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30 Days of TV - Day 10
( The Days )
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Here's another easy choice: The Sentinel.
Like many TS fen, I came to the show through the fan fiction. Unlike many TS fen, I freaking hated the fan fiction!
Let me explain. The first fandom in which I truly felt like part of the online community was Hercules (HTLJ) and to a lesser extent its sister show Xena. When HTLJ was coming to an end, I sort of drifted into Stargate SG-1 because I saw a thematic connection: both were modern reinterpretations of ancient gods. I discovered I rather liked Stargate, and found the same kind of community feeling there that I'd enjoyed among HTLJ fen.
But there were these two characters who I emphatically did not recall from the TV show, who kept showing up in Stargate fanfic. Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg. It wasn't unusual for the crossover label to be missing from these stories; I always skipped the ones that admitted it because I like to know both fandoms when I read a crossover. But these two guys just kept showing up. In particular, I loathed Blair because he talked like an illiterate teenager but context indicated I was supposed believe he was intelligent. And this 'sentinel' thing, I just didn't get it. Of course, fan writers generally do assume their readers already know stuff: it's one of the luxuries of being part of the audience you're writing for. And mostly it's fine. But all this stuff...it wasn't Stargate.
Eventually, I figured out that Sentinel was a US TV show and these two interlopers in my fandom were coming from there. I figured there must be something in it since so many Stargate fen liked it. So I went to check it out and...blow me, it was a goddamned cop show! This made no sense. I mean, what were Starsky and Hutch doing at Stargate Command? Cops didn't belong there! Not even cops with weird powers and sidekicks who talk funny and can't decide if they're a shaman or an anthropologist. I am really not a fan of crime drama so at that point I gave the whole thing up as a mass mental abberration and resigned myself to hitting the back button any time I saw words like 'sentinel', 'Ellison' or 'Blair'.
But there was this one fic. It was a long-running slash series, not brilliantly written but very engaging, and I was really into it, following it as each new chapter was posted. I wanted to know what would happen. I really did. And the damn writer snuck in a Blair cameo. After resisting my desire to lambast the author for sneakily forcing me to read something so anathema to me, I sighed, bit the bullet and asked on one of the lists if anyone could point me to resources about this Sentinel show. Sheila generously offered to send me tapes of the whole series (wow, tapes - yeah, this was in 2001, way before BitTorrent came on the scene). Around that time, I lost my job so I had a lot of time on my hands. I pretty much mainlined those tapes in a week. Maybe less.
And I got to read that fanfic to the end.
And, since I had so much time on my hands, I watched those tapes again. And then I found this idea for a Sentinel fanfic worming into my brain. And I started writing.
And the rest is history, I guess.
To this day, there remain a lot of fandom tropes I just can't get on board with. I tend to hit the back button every time I see the word 'guide'. Because in spite of everything, what I fell in love with was the canon, in all its flawed glory. This crappy cop show with its babe-of-the-week mentality and its blowing-shit-up and its hero who can't keep hold of his gun, and those weird, out of place episodes with sprit panthers and South American tribes...I just adore it. I can't even articulate why. I just do.
But it still doesn't belong with Stargate :)
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Here's another easy choice: The Sentinel.
Like many TS fen, I came to the show through the fan fiction. Unlike many TS fen, I freaking hated the fan fiction!
Let me explain. The first fandom in which I truly felt like part of the online community was Hercules (HTLJ) and to a lesser extent its sister show Xena. When HTLJ was coming to an end, I sort of drifted into Stargate SG-1 because I saw a thematic connection: both were modern reinterpretations of ancient gods. I discovered I rather liked Stargate, and found the same kind of community feeling there that I'd enjoyed among HTLJ fen.
But there were these two characters who I emphatically did not recall from the TV show, who kept showing up in Stargate fanfic. Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg. It wasn't unusual for the crossover label to be missing from these stories; I always skipped the ones that admitted it because I like to know both fandoms when I read a crossover. But these two guys just kept showing up. In particular, I loathed Blair because he talked like an illiterate teenager but context indicated I was supposed believe he was intelligent. And this 'sentinel' thing, I just didn't get it. Of course, fan writers generally do assume their readers already know stuff: it's one of the luxuries of being part of the audience you're writing for. And mostly it's fine. But all this stuff...it wasn't Stargate.
Eventually, I figured out that Sentinel was a US TV show and these two interlopers in my fandom were coming from there. I figured there must be something in it since so many Stargate fen liked it. So I went to check it out and...blow me, it was a goddamned cop show! This made no sense. I mean, what were Starsky and Hutch doing at Stargate Command? Cops didn't belong there! Not even cops with weird powers and sidekicks who talk funny and can't decide if they're a shaman or an anthropologist. I am really not a fan of crime drama so at that point I gave the whole thing up as a mass mental abberration and resigned myself to hitting the back button any time I saw words like 'sentinel', 'Ellison' or 'Blair'.
But there was this one fic. It was a long-running slash series, not brilliantly written but very engaging, and I was really into it, following it as each new chapter was posted. I wanted to know what would happen. I really did. And the damn writer snuck in a Blair cameo. After resisting my desire to lambast the author for sneakily forcing me to read something so anathema to me, I sighed, bit the bullet and asked on one of the lists if anyone could point me to resources about this Sentinel show. Sheila generously offered to send me tapes of the whole series (wow, tapes - yeah, this was in 2001, way before BitTorrent came on the scene). Around that time, I lost my job so I had a lot of time on my hands. I pretty much mainlined those tapes in a week. Maybe less.
And I got to read that fanfic to the end.
And, since I had so much time on my hands, I watched those tapes again. And then I found this idea for a Sentinel fanfic worming into my brain. And I started writing.
And the rest is history, I guess.
To this day, there remain a lot of fandom tropes I just can't get on board with. I tend to hit the back button every time I see the word 'guide'. Because in spite of everything, what I fell in love with was the canon, in all its flawed glory. This crappy cop show with its babe-of-the-week mentality and its blowing-shit-up and its hero who can't keep hold of his gun, and those weird, out of place episodes with sprit panthers and South American tribes...I just adore it. I can't even articulate why. I just do.
But it still doesn't belong with Stargate :)
no subject
But then, TS is one of those shows you find crossed with every single fandom! X Files, both Stargates, Buffy... you name it, they sure will be a Sentinel crossover ;)
But I love the show, too, Really love it.
no subject
But I admit they're crossovers. I don't just plonk an ex-ranger, ex-cop and his weird sidekick into the middle of a story in another fandom and pretend they're part of the canon. If I take a step back, I can see the logic of those Stargate crossovers - Blair and Daniel have a lot in common, so do Jim and Jack, Jim would certainly be well qualified for an SG team...but those early experiences just put me off the whole idea.
no subject
AUs, of course, are another matter. ;-)
The show is dodgy, but no more so than many a tv production, and I love it for giving me Jim and Blair - but hey. There's nothing wrong the occasional explosion, y'know?
no subject
I do like crossovers. Um...well, I like crossovers that seem logical to me. I couldn't cross TS with, say, Hercules. I'd spend so long trying to get my head around how they could possibly meet that I wouldn't enjoy the story. But logical ones are okay. I just got put off TS/SG1 by all the crossovers that wouldn't admit they were.
The show does have its dodgy moments, but I do love it so...
here from ts_newsletter
Re: here from ts_newsletter
I remember joking with her about 'which one was the curly-haired one' and oh, it all went uphill from there.
LOL! Yeah, I can see that. I never saw much of Pros, but it would fit well with Sentinel.
Re: here from ts_newsletter
It's fun to know when other fans are starting interesting conversations now that fandom is more distributed than when we were on mailing lists.