TF01 3,Terry Shuttleworth - Interviewed 4,by Simon Plumbe, Tim Smith, and Tim Gaskill Terry Shuttleworth - Interviewed ---------------------------------- by Simon Plumbe, Tim Smith, Tim Gaskill ----------------------------------------- While attending Contagion '94 as a guest, Terry Shuttleworth, the man was, up until recently, responsible (if that's the right word!) for Star Trek at CIC kindly spared a couple of hours to allow us to interview him for TFF as part of this issue's focus on CIC Video. We sprung a surprise on Terry by bringing Tim Gaskill along from the Official UK Fan Club, who used to work at CIC Video, meaning that Terry had to really be careful about what he said! The three of us dragged him off to Pizzaland for a meal while we interviewed him and this is the result... SIMON - What does CIC actually stand for? TERRY - It stands for Cinema International Corporation. I don't know why it's called "Cinema". TIM G - It was because CIC was formed as a joint venture before video existed. TERRY - So it's been going some time. Well the earliest records I've got for video releases are 1987 but we were around long before that. I haven't got a fix on the actual date. SIMON - How did you come to work for CIC? TERRY - How did I come to work for CIC? I was at a company called Procter & Gamble Health and Beauty Care, and we made things like Oil Of Ulay, Wash 'N Go, Pampers - that sort of product and Crest they do and Vidal Sassoon and I was there for going on 2 years, 2 and a half years, and I was bored so I wanted another job and I only wanted one job in particular.... SIMON - To be a lumberjack?! TERRY - To be a lumberjack - no! Yes, I am a lumberjack! I wanted to be the brand manager for all of Sega Software in the UK. Funnily enough the job came up so I went along and interviewed for it and while I was interviewing for it the headhunter basically said, "Well, there's also this other job working in movies and why don't you go and interview for it at the same time?" so I did and as it turned out Sega never made a decision in time - they kind of re-interviewed and then chucked everybody's CV away apart from mine, which was nice, but said they wanted to start again so I went and interviewed with CIC at the same time and CIC just offered me the job, so I said, "Okay, fine I'll take the job!" so Sega could still say yes but I don't think they're likely to after a year and a half! So that was it really - I was looking for something exciting and I found it... TIM G - ... working in the mail room at CIC! TERRY - That's excellent. I've got my own trolley, it's nice! TIM S - What are your plans for Voyager? TERRY - What are our plans for Voyager? Unconfirmed as yet - I had to say that - I've always got a rider on everything we say just in case the fans say, so people don't get me against a wall and say, "Hold on a minute, you said this...". Well it actually backfired on me because with Quantum Leap people wrote to me saying, "The BBC are really crap, they're showing all the episodes out of order and that's crap" and I wrote back to a couple of them and said, "Don't worry, if we release Quantum Leap rest assured they'll all be in the right order, we'll release the whole lot, they will be proper." and of course... things didn't work out, did they?! TIM G - Not through any fault of your own. TERRY - Thank you Tim! It's true, it's true. TIM S - I thought it might be with all the music used in it. TERRY - Do you want me to go through the whole bio? Okay, basically the original plans as Tim [Gaskill] will remember, was to release all the episodes AND in the right order - that was the plan - and apparently MCA said to us, "Yes, okay, you can do it, that's fine, but you'll need to pay for the music." and we said, "Well, how much will the music be?" and they came back to us and said, "You're talking up to $60,000 an episode" and at two episodes a tape it's quite a lot of money! Actually as it works out, there was no way we could have made that money back on the tapes we sell, numbers of tapes we sell. So we can have them released, those episodes that have been released in the US already, because they've already paid a chunk of money. It's only because they weren't releasing them that we'd have to pay the chunk of money, so what we are in the business of doing now is going back to them and saying, "Actually, these tapes do phenomenally well - you should do them as well." to try and get them to pay the chunk of money so that we can release all of them. TIM S - Actually I was talking to the manager of the HMV Video Zone in Birmingham and he said that he was selling as many Quantum Leap as Next Gen. TERRY - Yeah, that's probably exaggerating a little bit, but sales have been phenomenal. In the first two weeks Quantum Leap sold as much as Deep Space Nine, the new release of Deep Space Nine which still isn't as good as Next Gen but it's getting there. So what are our plans for Voyager? I think what we'll probably do is do a Deep Space Nine on it and release it on rental first. I think we should do it on rental first - a: to give fans as taster, b: to give the rental dealers a bit of Voyager as well - and to make some money as well, I'm not afraid of saying! But what I really want to do is go overboard with the packaging again like we did with Deep Space Nine. TIM S - I really liked the packaging. TERRY - Well actually it's been nominated for a few awards, the packaging, as has the Deep Space Nine Collectors Edition. The film case won an award, but I don't think the actual Deep Space Nine did. Go overboard with the [Voyager] packaging, try and get a bit more distinction between different episodes because that's a criticism I've had and maybe do the back-ups again and have a huge launch thing - I don't know what yet - and push that into the market. TIM S - I was just wondering if you weren't going to go with rental, because I know there was a bit of criticism that shops were selling the rental tapes for £30 or £40 even. SIMON - Quite a few, even after the sell-through were released. TERRY - It's like I say to Simon regularly, you're probably sick of me saying this, I can't believe what some accounts do - I'm not going to name them - that were selling Star Trek VI, the rental version, for £60 over the counter a WEEK before the sell-through. Now that is really cynical. And of course, CIC get all the stick for it and reciprocally, I get all the stick for it, which I'm not particularly pleased about. It's exactly the same with rental tapes. These companies buy them up and sell them on for £30, and the consumers think that we're trying to rip them off, which is not what we're trying to do. What we did with Deep Space Nine, I think we'll do with Voyager as well which is to make the rental ones not as good as the sell-through ones so they haven't got the spine design, they haven't got the gold foiling on so that people are basically encouraged to buy the sell-through ones. TIM S - Saying that, when I was working in a video shop it was actually, I think, a couple of weeks before "Emissary" was released on sell-through, and this bloke came in and ordered the rental version and I said to him, "You realise it's out in two weeks and it's £10.99? It's exactly the same tape." And he still insisted on paying £30 for a rental version." TERRY - Tell him to buy both. It could be Simon! SIMON - While on the subject of rentals, what's the actual difference between the rental and the sell-through versions of the tapes? TERRY - Nothing. It's something people come back to us and say all the time, "Your rental tapes are so much better quality, they really are.". Rubbish! Correct me if I'm wrong, Tim, but they're both duped up in exactly the same way. They're exactly the same as the rental. The only difference is the rental box is bigger! If that makes a difference to playability, then yeah! SIMON - I've found that the quality DOES seem to be better. TIM G - Usually that is the case. They did use different standards of tape, but now it kind of dovetailed to the same style. TIM S - With audio visuals come on to Dolby Surround, Widescreen televisons, and people are more au fait with it. They expect more from their tapes. Can you remember the first movie you ever saw? TERRY - The first Star Trek movie or first actual movie? TIM S - The first movie. TIM G - Terminator 2, wasn't it?! TERRY - At the tender age of 18 months! I don't know. I think it was probably 101 Dalmatians in a small cinema in Glasgow, in fact, because I lived in Scotland at the time. SIMON - You can't get away from the place! TERRY - Yes indeed! Infact it WAS 101 Dalmations, and there was me and my mother and two old men in the cinema, so I don't know how much money they made out of it! A big empty cinema. SIMON - I'll just write that down - Terry Shuttleworth goes to cinema with "Dirty old men"!! TERRY - AND his mother!! TIM S - How do you feel about video censorship? TERRY - Ooh, ah, this is a sore point. I hate it, I really do. I think it's - I'm trying to find the right words here - I think it's unexplainable and unjustifiable that you have cinema releases that go out and are critically acclaimed andthey're given a certificate for cinema, right? Point in case, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance - they're also excellent films artistically as well, and when it comes to video and they won't get a certificate. It's an absolute whitewash. I also believe, and this is a personal point and not CIC's point, that I don't believe all this argument about kids seeing videos and turns into axe-wielding murderers and all that sort of stuff. I don't believe in that. TIM S - I think that's more to do with the parents attitudes. TERRY - I agree. TIM S - As I said, I used to work in a video rental and retail shop, and you'd have parents come in and they'd have little "Johnny", five years old, and they'd be renting out "Freddy's Dead" or whatever to them and you say, "You realise this is an 18 film?" and they go, "Oh yeah, we let him watch them.". TERRY - That's right. TIM S - I think that has a lot to do with it. TIM G - That's exactly why things aren't released on video. James Furman knows that. TIM S - But the thing is, I think that's an indication of how parents must treat their children in general. TIM G - Part of the problem is that you have control over who goes in the cinema; on video you don't have control over who watches it. TERRY - Well, you do in rental shops as well. TIM G - Is the parental control there, though? SIMON - The thing is, who's to say who is going to see the film when it gets home? TIM G - I'm not being an advocate of censorship. I'm anti it in every form, because I find that they're very heavy-handed. TIM S - We've had parents send their 10 year old child in to pick up 18 rated videos. TIM G - And you let them? TIM S - No way. Never. We had to keep ringing them up and saying, "Look, you're going to have to come in yourself for this." and they still do it - the same people. TERRY - They're fairly true arguments, like the alcohol and tobacco arguments. Even if they don't let their kids drink, it's not going to stop them. You can't check at every point of purchase. Similarly, you have parents who send their kids off to pick up their cigarettes for them, and kids are blatantly under 16. Okay, the retailer shouldn't do it but if you say, "That's for mom and dad." it's difficult. I think that's the thing that's really sad, especially with all the censorship we have in this country which rests on a man who, I believe, is over 60 years old. It's hardly representative of the population. TIM S - It's an option favoured by the politicians because when they say "Censorship Laws" it sounds good, and they know that people will think, "Oh, they're doing something about bad children, delinquents or whatver" when in fact they're not even touching the problem. SIMON - It's for their own political gain, really. TERRY - I believe that the word "censorship" is kind of a touchy word. If you say, "What do you think of censorship?", most people would say it's bad. Politicians managed to re-position it so that they can win arguments saying, "We're protecting society" and all that. But we should civilise, we should be letting people make their own decisions. TIM S - That's what I was saying. They're doing it because it sounds good to them, and it sounds good to their leaders, not that it has any effect. TERRY - But if you take it back to alcohol again, and you did the same thing as you do in the video stores and take it off the shelves and sell to no-one, can we justify doing that? I don't think we can. But that's a personal opinion, as opposed to a work opinion. Please make sure that's in there!! And I really don't agree with the whole set up of the BBFC [British Board of Film Censors] anyway - we should have some sort of panel that is representative of the people that are actually buying videos. I would argue that we need a spread across age groups and backgrounds. You can have a board of 8 people, but if the board of 8 people are all over 65, what's the point? SIMON - Well, it's over 65 white males. TERRY - Yes. Being cynical, yes. TIM G - It's all David Altman. If anybody wants to destroy the video industry it's him. SIMON - On a lighter note, can you describe what you do in a typical day at CIC? TERRY - It starts at 11:30... no! TIM S - Until twelve o'clock! TERRY - Get in anywhere between 9:00 and 9:30 - it's usually nearer to 9:30, which seems to have got worse since I moved because I live five minutes from the office now - I walk to work. I'm just getting in later! TIM G - What, when you lived in Oxford? TERRY - Yes, that's true! [Proceedings stopped at this point as our pizzas arrived - and Simon asked for his obligatory tub of parmesan. If you've never seen Simon eat a pizza with parmesan, consider yourself lucky! Not many have lived to tell the tale!] Where were we? It starts about, let's say 9:30... TIM G - For argument's sake... TERRY - For argument's sake. There's usually half an hour of settling in, going through the in-tray, going through the mail. I'm a great one for, if there's something interesting in the mail I'll see it and do it just then in that first kind of half an hour. Then really I mean every day is very very varied. I try and book meetings in for about 10:00, 11:00 and 12:00 - I try and book a fleet of meetings in so I can get them over and done with - do the really kind of dull "thinking stuff". Because I know that once we hit 10:30 it's just chaos. The phone goes all the time - it's a real nightmare. Quite a lot of the time I take it off the hook, which I think is good, but people argue a bit, but if I really want to get something done I have to take it off the hook. All the time we're getting calls from fans and dealers and all that sort of stuff asking various questions about Star Trek - most of them I don't take. A few, there are four or five people I do speak to, but most calls if I don't recognise the name I won't take the call, I'll ask for a message to be taken and I won't reply to the message unless it's specific. So if I get a message saying, "John Smith called re: Star Trek" I ain't calling him back! Whereas if John Smith called and says, "What's the release date of the next set of videos?" I'll call him back and say it's August 8th or whatever. SIMON - Or get someone to call back on your behalf? TERRY - Yes. But it all boils down to if I answer every call I'd spend half the day on the phone, so I'm not getting any work done and I'd eventually get the sack! But really the work varies. Most of the time I work through lunch - I'll grab something quick for lunch and spend about ten minutes. I do have the occasional two hour lunch break, I won't deny it, but it's the exception rather than the rule. And really my day is structured so I can say at 2:00 we always have production meetings and other running about really from 2:00 through till about 6:00 we're doing various things. And then from 6:00 onwards people kind of start leaving for the night. I usually work though until about 7:00 or half past. I try and get anything that I haven't managed to get done during the day because of interruptions I do in that sort of time. Like important things where you sit down and do thinking if I have time again I do that sort of thing at the end of the day. And phoning the States, there's quite a lot of that to be done - any time from 6:30 onwards. So 7:00 - 7:30 is the end of a typical day, but I have been known to stay up until 10:00 at night! SIMON - Must be good overtime, though? TERRY - Overtime? I wish! TIM G - How many screenings do you get a week? TERRY - Screenings. This is one of the perks of the job. We do get screenings of new films. I think there are usually two a week of which I'll go to one a fortnight maybe. I like to keep up with the new stuff, but I don't know. If its Lassie: The Motion Picture I won't bother with it! You always get the perks afterwards sometimes, which is you get to go to premieres, screenings - I do like to go to some of those, conventions. Conventions are kind of funny because I don't need to do those as part of work, the convetions aren't something that I need to do, but I think it's important to do them because you can see the difference this year coming up to Contagion. Last year I came in and it was like, "the man from CIC" type of thing or the "young boy from CIC" (!) and there is kind of like that "all groan" from the audience. This year was actually reasonably decent applause and I think part of that is because there is someone that people can talk to, they can see our ideas being put into place and stuff. I just think it's important to do. Saying that, I don't go to every convention - I go to about three a year or so. TIM S - I think the thing that impressed them is that you actually asked them to write their questions down and come and see you afterwards. A lot of people when I talked to them seemed genuinely surprised by that. SIMON - Only because you can't remember what they said! TERRY - My memory is so bad! Especially when you are up speaking, like when people fire things at me I can't remember so I do ask people to come up. It's good for me as well when I get back to the office. TIM S - How well do you think Trek fans are served by CIC? TERRY - Oooh! Personally, or on a company basis? TIM S - Personally. SIMON - Well, both! TERRY - Actually, there's not much difference. On a company basis I'd have to say of course we're giving the best service possible. On a personal basis I think the service we give is pretty good, said he immodestly you can write in brackets! It's pretty good but because there's only me working on Star Trek at the moment - I did have an assistant who's just left, we're trying to get a new one - I haven't got the time to do everything I want to do like to see if I can do the special edition of Star Trek I in widescreen, if we can do other things. It's a time thing rather than we don't want to do it. I'd like to be able to invest more time in it - it's just not happening at the moment. So there are improvements we can make but on the other hand we value opinions people have and we've changed our release schedule and we've actually put in place systems to make sure that people get their queries and calls answered - that sort of stuff. I think we've improved but we could be better. SIMON - Then you've got the introduction of the new phone system as well. TERRY - Yes, the info line. Oh, plug the info line! 0891 424500 - call charges 39p per minute cheap rate, 49p all other times. Under 18s please get parental permission! Got to make sure I say that! SIMON - Over 18s, make sure your parents aren't listening! TERRY - Over 18s, we've got another number...! TIM S - Just make sure you don't get an itemised phone bill! TERRY - I think I should say actually, on that info line, what's on there is all the dates of the forthcoming releases for the next month or so, synopses of those episodes... SIMON - Details from the back of the boxes? TERRY - No, actually a bit more detailed than that most of the time. What else is on there? In-store promotions, so you can find what deals you can get from buying in certain shops; the address of the Official Fan Club, of course; and they an leave their name if they want to go on the mailing list; they can leave queries if they want queries answered. Things like that. SIMON - When does it start up? TERRY - It's running. It's running now. It hasn't got in-store promotions on at the moment, but it will have. SIMON - Have you had many calls on it yet? TERRY - A few, but it's not been publicised. SIMON - Do you think it will lighten your workload alot? TERRY - God, I hope so! I really do. What's happening now is that people that phone through from reception, people who are asking for release schedules and stuff like that, we say, "Look, there's an info line. Phone the info line - it's there for you." and that way they don't get p****d off because nobody's talking to them. That's got to be good then. TIM S - I know video companies that people will write to, enclose a stamped addressed envelope, and never hear from them again. TERRY - Yes, I have loads of people write to me as well. Written stuff I try and reply to, but it's not as quick as I'd like it to be. I'm doing it because of my workload, you know. I don't want to stay until 9:00 just because I'm answering letters. But I do try and reply to them. SIMON - Looking slightly ahead, any special plans for the 30th Anniversary? TERRY - Oh god! You are looking slightly ahead! No, not yet. Give me a chance, already! SIMON - Do you want some ideas?! TERRY - Yes I do - write them down! I haven't even started to think about that yet. When is it, exactly? SIMON - Two years. TERRY - You got me worried there. I thought I was missing something that was happening in two months time! SIMON - Although technically it's the 25th Anniversary over here! [to the others] He hadn't thought of that! TERRY - No, no! SIMON - It could be an idea to release the 25th Anniversary documentary as a stand-alone tape THIS year. TERRY - It MAY happen,it may happen in the first quarter of next year. SIMON - Which version would you release? Because there is an extended one. The one in the States is about 20 minutes longer than the one that was released as part of the pack. TERRY - I'll release the longest one I can get my hands on. TIM G - What have you got in it? SIMON - I haven't actually seen the extended version. TIM G - As far as I know there's only one version. SIMON - Colin [Gunn] has actually got both. TIM G - He's got both? SIMON - Yes. He bought it on an NTSC tape. TIM S - The version of "Relics" with the Scotty and Troi scenes edited back into it. TERRY - Ooh, I didn't know about that. TIM S - The version of "Relics" with the scene between Scotty and Troi in his room, edited back in. James Doohan's actually got a copy of that. He asked for his copy of it to have that scene put back in. TIM G - You never know. TERRY - With a lot of these things, there's the question of whether we're allowed to have it. Quite a lot of the time we'll get back to the guys in International - the faceless guys - and say, "Can we ave this?" and they go, "No. You can't." It's not even worth asking. We do a bit of pushing sometimes, but a lot of the time we get knocked back. TIM S - Any plans for any more promotions such as the DS9 poster? TERRY - No firm plans as yet, but we haven't made the plans for next year yet. However - this is a worldwide exclusive - we're starting as of September 4th or 6th, "Space Miles", which works like Air Miles. Basically inside every tape you buy, you get a set number of miles. It's either 3,000 or 10,000 depending on whether it's a new release or back catalogue. You collect up your miles - there's basically three levels - and at each level you can get different prizes. So at level one there's like a baseball cap, level two there's t-shirts and figures. TIM S - Level three's a starship! TERRY - Level three is the Enterprise itself! TIM G - It should be Space Kilometres though. They never use miles! TERRY - Ah, yes, I know but... SIMON - What about Kellicams? TIM G - Parsecs? SIMON - Yes. TIM G - How far is a parsec? TERRY - Isn't it the speed of light over a certain time and that's the distance? SIMON - Something like that? TERRY - Like a light year... TIM G - ... but shorter. TERRY - Is it shorter? TIM G - I think so. A light year's a long way. I always thought it was an abbreviation of something like Partial Sector, you know. TERRY - Well,,if you think about it, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is 93 million miles, it's still bloody hot! When you're talking about the distance between a sun and a planet in parsec terms you'd be looking at about 2 or 3. SIMON - It's only a couple. TERRY - So it's got to be much, much longer than that... No! It's got to be much much shorter than a light year! You're right. SIMON - It's very similar to the promotion that was done a couple of years ago for the 25th Anniversary. TERRY - Yes, yes. I've still got people sending me those tokens, by the way! TIM G - We never had a conclusive closing date or something like that. SIMON - There were a couple of problems I found with it as well. Some of the goods ordered didn't, because it wasn't being dealt with by CIC - the actual distribution of the goods - some of the things did take a while to arive. My jacket didn't actually turn up and I had to go through quite a lot of trouble to get it in the end. TIM S - I ordered one of everything and I had one half about 8 weeks after I ordered it and the other half about two months after that. TERRY - So what's going to happen? SIMON - Get Absolute Field Marketing to do it for you!! TERRY - Yeah, right! I think that would be a bad move, politically! Because CIC doesn't actually deal with that kind of merchandising and stuff itself, we always get a handling house to handle it and always there's going to be cock-ups. With any promotion - it doesn't matter who it is - whether it is CIC or IBM, there's always going to be hiccups. All we can do try and minimise it. So that's an apology in advance for anyone who buys Space Miles. Oh, by the way, I should say Space Miles will run until the end of this year. What we are doing is saying is that we reserve the right, so if there's a lot of uptake and it really works we just keep it going. There is a definite cut-off date, but we may extend it. Nobody's saying that we will extend it. TIM S - Are there any plans for UK releases of Star Trek on CD Video or laserdisc? TERRY - Oh god, not not the bloody CD Videos! Again, for the benefit of your readers... SIMON - Both of them! TIM S - And they're both here! TERRY - CIC doesn't have the licence at the moment for any of the CD formats. I believe the licence is with Philips. Now, however, I have been saying to people, that licence is up for renewal quite soon and I 'd like to think that we are doing everything we can to get it. SIMON - Do you think you can do a better job than Philips? TERRY - Well, I think we probably can anyway, he said modestly again! We have one thing in our favour which is that we've just got a new President at CIC - worldwide international President - and he is very into all these new formats, whereas the other President wasn't as much. So that should be something in our favour to help us - we're not going to get held back by the guys in our own organisation. We should be able to get our mits on it and then we'll be able to do what we do with videos, so we'll re-release the whole lot. So that'd be nice. TIM S - Release each season in a boxed set? TERRY - We'd have to see what would make the most commercial sense. TIM S - I know people are paying almost up to £300 for the Star Wars trilogy on laserdisc. TERRY - The trilogy? TIM S - In CAV with an analogue soundtrack as well, so you can either see the movie as it is, or listen to how they made it, talking about each process as well. TERRY - Wow! Still, £300 for 3 discs... TIM S - It's nine discs. There's a booklet abouyt what's on each track, you've got the movie trailers, interviews with the cast and the hardback book that George Lucas had created - a nice little box. The first thing that I bought when I got a laserdisc player. TIM G - That must have cost as much as your laserdisc player! TIM S - The discs I picked up for £210, the boxed set, and I've known it for sale for £290 and apparently there's one shop now that is offering it for £155. TIM G - NTSC? TIM S - Yes. All the discs I've bought so far are NTSC - I haven't bought a PAL one. SIMON - But you would if it was Star Trek? TIM S - I would if it was Star Trek, definitely. SIMON - With the videos, with DS9 the sort of panoramic view, whose idea was it? TERRY - The spine design? Well, I'd like to say it was mine, but no. It was kind of - it was a collaboration really, wasn't it, between the guys over at International and Sales. Because we wanted something to tempt people into collecting the whole series. So we spoke to the creatives and said, "How can we do that?" and they came back with an idea that said, "Yeah, I collect those and I can make a picture.". We kind of steered them towards that idea because of the box sets, you know, with the Enterprise on the back and stuff [Star Trek's 1-5 in widescreen]. So we already had the idea, so we said to them, "What can we do like this?" And they came back with the whole spine and they said, "Let's put this strip on." which is a good way to do it. So it was a collaboration. SIMON - Actually, it does look a bit silly having the tapes on a shelf with a gap! TERRY - That's good because it encourages people to buy it up! Actually, I have a lot of arguments with the creative guys about it because they're very precious about their design and I remember one time in particular they came back and said, "What we really want to do here is we want to do a shot of a black hole. It's going to have the Enterprise reflected on the other side where it is, and to make it really realistic what we want to do is to have like a large kind of black gap and then the beginnings of the black hole, then the black hole, and then the end of the black hole." And I said, "Tell me about this black gap." And they said, "We want to have 3, 4, maybe 5 spines worth of just black." And I had to wind them in and say, "No way. Put some stars in it or something. If you put black, people are going to write to me and say `You forgot to put the design on my copy!'". People get annoyed that we're not doing anything imaginative. SIMON - Either that or those tapes will turn up on the collector's market as so-called "faulty" tapes! TERRY - So no, we really have to keep tabs on them. One of the things we're doing - sorry to bring up the promotions point again - we're looking at that Deep Space Nine poster idea, it went really well. TIM S - It was a great poster. TERRY - Yeah, and at £1.50 you'd expect it to fly. It went really well. It didn't go as well as I expected, but I had very high expectations. We are looking at other ones we can do, or other things we can do in that sort of area, and one of the things we're looking at - again, don't hold me to this - is to do, like, a wall freeze of the spine design from Deep Space Nine. Maybe one, maybe two joined together, whatever. It would be a good idea - we think! TIM S - What about the Voyager ship when Voyager is on its way on video? TERRY - You mean doing a poster of the Voyager ship? It's a good idea - a very good idea. Again, we can do it as a mailing with the very first one. [After talking (and eating) for almost an hour at this point, we were in dire need of extra drinks, so we paused for a few moments. Simon, Tim Smith and Terry ordered extra caffeine fixes, while Tim Gaskill settled for the safe option of a mineral water!] That sounds like a good plan. Again, we'd do it as a mail-in to make it pay for itself rather than as a give-away. I don't think that's too mercenary. But yeah, that's a good plan. I haven't actually seen the designs for the ship yet. TIM S - I know someone who's apparently got them - I haven't seen them myself. TERRY - I assume something will turn up on the Internet! When it does... can I have a copy?! No, we're trying to get material as quickly as possible for it. TIM S - I got two of those Deep Space Nine posters. I sent one over to my penpal in the States... TERRY - You had two?! TIM S - She was absolutely smitten by it. She thought it was wonderful. TERRY - Exellent. We put on the application thing that you weren't allowed more than one, but yeah, we let people have up to five. SIMON - Is it still running? TERRY - Yeah, it's still running. SIMON - I just haven't got round to getting one yet! TERRY - So many people have said that. Tell you what, I'm going to make a thing here, I'm going to stop it as of 31Star Trek December, right, so anyone who's not had one by then has had it! SIMON - Or not as the case may be! TERRY - So, yeah, get one! It's only £1.50 and they're quite nice! SIMON - I haven't even got the first tape of season two yet! TERRY - No! You don't need to buy the tapes to get the poster.... TIM S - But it helps...! SIMON - It's just that it's got the address, the details...! TERRY - I'll tell you another reason for buying the poster and that is... [One of the perils of interviewing in a restaurant - at this point we were interrupted by one of the staff asking us why we were recording ourselves! There then followed a brief conversation, trying to expalin to him what we do, and why we were interrogating Terry!] Where was I? SIMON - I don't know! Another thing about the posters... TERRY - Another good reason to get the poster is because I'm quite keen to make science fiction products, not available easily, available through a mail-order scheme. And what I'd like to do - and don't hold me to this - is to do a mail-out to all the people who ordered the poster, presumably Star Trek fans and say, "You can have a whole load of titles thorugh mail order if you want to do it." as like a special thing for you. And then basically give them a list of titles they can have at a special price and sell all things direct from us. [Another brief interruption this time as the tape ran out! After a quick fumble, side two commenced...] SIMON - Why do you think Star Trek has succeeded on video, where other cult shows haven't fared so well, such as Mission: Impossible? TERRY - Okay, let's draw some distinctions. Star Trek's done very well, but it hasn't done as well as Doctor Who or Red Dwarf in terms of unit sales. Star Trek sales are more volume but less units per volume than Doctor Who or Red Dwarf. I don't know why that is, but I couldn't even tell you why it's done better than some of the other series apart from to come back again to the quality of the programme. It was always available to a cross reference; the vision behind it - things that make Star Trek good. An easier way to approach this is to say, I think I know why things like Mission: Impossible haven't done as well, and that's basically because they haven't had the constant airings that Star Trek's always had. The programmes are not the same sort of quality, they haven't had the same focus on them, they haven't had the same kind of marketing "oomph" and Star Trek has a high profile. TIM G - You don't see Mission: Impossible conventions! SIMON - No, they're top secret... TIM S - They last five seconds...! SIMON - You know you were saying with the unit sales they are not as high as Doctor Who or Red Dwarf, do you think that might have something to do with the fans taping episodes? TERRY - It may do. I think Doctor Who and Red Dwarf have different things going for them. If you look at the TV product market in the UK, I think something like 60% of it is comedy, 24% of it is sci-fi. So if you've got something that's on the boundary between comedy and sci-fi - Red Dwarf - then it's going to do a lot better. SIMON - And Doctor Who falls obviously into the comedy category! TERRY - You said that, not me! The same with Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - again very successful. It only did two volumes, but it sold phenomenal amounts of both. Its the comedy/sci-fi crossover. With Doctor Who, because it's not on TV anymore... SIMON - You think re-runs are affecting sales as well? TERRY - Yeah, I think probably they are. TIM S - But does even the Davison and Sylvester McCoy stuff sell more than Star Trek? TERRY - Yeah, just all Doctor Who goes through the roof. It may again be because there's less Doctor Who and they come out sporadically, people get them all the time. With Star Trek, it's just an ongoing thing. If you were a new person coming to Star Trek, you'd go, "Jesus Christ!!". We could sell more and I think taking it off the air may or may not be a bad thing. There's a couple of arguments either way. SIMON - Roughly how many copies of each tape are sold? TERRY - I'm not going to tell you, that's confidential! Lots, let's put it that way! TIM G - Is it confidential? I thought Gallup reports... TERRY - Okay, how many we sell to consumers - how many we actually sell to the trade is confidential. How many are sold to the consumer - at the moment anywhere between 20,000 - 30,000 per tape. We sell more to the trade, you know, because they have... shelves! But I can't really say because the BBC, if they got hold of your magazine, will warn us and they can work out much money we make! TIM S - I don't think the BBC would have the sense to do that! TERRY - [Trying to remain neutral!] They're obviously smart people, they're selling lots! TIM S - Why doesn't CIC invest more into the promotion and advertising of its tapes, I mean on telelvision? TERRY - Ooh! TIM G - It's expensive to advertise on TV! TERRY - It's very expensive and also we've kind of, not shot ourselves in the foot, because Star Trek's sold so well in the past with the amount we've spent at the moment, there's no reason to increase that unless you really needed to push Star Trek through the roof. I argued with quite a few people and said, "We should do advertising and the amount of money we are spending is too low." but the answer that always comes from Paramount - "No - you can't spend that money, give it back to us!". Saying that it's quite successful. At the beginning of the year I have a set budget - we've more than doubled that this year already!! So I go back and ask for money and they give it to me in little amounts, but if you add it all up it comes to quite a lot. SIMON - How well is Deep Space Nine selling in comparision to TNG or Classic Trek? TERRY - In comparison to Classic Trek, very well. Compared to Next Gen it's doing relatively well - it's selling ALMOST as many as Next Gen. TIM G - It was selling well, wasn't it? TERRY - Oh yeah, it went through the roof when it first started. It's calmed down a little bit. I think that's maybe because SKY have come back. But it's growing all the time, so the actual proportion of Next Gen sales - it creeps up a bit. I think it will be neck and neck with the Next Gen quite soon. I really hope it is. TIM S - Are there any plans to re-package the Classic Series? TERRY - No, there are none. I get asked this all the time. I know fans are very understandably nervous about what happened in the States with the collectors cards, where they repackaged them with a trading card in each. A great money maker, but really bad for the fans. No, no plans at all. We considered it - we had a look at it for a while - but we thought no, it's not worth doing, it's not fair. TIM G - The only real value is the aesthetic value. The new sleeves do look better, but as far as collecting cards, you can buy any other sets complete. You have to buy a whole new set of cards, really exclusive. TERRY - When we looked at it we looked at ways of getting copies of all the sleeves - usually its the people we already have who wrote them, and it's a real nightmare. SIMON - And you have to take into consideration that some of the videos were in black boxes and others in transparent boxes. TERRY - Yeah, that's right. TIM G - What it depended on was that we usually buy the black ones or whatever you buy by the 100,000's. Up until 3 or 4 years ago they only had black boxes, and then the see-through ones became the norm. But we had to use up the old stock of the black ones before we could use the new ones. TERRY - We actually tried different colours. We tried pink ones - do you remember them? They just flew off the shelves... on to the floor into the bin mostly! SIMON - The hard-hitting questions now! Which is your favourite out of all three shows? TERRY - The Next Generation. Without hesitancy, The Next Generation. Any reasons? I think the story lines are better. Deep Space Nine hasn't gripped me like The Next Generation has. The characters are better, it's just hilarious. Let me put it this way, when Richard Arnold came over to Contagion last year and described DS9 as "The Next Generation with PMS", or PMT in this country. It is a bit more uptight, there's not the kind of humour there is in Next Gen I think. So I guess for that reason I think Next Gen's brilliant - you've got all the characters who are so good, each one, they have so much personality. It's brilliant. SIMON - Any favourite characters? TERRY - I like Worf, he's terrific. SIMON - You're only saying that because Michael Dorn is here! TIM S - He's sitting behind you!! TERRY - I like Worf, I like Data. Data is hilarious. SIMON - Except when he's singing on the bridge! TERRY - Ooh dear! TIM G - Brent's not a good singer? SIMON - Not when you find out what he's singing!! TERRY - Who else...? SIMON - Wesley? TERRY - I'm not even going to think about Wesley! Oh no! SIMON - I think the problem with Wesley was the writers fault and not Wil Wheaton though. TERRY - I don't know. I haven't thought about him in that sort of depth. TIM S - He can only say the lines that are written for him, really can't he? SIMON - Especially at that age. He wasn't in a position to say, "No I don't like doing this". TERRY - Maybe, but at the end of the day it's the total character as well. Okay the reasons behind it we can argue out, but I don't like Wesley! Picard's cool, but my favourites are Worf and Data. And Ensign Ro as well! That's why she's still on the sleeves for season seven! SIMON - Talking of the sleeves for Deep Space Nine... TERRY - Oh no..! SIMON - Why the mistake on the back?! TERRY - Why is that badge on there that only the ones in the movies wear?! It's a mistake! Okay, you got me! When the Deep Space Nine sleeves were done, there was no-one really working on sleeves who knew any better. I know they were flashed past Tim but he probably wasn't looking for those types of details. I'd only been with the company five months, four months. TIM G - Sometimes they start the artwork before we even see the episodes. TERRY - That was a rush, especially with Deep Space Nine. TIM G - I have a feeling that one thing that might have happened in that they a load of promotional runs for the sixth movie and maybe they... SIMON - Put two and two together and got three! TERRY - Probably the classic mistake made is that anything that's got Star Trek would apply to any of the series. So it shouldn't be like that. Now it's there I can't really change it. SIMON - What about for season three? TERRY - I might look at it. Yeah, I may do that, take a look at it. But then people are going to say to me, "Are you going to go back and change the first two seasons?!". TIM S - There's another mistake on the tape with "Necessary Evil" on. It says Rom first appeared in "Past Prologue" - he actually appeared in the pilot, "Emissary". TERRY - Really? TIM G - Some of the Stardates were wrong originally, weren't they? SIMON - Is this "tear the video sleeves apart" time?! TERRY - No, that's an interesting point. When we did the sleeves for "Emissary", there were three different Stardates floating about for "Emissary" and we had to pick one basically. So we picked one and it turned out to be the wrong one! That's why the Stardate for "Emissary" was wrong. People often ask me how we work out the Stardates. You know, why do we put ones that are different from what they should be. Basically how they work is the guy who designs the sleeves watches the tape and takes the Stardate off the tape. Occasionally he has to work them out so the chances of them being wrong are increased, but that's how they get put on there. SIMON - Coming back to the shows again, are there any favourite episodes from any of the series? TERRY - Favourite episodes from anything? Oh, "Shades Of Grey", "Sub Rosa", "Justice"...! TIM S - I know someone who say "Shades Of Grey" is their favourite episode! TERRY - Yeah, "Justice" was good because...! Oh no it wasn't because he didn't get killed! SIMON - Well he did in "Hide And Q"! TIM G - The outfits were nice! That was Worf's greatest line in Star Trek, "Nice planet!". TERRY - And everybody runs everywhere which I thought was particularly good! Grimace, grimace! No, "The Best Of Both Worlds". It's got to be. I use that one saying to people who've never watched Star Trek before. Instead of saying, "Star Trek - Farpoint", I give them the tapes, say, "Watch those and tell me what you think." SIMON - If you give them "Farpoint" they'll never come back! TERRY - But that's the way I like to get people into it. They've got to be the best episodes. We can argue about that. I'm not going to go into the original series. As far as Deep Space Nine goes, I don't know. It's got to be the three- parter I think. The season opener. "The Circle" and that lot. SIMON - "The Homecoming", "The Circle" and "The Siege". TERRY - Yeah because they seem to have a bit of everything in them. There's phasers on stun, a bit of politics, and good characterisation. TIM G - My favourite's "Move Along Home"! SIMON - ... NOT! We're going to quote you on that! Remember, I can put small sound samples on the mag! TERRY - We were doing the launch of Deep Space Nine at Planet Hollywood, and we said, "Which episode should we watch, should we screen?" because we didn't want to show "Emissary" because it had been out and everybody had seen it so we wanted to show one further down the season. So someone said, "Show 'Move Along Home' because it's really good.". And I didn't watch it. I watched it like two days before the launch and I thought, "I'm sure there's a much more... exciting episode that this!". What did we show in the end? It was "The Passenger". Coming back to "The Best Of Both Worlds", my kind of personal opinion. I think we should have done that as the first Next Generation movie, because if you look at it, it stands up. If you come to it cold, if someone's never seen the Next Gen before, it stands up on every level as a movie. I really believe that, I really do. TIM S - Did you realise what you were letting yourself in for at CIC? TERRY - No, I didn't. No! I came to CIC young and fresh. I'd watched the original Trek on telly, I'd never seen The Next Generation. I'd obviously never seen Deep Space Nine. I really didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I set myself the challenge which was to watch all the Next Gen tapes which I did within about seven months. Much to the annoyance of my wife, to start with! Anyway, I didn't but I really do enjoy it now. SIMON - So you weren't a fan to start off with? TERRY - No, I wasn't at all. Like I was saying today, the fans are so in to it. Sometimes you can listen to people and see what they want and actually do something about it. Which is one of the things I always try to achieve. Plus its better than when I was doing baby products! SIMON - Well, you can't exactly interview the users, can you?! TERRY - So no, not very exciting at all, but this is good. I really enjoy it. And it's got to the stage now where I know they are considering personnel reshuffles and that sort of stuff - they're looking like reshuffling people's assignments in the marketing department. It's got to the stage where people are very very unhappy not to be doing Star Trek any more and it's actually quite good because most of the other people in the department don't want to go near it because they know that it's such an involved thing. They don't want to have to do that. Basically, when I first started for CIC I was doing not only Star Trek but all the new releases from Universal and all that sort of stuff. SIMON - What Chas Evans was doing? TERRY - Yeah, only on video though and not theatrical. And I got bored with the feature film stuff so when it came to redrawing assignments last year I said, "Well, I'm bored doing this stuff, give me Star Trek, give me TV products and I'll see if there's other ranges we can do." like Quantum Leap, Northern Exposure, Mission Impossible, and they also gave me a couple of other bits and pieces as well. So I dropped the boring new big release feature films. SIMON - What about your wife with Trek? TERRY - Jemma, spelt with a J, she thought it was all a bit sad, strange, you know, I was watching Star Trek every night because it was part of my job. I started to get into it and she was a bit, like, "Well, yeah." She started watching it, well she had to basically, probably about the fourth season sporadically. She runs a touring opera company - she's away quite a lot - so she missed big chunks of it, but she watched the seventh season almost in its entirety. And she's now got to the stage where she's saying, "I want to go back and watch the very beginning, every episode." So she's into it now, which is cool! Even to the stage where I've got her coming to Archon! But Jean's into it as well isn't she? TIM G - Well we started watching it together. We toured the set together - I was originally a sceptic of Next Gen, and we were over at Paramount, did the tour together and that really kind of fired our imaginations. The first two seasons kind of went by without me taking much notice, then we went on the hiatus between season two and three and came back and started watching the first two seasons. And then just watched each one as they came out. SIMON - Have you been to a lot of conventions? TERRY - I've been to a few - I go to three a year, maybe. Contagion, Starbase '94 and I'm going to Archon as well but I don't go to a lot of little ones. I keep getting invited but I prefer to go to the big ones. Because unless there's people you know, or unless you're actually doing something it can get a bit dull. So I'll probably go to a few more now that I know a few more people to talk to, so yeah, but I try to ration it a little bit. Still a bit special. TIM S - How do you see video evolving in the next few years? TERRY - I believe it will be the return of the Video 2000 format! And maybe Betamax! SIMON - Well, it's a good system. TERRY - It's a good system. SIMON - Much better than VHS. TIM G - Remember the Video Disc? It was actually played like a record! TIM S - Having said that, I know of someone who has brought a compact disc back once and said "This won't fit on my turntable!" and they took it out of the packaging and there's a lovely scratch right across it - they'd put it on the turntable and put the needle on and tried to play it! TERRY - Oh no! People are so stupid! People don't understand do they! Video will continue I will imagine for the next five or ten years. FMV 5" fdisc technology - I think that will probably catch on but if you look at the rates of uptake of televisions, video recorders, CD players, they all follow the same sort of curve. And if you put that into the new 5" format, you're talking about 10 years before it's actually any serious threat I think. Prove me wrong! SIMON - I'll prove you wrong then! TERRY - Yes, this time next year everyone will have one! SIMON - The date is...! TERRY - So video will be around for a while yet. I certainly hope it is. TIM G - Until you can download it down the phone line. TERRY - Yeah, all that stuff. SIMON - That comes to FMV again. TERRY - Well, yes and no. SIMON - Well Video On Demand will rely on an FMV equivalent to be able to get the signal through at a decent enough speed. If you are going to be transmitting a signal digitally down the phone, you're going to need something that candecode that signal and display it fast enough. I think FMV's the only way you can do it. TERRY - I don't know - I'm not technically minded. SIMON - What sort of set-up have you got at home? TERRY - At home? I've got a rented video recorder! It's a good one, it's a Mitsubishi - a nice one! No, it's not stereo. I'm looking to get a NICAM stereo one, even a Dolby Prologic one if I can afford it. At the moment money's a bit tight... SIMON - Unless you could say you need one at home for work! TERRY - But I've got a nice Mitsubishi machine, the best thing about it is it's got a perfect freeze frame so when we're picking all the trannies for the backs of the sleeves, I do it on the machine at home. It's better than the bloody machines at work, actually! Especially the board room. It doesn't respond. SIMON - Well, with CD Videos you've got perfect pause. TERRY - Yeah, it's another thing we're thinking about. SIMON - Well, it depends on what system you use it on as well. CDi tends to be a bit lacking in quality. TIM G - Because it's compressed? SIMON - On CDi you tend to get a lot of blurred areas - every other platform that uses FMV is better than CDi. TIM G - It's still compressed because if you look at somebody's head or whatever, and compare it side by side you can see it's squeezed a bit. SIMON - That could just be the Phillips system though. I've had no problems watching films on mine. TERRY - You see, what I've heard about FMV is that if you play fast forward you get drop-outs and tracking. SIMON - It depends on the system because they all work differently in the way they fast forward. The CD32 system has key frames on the disc and all the rest is made up of just recording differences between frames and some systems in fast forward will just jump to key frames, so you get a series of stills. Others will try and run at fast forward, which is when you get problems. Actually, who is supposed to be interviewed here?! TERRY - Sorry! So, tell me about your childhood! TIM S - Do you go to the movies often and if so, what sort of films grab your attention? Or how do they grab you?! TERRY - Ooh err! I think it was 101 Dalmatians - I think that was the last film I saw! And those two men turned out to be...! Yeah, I'd love to go to the movies a lot but I don't get the chance to do it. I see obviously all the CIC films. I've missed out so many films it's unbelievable. I love the movies. The sort of films that grab my attention, I like action films so all the Terminator, True Lies... SIMON - Anything with Schwarzenegger?! TERRY - I've seen True Lies - it was absolutely brilliant. It's Terminator 2 quality. So action films, things like Cliffhanger and stuff. And the occasional comedy. I don't like serious films or period dramas! SIMON - One last thing - CIC's plans for 1995? TERRY - Just for Star Trek? SIMON - Well, in general. TERRY - I've pencilled them in but they're not confirmed yet so I'm not going to give you any sort of firm dates. Of course you'll see Deep Space Nine season three, of course you'll see Voyager. I'm also working on some kind of like re-workings of old products. Like the first first half of the year there's no new products you know special things for the fans. I'm asking loads of different people what they'd like to see and I'll see what I can give them. SIMON - Like a special series? TERRY - Yeah, a special series, or like the behind the scenes things, maybe doing those as stand-alone for the beginning of the year, that sort of thing. Nothing confirmed yet. I may or may not, and I'm tending towards it but don't hold me to it, doing rental of both the new series as well. There'll probably be a couple of special editions and boxed sets as well, - Movies 1 - 7 boxed set!! It will probably be done! Probably because we'd be silly not to do it, but I imagine we'd also do the movie as a stand alone as well. TIM S - What about Star Trek IV from the Directors Series in the States? TERRY - Again, all these things I can follow up. TIM G - I didn't konw it was any longer. SIMON - It had a short introduction from Leonard I think, then went into the film and then there was out-takes afterwards. TIM G - It had a pretty long introduction didn't it? TIM S - In all I think there was about 20 minutes extra footage. SIMON - I mean, people are asking for bloopers anyway. TERRY - Well all these ideas really help us as well. And at that point we wrapped things up, thanked Terry and Simon was left to settle the bill!!