you're suddenly swimming downstream. And that's what happened for my SoonerCon peeps: pre-registrations jumped 50 percent over last year, and the military/college suburb of Midwest City literally schmoozed them away from a downtown location to a new conference center/hotel complex—to near-universal acclaim by fans, guests and dealers. SCon is still on the small side by national standards, but it may be about to explode—and have a Comic-Con savvy Chamber of Commerce helping out all along. It doesn't hurt to have the Starship Ajax team (and their bridge ripe for fan snaps) as yet another looming Star Trek national-level indie fan film of note rightin Oklahoma City, either.

In fact, indie films are a looming aspect at SCon already, as OKC's nascient Dead Center Film Fest attracted 15,000 this past year as well, I'm told. Saints preserve us. That aspect of creatives was on display often in panels and screenings at SCon, too, along with all the rest of the traditional fare and genres involved.

What astounded me, though, was how my benefit meetup for The Con of Wrath at this SoonerCon drew the most turnout ever, ANYwhere—even with S-Con's sub-Vegas scope in numbers. More on that later, but the night was a humbling moment and gratifying thrill to both entertain that size crowd and add an extra hour to big-screen our "Star Trek Continues" in its Oklahoma public premiere. The winners of an autographed STC Phoenix debut poster even turned around to re-gift it for a benefit Trek auction for the troops coming in November—so the good karma's really catching.

What' surprised me just as much: Okie and regional fans were coming in who want to talk Trekland who know me only by social media, not "back in the day" association—and that's great. It's exactly how I wanted to get to know more new fresh faces and hear what they're up to. But the topper may be that I came across yet another Con of Wrath "Survivor" from 1982 (left), Mary Cottley! Or better yet, SHE came across ME, thanks to all the legit media stories that led her in the door. Mary was rattling off some great memories from that crazy Houston weekend—and I doubt she forgets them before we get her on camera soon.

So sure, money talks—but equality of money is just as gratifying, as fandom is finding out these days. So, here's to SoonerCon 23 in 2014—where the buzz is already hot, the exhibitors are flocking, the guests and panelists are already brainstorming.

I look for Jerry Wall, Leonard Bishop, Aislinn Burrows and all the volunteers to pull off another great clambake next year. And even if the busy Matthew Price (thank you!) Is not still at the Oklahoman, whoever comes along in his shoes later on deserves to do no less to get the word out to the untapped but hungry readers and viewers as Matthew does, especially this year. Wow.

Yes, It's a Different World—and I am cheered to say that's sometimes a GOOD thing, Miri.