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If you ask most couch potatoes whatever happened to such cult favorite TV shows as Millennium, Forever Knight, and American Gothic, they'll tell you (some with great sadness) that these shows are long gone (or now molding in cable re-runs). They'd be wrong. These shows are alive and well and living in cyberspace, and they're not being produced by Hollywood studios, but by their devoted fans. Fan fiction (or "fanfic") is nothing new. Fans creating their own stories using the characters from TV shows probably is as old as TV itself. In the 1980s, fan fiction got a huge boost, thanks to desktop publishing and the corner copy shop. There are even numerous sub-genres of fanfic, such as relationshippers (or "shippers") who fantasize romantic pairings of their favorite characters and the "slash" crowd, who write sexual, often homoerotic, stories (Kirk/Spock, Seven of Nine/Harry Kim, etc.). Online seasons (or "virtual seasons") of cancelled TV shows differ from fanfic in several important ways. First off, they’re actual seasons, with a series of shows that continue the drama from the TV episodes. Fanfic is often wild flights of the writer’s fancy. Virtual seasons attempt to stick close to the original content and are presented as if they are actual episodes of the programs. Many of them are written in teleplay style and are surprisingly well written, with all of the stage directions and scene descriptions so you can visualize the show as if you were watching it on television. One of the most critically acclaimed and popular virtual seasons was for Millennium, the Chris Carter show about a former FBI agent with psychic powers who tracked down serial killers and millennial cults and lone kooks. The show had great promise, but had three extremely uneven seasons as it tried, and never really found, its voice — until it was resurrected for a fourth season online by Dan Owen and Matt Asendorf. Their virtual fourth season became a model for how many other virtual shows are produced. The two amateur writers functioned as executive producers for the virtual show, using a core group of fanfic writers to create the weekly scripts. Show ideas where bandied about in a staff forum and promising show ideas where assigned. After Owen and Asendorf approved the scripts, the other writers where given a chance to critique them before "showtime." The teleplays where even published online at the day and time when the fourth Millennium season would have appeared on television. After finishing out the 1999 season online, Owen and Asendorf have no plans to continue the show. The question many ask after looking through PTV’s offerings is: "What do the original show’s creators and owners think of virtual episodes?" So far, they’re either largely ignorant of them, or have kept silent on the subject. Chris Carter is aware of the Millennium project online and has even sounded somewhat supportive of it. Lance Henriksen, who starred as Frank Black on Millennium, and one of the show’s writers, have read some of the online episodes and been complimentary. Knowing the fate of many TV and movie fan sites who’ve run into trouble with Fox, Paramount and others, one has the distinct feeling that it’s only a matter of time before these companies notice the success of virtual TV and begin to make trouble for its creators. Fans of virtual TV hope that the studios realize how these fan-based enterprises (like all fandom) only help to extend the lives of their properties, not detract from or diminish them. See also: |
