Interview with Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams
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| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Interview with Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams |
| Interviewer: | Susan P. Batho |
| Interviewee: | Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams |
| Date(s): | April 28, 2003 |
| Medium: | online as PDF |
| Fandom(s): | many |
| External Links: | effect of commercialisation and direct intervention by the owners of intellectual copyright : a case study : the Australian Star Trek fan community by Susan Batho (2009) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams were interviewed by Susan P. Batho in Perth, Washington.
The interview was included in an academic paper by Susan P. Batho which addresses the effect of the Viacom Crackdown, TPTB, and Australian fandom.
Part of a Series
- Interview with Susan Batho
- Interview with Geoff Allshorn
- Interview with Julie Gormly
- Interview with Ruth Collerson and Joanne Kerr
- Interview with Shayne C. McCormack
- Interview with Ian McLean
- Interview with Tricia McKinlay
- Interview with Rose Mitchell
- Interview with Regina
- Interview with Jim Rondeau
- Interview with Derek and Sharon Screen
- Interview with Rachel Shave
- Interview with Nikki White
- Interview with Donna Hanson
- Interview with Bob Miller
- Interview with William Hupe
- Interview with Dr. Ann Hupe
- Interview with Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams
Excerpts
Jodi: WESTREK was the big thing for many many years. It started out originally as a couple of people meeting at someone’s house, and then it got too big for the house idea, and went to the Karrawalla Hall, and from there over to a place at Mt. Woolly – they hired the rec room. They were running an episode one night and in there was a square dance in the room next door, and it was very hard to watch… “What is Scotty doing with the Indians again?” Keep hearing this “doce doe, take your partner” kind of thing, and eventually we wound up at a hall on our own. Clinton Hall… and we were there for like eight or nine years, and then the numbers got right up to, we got up to like 200 people every – the last Friday of every month. We went from there to the Union Hall in town, and the numbers got up to about 300, 320 at its height, but that’s also when it started to get quite politicized. I think this was around the time of the tail end of TNG and DS9 was running, and Voyager was coming up, and the numbers then just dwindled off… and then the letters saying to cease and desist showing the episodes.
Jodi: My views on Paramount? They’re shooting themselves in the foot. They really really are. There was something learnt early on in the 80’s: even then I was aware of how hush-hush we had to be about everything. We couldn’t openly advertise when you were meeting, and you were going to show episodes. You could say Trek people are getting together for a social gathering. You never mentioned we were showing episodes. Just all hushhush. So, yes, we were all aware that Paramount could be pooh-pooey on us, but it didn’t make us… if anything made us despise Paramount all the more for doing that, it was because they were taking away our social enjoyment. “How dare you do this?” you know?. I think especially since Gene Roddenberry died, I mean, even when he was still alive during TNG, it was a franchise, we’re aware of it; they’re only looking at it from, the point of view of it being money spinner, and then Roddenberry died, and the franchise went off in so many directions… that’s all it is: it’s a cash cow. It’s a cash cow. And in spite of the fans. They want to suck us in big time....They don’t just move on to the Official Club. They just move away... And the other thing is that the Official Fan Clubs don’t have areas that interest me about fandom. They will not accept or acknowledge in any way other than to say “Bad Fan Fiction”. I’m sorry – fan fiction is what maintains my interest, because it takes the stories into areas that I want to read about, and it carries on stories that the episode didn’t deal with, or it stopped there. I want to know what happened when so-and-so walked through an elevator – what was that conversation? I want to read fan fiction. I want to see them take a story I like that goes off into a different area.
Fern: And not only that, in fan fic you can have a character die and it’s not the end of the world. But not in a novel – not that I mean I want my character to die. There are places they can take the stories, cause at the end of the fan fic, we know the character isn’t dead. But obviously wouldn’t want someone to die in a book, because it would then become official canon. And that would be a bad thing. But the, even in the official books, you can’t have Kirk going off and having a bonk, well you can – the right Kirk you can. You probably couldn’t with most of the characters, because it’s not in the canon that they’re sexual.
Jodi: I went to one Star Trek con that, which was the very first time I met you, which was Holodiction in Sydney, which I really really enjoyed, and then found out afterwards, or maybe at the start of the con, all the politics and all the backstabbing and bitterness that went into it.Fern: God, I would have loved to go to that con.
Jodi: I was just sort of horrified at all the double-dealing that went on and all the back-handedness and stuff.
Fern: I would have been oblivious.
Jodi: No one was oblivious. But it was really, really bad.
Fern: I’m really good at being oblivious. I would have been like, things to watch, people to talk to.
Jodi: There was all of that going on. I mean like, I had a fantastic time at Holodiction, I loved it, it was a great con, but it introduced me to Sarah, and I remember going into there Friday night and expected everybody to be there, like in the Huckster’s Hall, and I’d come with like, hundreds and hundreds of dollars, specifically to buy fanzines, and it turned out that no one else was selling fanzines. I was devastated. I wandered out one morning, just before the first panel started. I went back in, and thought I’ll give it another go, and I wandered in, and there’s Sue sitting there, right out in the back corner, and she’s only pulling a few out, and I just rocketed across there and went “Whew!” and just about had a heart attack. “Fanzines please. Just introduce me to whatever you have for sale.” It was Trek, Professionals, Blake’s 7, anything black cover? Anything under the table? Anything slash? Anything x-rated? Whatever. Please sell it to me. She’s just like this is really good. And by the time I left, I think I wandered out with an A4 box, a packing box, full of fanzines, and I spent hundreds of dollars, and I just had the hugest grin on my face. And I plopped back into the main room with them where the meeting was about to start, sat down, and Ray went “Ah, so you finally found some fanzines.”