Say, what WAS the combination to Kirk's safe, anyway?

Blogger J. Marcus Xavier e-mailed me a link to this post of his a while back. Following the link, I found the post interesting, bookmarked it for future reference, and...promptly forgot about it. Whoops.

Anyway, Xavier's thesis -- focusing on F&SF fandom -- is that the producers of F&SF franchises ignore their fandom at their own peril. I'm not sure I completely agree, but it is a generally good point, particularly as illustrated by the way the once-proud Star Trek franchise has run into the ground. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, for instance, are pretty well reviled nowadays by Star Trek fans, but it's not as though they produced nothing but crap in their Trek tenure. However, most would agree that Berman-and-Braga eventually put too much stock in their own ideas and abilities, leading them to basically (a) run dry on ideas, and (b) assume the quality of the ideas that they still had.

Some would argue that George Lucas ran afoul of the same kind of thing in the Star Wars prequels, but I would disagree, on the basis that the long period in which Star Wars lay fallow (excepting all those "Expanded Universe" books and comics) also saw the latent Star Wars fandom change in its own tastes. I think there's also a danger for fandom itself to fossilize and become unwilling to allow the creators/producers to break free of formula and try something new (for the definitive illustration of this, of course, see Annie Wilkes and Misery).

But Xavier's point is well taken: Sci Fi Producers: We Are Your Word of Mouth. Keeping the fans happy may be difficult, but completely disregarding them? That way madness lies.

(By the way, upon further noodling around Xavier's blog, I see that he's launched a blog-like site called PlanetFandom.com. This is cool, especially since SFSignal seems to be off the air now.)