Interview with Ian McLean

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Interviews by Fans
Title: Interview with Ian McLean
Interviewer: Susan P. Batho
Interviewee: Ian McLean
Date(s): May 22, 2004
Medium: online as PDF
Fandom(s): Star Trek
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.

Ian McLean was interviewed at Penrith, NSW.

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

Excerpts

We actually had an ASTREX meeting, well a committee meeting, where we talked about, what… well I was a little worried about that somebody could come in and open up an official club from under our noses, and suddenly we would be told we had to shut down because we weren’t official, right? And everybody say, “Well, that’s just Ian worrying about in advance [about the club being shut down] “, and all this sort of stuff… including George and Maria Papadeas saying, “Ah, well, you know, there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing, or whatever.” Now, whether that meeting planted the seed in their minds, or whether they’d already been working on it themselves, I don’t know. And we probably never will know. But… the next time Richard Arnold came for a convention, we pounced on him. And we said we’re really scared that this guy wants to open an official club in Australia and Richard said it won’t ever happen. And then the next thing you knew, there really was a group organizing to become an official fan club that was likely to happen. And then all of a sudden, the next issue of the American one had been slightly reworded that they were no longer the official fan club for the world, but they were the American one, and now suddenly we heard that there was now a British one, and there was suddenly a Canadian one, and then, of course then, George and Maria announced they were the Australian one.

So I still remember the days, like I had one meeting at my place in the flat and there were about thirty people that came, and, somebody I don’t remember, Sue… Sue Bellenger would turn up with three bottles of coke and everybody was satisfied, you know? And a year later, we had a meeting at my flat again because the other one had worked out so well, and we got a few people in that area who had never been to a meeting before. And George and Maria brought the original “The Cage” that had just come out on VHS in America and hadn’t been seen here yet. Yup. And we got a hundred people. In my flat! So the writing was on the wall from that moment on. You can’t show VHS videos, commercially bought VHS videos to an audience that is bigger than the number of people that would fit in your lounge room.

And it was like we were drunk on laughter. And then I’ve been to parties where people’d complain nobody’s been drinking, and it’s a boring party, and you think I’ve actually been to places where you can get the same high that you can get on alcohol just from laughter and creativity. And I miss that because… Two things used to happen. You’d have this hilarious afternoon of killing yourself laughing, and then you’d go home and write it up, and then the people that you laughed with read it and then go oh my god, you turned that into a poem. And so, like, we weren’t ever quite sure if they were offended by it or not. But they still laughed with you the next time and allowed you to turn it into another one the next time. But then, the fact is that when you don’t have these sounding boards to build your creativity with, it’s bloody hard to do it on your own.

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