Diana Barbour

Fan
Name:	Diana Barbour
Alias(es):
Type:	writer, publisher, early vidder
Fandoms:	Star Trek & Starsky & Hutch
Communities:
Other:
URL:
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Diana Barbour is a Star Trek: TOS and Starsky & Hutch fan who, according to Who's Who in Star Trek Fandom, got into fandom at Baycon 1968. Her fannish roots extend much further back to her teens when she began reading and collecting Edgar Rice Burroughs books.

She and Sharon Ferraro were the creators of Memory Alpha, a zine archive that did not make it off the ground.

Writer and Publisher

She published The Best of... and the seminal letterzine S and H. Diana wrote fiction for Saurian Brandy Digest.

Early Vidder

In 2008, Sandy Herrold and Kandy Fong researched the early history of fan vidding. They presented the following summary at Vividcon 2008:

Diana reports that in the summer of 1980, her friend Kendra Hunter returned home from Greece. Diana lugged her 40 pound RCA VHS machine over to Kendra's house. Kendra had a Magnavox VHS, and a reel to reel audio tape player. Diana had been wondering what the 'audio dub' button on her machine was for. Since they had some of the last season of Starsky & Hutch on a video cassette, they paused a picture on one machine, started the song playing, and hit record on the second machine. .....The vidders decided they wanted action!! But, Diana and Kendra found that if they recorded one scene and then try to record another one after it, they got several seconds of static, unstable images, and music interruption. Their solution was to find one long scene and add music. ....Kendra and Diana found a friend with nice handwriting, and used a camera for the credits. [Other friends] helped them with source material and song choices. But, none of their friends knew exactly what Kendra and Diana were doing. They made 20 songs videos by Z-Con 2 , in the Fall of 1980. They carefully put the gen on one tape and the 'underground' slash on a different tape. The night before the con, Diana decide that they needed more credits. By now, they had found out that if one picture was paused, then the action scene they edited after it looked okay.....Diana and Kendra spent the con inviting people into their room to share their *crack*. i.e. vids. They blew everyone away - no one had seen anything like that. They spent the whole con showing their work over and over, and explaining how they did it.

The next year, 1981, sixteen people showed up with vids they had made, and they were inviting people into *their* rooms.

Diana, along with Kendra Hunter made vids under the name of the Magnificent Seven Productions. They are perhaps best known for their Starsky & Hutch vid The Rose. In this vid, Kendra and Diana timed the tag clip of "Starsky's Lady" to Bette Midler's song 'The Rose' - it's the clip where Starsky & Hutch have to open the gifts left to them by woman Starsky had been in love with, and who had died two weeks before. It's a clip instantly familiar to everyone in the fandom and a big fan favorite. Even though the vid consists of a single unedited clip, it still had the power to move Starsky & Hutch fans when it was shown at Sharecon in 2000.

A Sample Listing Of Their Vids

All are Starsky & Hutch and may have been made in the late 1980s and 1990s. The list came from a compilation VHS tape supplied by Sylvia Bond in 2007.

• Magnificent Seven
• Beep Beep
• The Rose
• You Needed Me
• I Am A Rock
• All The Time
• Dust In The Wind
• Don Quixote/The Horseman
• Bridge Over Troubled Water
• Forever In Blue Jeans
• The Boy Can't Help It
• Kiss You All Over
• Sometimes When We Touch
• Let Me Take You In My Arms Again

On Sunday April 3, 2011, Diana passed after a long illness. In lieu of flowers, her loved ones would appreciate donations made in her name to the Rheumatoid Arthritis Foundation or the Lupus Foundation.