THE OFFICIAL STAR TREK FAN CLUB OF THE U.K. - A STUDY ------------------------------------------------------- by Colin Gunn and Simon Plumbe -------------------------------- With assistance from Tim Gaskill of The Official UK Fan Club -------------------------------------------------------------- During its infancy, the Official Fan Club of the U.K. has had its run of bad press, mainly from fans who feel that the club was set up as a solely for profit making scheme. Initially we wrote this article as two very annoyed fans who wanted nothing more than to put the record straight as regards just where the club was heading, and why it seemed that no one remotly had a clue at what was going on in the world of Trek. Thankfully, it seems that the club is at last beginning to cater for the fans. Tim Gaskill (formely of CIC Video), has now joined the club as the editor of the magazine, and is trying his best to make the magazine, and club, one of the best that will hopfully appeal to ALL fans of Trek. In the article below we have endeavoured to show what the club has been like before Tim joined. Unfourtunately Tim comes under close scrutiny himself in this article, but after talking with him, quite extensively on the phone one evening, he comes across as the type of person that is himself an avid fan of the show and is indeed a Trekker himself! In a section below that deals with Tim's first appearance on QVC, a lot of mistakes were made, and here Tim himself will put the record straight, and his comments made to me are included. I urge you all to view this article as WHAT the club WAS, NOT what the club is becomming. Tim has a mammoth task ahead of putting right what has happened with the club during its short period of life. And I think that you will agree (by his comments) that the future of the club appears to be in good hands. Since their launch in July 1993, there has been growing concern over the Official Star Trek Fan Club Of The UK (run by a company called Absolute Field Marketing) in terms of their attitude towards Star Trek fans and their seemingly lack of knowledge of the subject they claim to be experts on. As well as this, the club has made a number of false claims and promises to it's members and, more importantly, to would-be members to woo them into joining. We decided to take a look at some of the areas in which the club seemed to be lacking or where there was a noticeable absence of knowledge regarding Star Trek. Already, in less than 6 months, we have found a vast number of incidents that, on their own could be forgiven, but when viewed as part of a larger picture, cast doubts over the club's reliability as a source of information. Contagion --------- The first time the club had any real form of publicity in the UK was when representatives attended and gave a talk to the fans to try and encourage them to join at Contagion '93 in mid-July in Glasgow. It was soon apparent that the representatives knew little or nothing about Star Trek and the person who was there wasn't really a Trek fan. When asked whether he was a fan or not, he said he had watched the original series, but didn't watch TNG and had only seen a few DS9 episodes. Now, correct us if we're mistaken, but don't the majority of fans actually WATCH the programme they are supposed to like? The next question raised that was raised by the somewhat hostile audience was that of the leaflet that was included with the con pack. On the flyer, it stated quite clearly that membership to the club was strictly limited (and this is something that they are still claiming today). When questioned on this, the representative from Absolute Field Marketing stated that membership was NOT limited and the advert was meant in the style of a "hurry while stocks last" advert. If this is so, why are they still using this advertising technique 6 months later, clearly in breach of the Trades Description Act. No doubt it is partly because of this sales technique that has seen the clubs membership figures rise so rapidly to over 5,000 members in such an amazingly short period of time. Another point the club made at the convention was that of merchandise that was to be made available EXCLUSIVELY to the club. Again, many fans were distraught at the thought of this, aliking this to a form of bribery - "If you don't join our club, you can't buy item X of merchandise". However, on close examination of the mail order sections of the first two issues, ALL of the merchandise for sale was available openly both to members and non- members. Where is the exclusive merchandise that has been promised? Tim is more than apologetic about the early cons attended by representatives of the club. He explains that the club membership is indeed limited. Paramount, when setting up the structure for the UK club set out a membership total of 10,000. So the club is limited to a set number of members. If the club continues to grow, an option is available if the club wants to use it. They can approach Paramount to renegotiate the clubs member size, but at present it's limited to 10,000. As regards exclusive merchandise, have any of you been able to easily obtain the Enterprise D T-shirt that the club sells? This is one of the first of many pieces of merchandise that the club will be selling made by themselves (or for themselves). Also they are looking to produce a poster, and a filo- fax style fact book which will include fact sheets of ALL Classic, Next Gen and DS9 episodes and sections on the animated and films, with sections for you to add your own comments (i.e. how many times you've seen a particular episode, favourite episode and favourite villian/alien. If this is produced (which I hope it is) then it will certainly be exclusive. The claims at Contagion did come across as there would be merchandise available NOW so to speak. And all in all this was a false claim. But as you can see they are trying. When Is A Club Not A Club? -------------------------- One question that has been raised by many fans is how you do you define what is and isn't a club? To the majority of Trek fans in the UK, a fan club is a non-profit making group run BY fans FOR fans; run by people with a passion and enthusiasm for Star Trek. Now, as the Official club is run by a COMPANY called Absolute Field MARKETING, we don't really think they are in it for fandom and for the good of Star Trek fans. Tim was quite certain of his answer here. To keep afloat they have to make a certain amount of profit. And to produce a quarterly magazine, and any exclusive merchandise isn't cheap. So a certain amount of profit obviously has to be made. Bear in mind that Absolute Field Marketing layed out the money to buy the licence for the club. And we're certain that they would mind at least breaking even on this. The Hard Sell ------------- On the subject of ambiguous advertising, the leaflets that have been distributed through fan clubs or in the general press have been making a number of misleading claims about the club. * One of the perks of membership, as stated in the advert was "you'll get all the latest exclusive data on: Features on new projects, eg. the launch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Character profiles/interviews. Special offers on licenced merchandise. New product releases/reviews. Upcoming conventions." For those of you who are in ANY other fan club, you'll know that they ALL provide info on forthcoming shows, conventions, news on merchandise releases etc. in far greater detail and certainly not exclusively. Just look through any issue of The Final Frontier and you'll see almost all of the above. But occasionally some duff info does get printed in zines. Hopefully any news in the clubs magazine will be upto date and factual. The impression given was that this information is ONLY available to members of the Official Club, which is obviously not true. In the case of articles, interviews etc, they are obviously exclusive to the magazine (or fanzine) that they are written for. It's rather like Pocket Books claiming that their latest novel is available exclusively from Pocket Books. The impression that we think they tried to convey here was, that the information given by the club is direct from Paramount. Hence as regards the info it would indeed be exclusive. The other clubs do indeed get up to the minute news. Alas 70% of this are rumours. If it's from Paramount it's fact and so therefore, to an extent, exclusive. * The members receive "A special limited edition metal pin badge engraved with the year in which you joined the crew." We don't really class a date that has been screen printed (or applied through some other PRINTING technique) as being engraved. This was before Tim's joining the running of the club and hopfully any new advertising will reflect that it is a pin and not really engraved. Although if you look on the back its got the official date and Paramount stamp engraved. * "Crew members of the Official Star Trek Fan Club of the U.K. are strictly limited so make sure you send your application form back immediately." As we explained earlier, they admitted themselves that this is not the case. This was strictly down to the Rep not really sure himself. As explained previously the membership IS limited to 10,000. Just Ask The Experts -------------------- One of the things that has shocked us more than anything else is the obvious lack of knowledge that seems to exist at Absolute Field Marketing regarding Star Trek in any of its forms. Some of the instances we have discovered include: * Recently, Sven Harvey contacted the club to see if they had a release date for the TNG figure of Commander Sela. The response he received was, "Who's that?". In reply, Sven said that she was Tasha Yar's daughter. The response? "Who's Tasha Yar?"! Can you put your trust in a club that has never heard of one of the cast members of TNG, who is also notable as being the ONLY regular cast member to have been PERMANENTLY killed off to date?! They are quite willing to accept the fact that in their offices no one is really a guru on Trek hence their need to look for someone who knows the subject. Through phone calls and letters to the club, they saw the need to employ someone with a knowledge of Trek. Hence Tim's involvement. So all in all, Sven helped to highlight to the club the NEED for someone up on the subject. We don't think they club realised the passion and demand there is for Trek. And we think we're safe in saying that Tim agrees with us here. By the way, the Commander Sela figure is now available in the States, although no UK release date has been announced for the toy. * The next series of incidents have been brought to our attention through reading the first two issues of the club magazine. First in a brief description of the background to DS9 in the first issue, we are told that Bajor was first seen in Trek in the TNG episode "Ensign Ro". Well, as most Trek fans are aware, Bajor wasn't seen in Star Trek until "Emissary" - the pilot episode for DS9! * Still with the first issue. A feature inside offers information and descriptions of all of the characters and there seems to be some confusion over Jadzia Dax. Twice in the first issue are comments regarding the symbiont inside the humanoid body: "...inside she is really a 300 year old scientist, most recently male..." "...The symbiont, in its previous incarnation, was male..." Since when was the symbiont able to change its gender? The host in this case is female, previously male, but the symbiont has and always will be androgynous. * Again, still with the feature on the characters, a mistake is made regarding Odo: "He cannot hold any form for longer than 18 hours without having to rejuvenate." Wrong again. While it may seem like a minor point, it has been stated clearly that Odo can only hold a form for 16 hours. * Onto the second issue now, and the first discrepancy we noticed occured in the letters section. Someone asked about the future of TNG and the response denied all rumours of anything happening with a new series and didn't confirm any details on the next film, although it has been openly stated (by Chas Evans from Universal Pictures) that the seventh film (with the TNG cast) is due for a December 1994 release date with filming due to commence in April '94. As far as the new series is concerned, Tim Gaskill himself then referred to its existence in his own article later in the same issue. * There is a trivia page where the question is answered on how stardates are worked out. To be blunt, Gene admitted that during the original series they were all made up and TNG stardates follow a pattern with the first digit representing the century (24th), the second the season and the other three are randomly spread between 000 and 999 throughout the course of the season. One thing to note here is that Tim did tell us that they are aware of three different "explanations" for Stardates, and only one was used. The piece in the magazine also concentrated more on stardates from a Classic Trek viewpoint. * They then mention the first occurance of a Klingon kiss in the episode "The Emissary" between Worf and K'Ehyler. Did we blink when that happened or was it just that it never occured? We have still yet to have seen a kiss between Klingons on-screen. * The next will, we think, go down as a classic blunder in Trek mis- information! The club claims to have found a mistake in DS9. According to the club, in the first two episodes, Sisko's cat is an Abyssinian, but then changes to a Tabby. Since when did Sisko have a cat???!!! DATA has a cat, which DID change from an Abyssinian to a Tabby, but that was a different CHARACTER in a different SERIES! * A comment from Tim Gaskill in his article refers to "True Trekkers" as being people who prefer Classic Trek. How can anyone in a position of responsibility dismiss fans of TNG and DS9 as not being true Trek fans? * Also in the same article, mention is made of the restrictions Picard et al have to cope with through the Prime Directive and that it wasn't fully adopted during the time of the original series and the characters weren't used to its implications. No clear date has been stated for the time when the Prime Directive was established, but it has been said that it was set up following the Federation's first contact with the Klingons and we know that, according to Star Trek VI, hostilities have been going on between the Klingons and the Federation long before the original series. * When the second issue was late, the reason given was that it had to be checked by Hollywood (not Paramount - they clearly stated Hollywood) but if that was the case, why weren't these mistakes spotted? Also, who is actually checking this as the Star Trek Research Consultant, Richard Arnold, was fired and the office was closed two years ago and has yet to be re-opened. The errors that are listed above are due to the same errors appearing in the clubs Canadian brance. For some reason these same errors got passed by Paramount! Bear in mind that there is really no one at Paramount anymore who sits down and checks every piece of Trek merchandise - that was Richard Arnold's job. Sadly Richard no longer works for Paramount so errors like those above, do slip through. After talking with Tim he is more than apologetic about these. His term as editor did not start untill issue 2 had been sent for proofing. But give him his due - he was aware of the errors and even went on to list others that we had missed! Paramount need Richard Arnold back NOW so these things do not go wrong again. With his comments about Classic Trek fans and Next Gen fans, he tried to point out that with the newer fans being more aimed at Next Gen and DS9, that they shouldn't discredit Classic. A valid point. QVC - The Quest For Knowledge?? ------------------------------- One of the club's form of publicity was when the new editor and Star Trek "expert", Tim Gaskill, appeared on a 1 hour Star Trek special on the satellite shopping channel, QVC. Tim knew that when he had said some of the things below that he had made a mistake. He was thrown into a situation where he had NO script and NO rehearsal time to prepare for his first appearance. Could you go on cold like that and not falter? Also when you read below, the producers of QVC only gave him about 10 seconds between products to actually explain anything about the subject. So if a mistake was made he couldn't go back and correct himself because he had no time! Unfourtunately his performance came across as if he didn't know anything about Trek. BELIEVE ME HE DOES. And alas when ever something like this occurs it is unfortunate bad publicity for the club. So when you read on, bear in mind that what you saw was a man sitting on a couch without a clue as to what he was going to be asked, and a great whopping camera pointing at him. It didn't help when the presenter appeared to be patronising towards Star Trek fans, and she was wearing an ill-fitting Classic Trek uniform accompanied by a Next Gen communicator! This only goes to highlight the less than complimentary attitude the British press have towards Trek fandom. This in part made Tim look inexperienced and unknowledgable. We completely sympathise with Tim on this knowing how harsh the press can be. In the space of just 60 minutes, between the promoting of all the merchandise, Tim Gaskill came up with an alarming number of blunders, some of which were so blatantly obvious that many casual viewers could spot, let alone dedicated fans. Fortunately, we had the programme on video and were able to take a closer look and came up with the following:- * When asked when the original series was set, he replied with, "English Earth date would be in the 24th Century, around... in... mid-2300's I believe, as opposed to The Next Generation which takes place in the 24th Century, in the 23rd Century." Classic Trek was set in the 23rd Century, and season one was set in the year 2266 (according to the Star Trek Chronology). TNG is set approx. 78 years after the movies and in the season one TNG story "The Neutral Zone", it states that the date is 2364 - the 24th Century. * The next question asked Tim when the original series was made. His reply, "The original series started to air at the end of 1966 and it went till the spring of 1968." Star Trek ran from September 1966 to June 1969. * On the subject of the communicator pins as worn in The Next Generation (the Playmates toys were one of the items on sale), Tim was asked if they were permanently attached to the uniforms to which he agreed, to prevent them being lost he explained. Here was a case of pure misunderstanding. Tim is well aware that the pins are indeed removable. As seen in the episode "The High Ground" when Geordi removed his communicator and placed it onto an explosive devise to allow it to be beamed off the Enterprise. Or more recently, when Sisko did the same thing in DS9 in the episode "Q-Less". * While demonstrating the communicator later on during the show, the presenter noticed that the "chirp" on hers was higher pitched than that of a communicator that was being demonstrated by a 13 year old boy. Tim then explained that the difference in the chirps was because one communicator was an Ensign's, the other a Commander's!! Tim here tried to make a joke about this. Unfortunatly it didn't come across as this. Mainly we feel because of the way the presenter was being patronising. * When promoting the videos that were being sold, he referred to the episode "Measure Of A Man" while talking about Data and he said that the episode was about Data being placed on trial to see if he was human. Tim tried to generalise the term sentient by using Human. Unfortunately by using this word the meaning of the episode was lost. Again this is all down to Tim not having the time to go into any great detail. * Once again, on DS9, a video clip was shown of Kira and he said that she was, "Not a member of Starfleet because she doesn't have this right badge." referring to the communicator. This was a pure slip. What Tim tried to say was that on DS9 there are more than Starfleet officers serving on board her. Hence the different pin. Again due to time limitations Tim had to generalise. * Back to DS9 again. When describing the cast of the show he made the following comments; "Sisko is the Captain" and "Doctor Bashir - that's the Doctor." This was only an attempt to show Sisko as the leader on DS9 i.e. the fans are familar with Captain Kirk or Captain Picard. It was just a mistake due to live television. * The next mistake we noticed was when the Playmates Enterprise was demonstrated, along with the sound effects for warp speed. Tim Gaskill then explained that "Warp Speeds are how many times faster than the speed of light." Based on information Warp Speed is calculated exponentially and Warp 2 is roughly the equivalent to 8 times the speed of light. Again Tim was being general. Can you imagine the length of time it would take up to explain how Warp Speeds are calculated? Tim only had about 10 seconds. * One minor point, and I'm sure this can be put down to being a slip of the tongue, but he said (of the Shuttlecraft), "These are used to beam down equipment." He agrees here. It was a slip up, but due to time restrictions he just couldn't go back and correct it. When we were watching this we saw it from a fans point of view. And our feelings were, `and all of this comes from an "expert" on Star Trek!'. Another thing we found alarmingly distressing was his general attitude towards Trek fans and the Official Club being the only "bona-fide" one in the UK. It didn't help when the presenter threw the comment at him that "You are the only OFFICIAL club abd that there are others that are not bona fide". He did however later go on to say that the continuation of Trek was due to the non bona-fide clubs existence. Good on you, Tim, but as a first time Trek fan, how would you view a comment like the above and which club would you join? Another somewhat worrying fact was that, when talking about the TNG characters, it was obvious that Tim was not familiar with them at all. He referred to Riker as being the Spock equivalent because he was the First Officer (or "Number One Officer" as he put it) and, apart from Patrick Stewart, he didn't seem to know the names of ANY of the cast. When referring to the characters, all he stated was that they were played by an actor or actress and he was visibly struggling. So much for fame and stardom! This was an obvious case of nerves. On watching the video again you could tell that some background activity was going on, and that Tim was more than likely concentrating on his prompts from off-stage, which while he was trying to answer the question, must have been off putting to say the least. Also, to Tim's credit, and this must prove beyond any doubt that the club is trying to improve, he appeared again on the show on 28th November 1993 and there were a number of situations similar to the above where Tim could have made mistakes and didn't. There were also a few references which we thought were subtle comments towards ourselves, referring to the mistakes we had highlighted above. A superb example was when DS9 was being promoted and Tim mistakingly referred to Sisko as the Captain and then quickly corrected himself and said Commander and then went on to explain that Sisko was in charge of DS9. Well done, Tim! Questionable Acts? ------------------ There have also been a couple of incidents that have been brought to our attention that, although not illegal, immoral or offering misleading information, we were quite disturbed to hear them. First, the club promises to offer discounts to members through a number of retailers throughout the country. We have spoken to one of these, who wishes to remain anonymous, and we were told that the discounts offered were up to the retailer. No guidance was given to the shop as to what sort of discount or what items should be reduced. Also, the shop in question was offered NO incentives to reduce its prices. This is something that the club will more than likly address in the future. And hopfully one that Tim himself can comment on. Also, when talking to a few fan clubs, who again wish to remain nameless in this matter, we found that they had been approached by Absolute Field Marketing who asked the club for a copy of their mailing list so they could send details on joining the Official Club to them. This is unfortunately frowned upon by many clubs. And what originally got the club off to a bad start with many of the clubs. Hopefully this article will help in some respects to put things right. Contrary to what is said above, we have no grudge against Tim Gaskill, or the Official Fan Club. When we orignally saw or read the above, we had just seen that the Offical Club has been sending special announcement flyers stating that Tim has "a wealth of Star Trek knowledge..." and that "...this is great news for Star Trek Fandom...") and we ORIGINALLY felt that this was not the case and that, to the casual Trek fan, whatever he says is being taken as fact, which sadly wasn't the case. Sadly, in the past the club was doing very little to help promote Star Trek fandom and as members of the club find these factual inconsistencies we are quite sure that they could be put off Star Trek fandom as a result. But now with Tim working hard on the mag it looks as if those could be a thing of the past. That is what the club WAS like. Rest assured that it IS improving. Tim is even now patching up some of the bad press the club has been given. We at Infinite Frontiers have offered our services to the club and Tim has decided to take up the offer through myself (Colin). Already we have been talking about joint projects that will increase the clubs standing with the fans. We hope that this is the beginning of a long and fruitful association with the Official Club of the UK. One which will benefit all concerned. But mainly the fans....