Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with KimE

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with KimE
Interviewer:	Clare McBride
Interviewee:	Kim
Date(s):	June 19, 2012
Medium:
Fandom(s):	The Tomorrow People, Firefly
External Links:	Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with Kim
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In 2012, Kim (KimE) was interviewed via Skype by Clare McBride as part of the Media Fandom Oral History Project.

Length: 00:43:22. A written transcript is available.

For more information about the origins of this interview, where it is housed, contact information, suggestions regarding future interviewee candidates, and how to become volunteer interviewer, see the Media Fandom Oral History Project page.

Topics Discussed

• The Tomorrow People (the original series, the new series, and the audio series are the way they’re referred to by the fans)
• her experiences at cons, both as a fan and as a volunteer who shows the stars around

Excerpts

[let me tell you about my favorite fandom]:

Oh, honey, I would be so thrilled to talk to you about The Tomorrow People. The original series was a 1970s British children’s sci-fi show and basically it involves people—teenagers—who are morphing into the next evolution of humanity. Instead of homo sapiens, they become super sapiens. Which means they have—they can teleport, they have telekinesis, they have telepathy, few other things, as the scripts dictated, it was great. Then also in the 90s, Nickelodeon decided to redo the show. It was completely different, and they could jaunt—teleport—and they were telepathic, but they, again, helped the world and then they also did an audio series in the early 2000s. Both completely different series, awesome.

[regarding the remake]:

My initial reaction was “What the heck? This has nothing to do with The Tomorrow People.” But then I decided to give it a chance and I watched it again. And so long as I don’t compare the two, it’s also a good series. It’s… got to think of the right way to say it… more Nickelodeon than the original series was, does that make sense? Because the original series—one of the things I liked best about it—it was four children but it didn’t treat you like a child. It treated you like, you know, actually understand adult things that… okay, some of the situations they were put into were ridiculous, but they used real honest-to-goodness situations for part of their stories.

[the convention]:

Found out about Hyperspace. Uh, they were contemplating having a big do, is what they were calling it, it was going to be possibly a river cruise down the Thames, in London, and is there any interest in doing this? I’ll put it together if there’s interest in doing it. And my immediate reply was “Oh heavens yes! Do you need me to help you do anything? Oh my goodness Tomorrow People eee!” I was a little bit excited, not overly so, of course. And, uh, I didn’t actually get a response from that, but apparently enough people said yes, I would love to do it, that they did decide to do a get-together. Apparently, there was one ten years prior to that, that was basically just dinner, dancing, and go home. But this was an actual convention, what they wound up doing. It was… what year was it? Oh, well, I don’t know what year it was, because I can’t actually remember that far back, I think it was 2008, but it was called Hyperspace, thirty-fifth anniversary for The Tomorrow People when they started filming the original series. They had people from all three series, some stars, some cast, some producers, everything was there, and I got to meet the two people I was convinced I was going to marry when I was young. That was awesome. Of course, it was also a great time, but I point out that I wanted to marry the characters, not the actors, because… actors, it didn’t ruin the show for me, but I had no desire to marry the actors, let me just go there.

[more about the convention]:

At the convention, they had like two and a half free full days of things to do, there was the meet and the greet, there was the autograph photo op thing, which, by the way, were completely free, so it was even more amazing, you actually got to spend time chatting with your favorite stars or writers. They had an awards show, they had everybody who was going to attend got to cast their vote for probably twenty or thirty different categories… what’s the best outfit for the old series and for the new series… well, they didn’t have outfits for the audioseries, but who’s your favorite character, which was your favorite episode, and so they gave out the awards there that night, and then on the second day of the convention, the place we actually held the convention was two doors down from the place they filmed it, the studio. Which was… okay, I have to say it, it was like so Mecca. We went to Mecca, okay? We walked in, and we saw stills of it, we stood on the stage and said “Okay, this is were the jaunting pad was,” so everybody had their picture made. “Oh look I’m standing where the jaunting pad was!”. And they had two of the stars from the original series and the creator of the entire phenomenon were there and they held their belts like they were jaunting in front of the cameras and… oh. It was amazing. And they also took us on a guided tour of some of the set locations within walking distance of that. There’s a bridge that appeared in an episode of the original series called “A Man for Emily”, and we got to run up and down the bridge. And the best part of that was there was a man and his daughter, granddaughter, niece, some little girl with him, and he’s like, “Come along, Emily!” And it was like, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

[being a Joss Whedon fan]:

I would have to say that yes, I’m a Joss Whedon fan, because he’s brilliant and comes up with completely off-center ideas and makes them both, well, I won’t go so far as to say believable, but once you buy into it, everything that goes on pretty much is believable, and regardless, it’s freaking amazing.