William Shatner Is Making A Xena Documentary, Starts By Calling Its Fans “Needy”

Super weird comment. I’ve been to a Xena convention and the fans are just like those of any other nerdy convention! Which is to say mostly friendly and loving and a little socially awkward maybe? But generally very cool, nice folk.

Weird, what I took from the quote was less offensive, to me it said that Xena fans probably don’t know a lot of other Xena fans in regular, everyday life. But when they go to a convention they can easily find kindred spirits and shared interests. But hey that’s just my take.

“An embracing of like minded people.” That sounds right.

I dunno, there’s a difference between “needy” and “people in need.” He didn’t call them needy, he said they’re people who need to be surrounded by like-minded people. I’ve been in a lot of small(er) fandoms, and I certainly do have a need to glom on to other fans and not let go when I find them. I guess I didn’t read his comments as negative? He said it’s a lovefest, after all.

I’m just wondering how he’s going to make this about himself since that tends to be his favorite topic.

Honestly, I don’t think he really gets what a con is. He’s an actor, and they live in their own world. A con’s got look pretty crazy to an actor who thinks what he did is just a job. A con is a big social event where everyone gets to go play. I’d be happy to see a Xena con in my area!

He’s jealous. He’s no where near as hot, or awesome as Lucy Lawless and she can out act him even when she is half asleep.

I haven’t been to many cons, but from what I’ve experienced, they really weren’t a whole lot different in terms of the atmosphere. It’s a time and place where it’s socially acceptable for an adult to act like a child and not get weird looks from everybody. Not that I don’t generally act like a child anyway, it’s just nice to be around people who won’t judge me for it :)

This is exactly how I read it. It didn’t seem to me like he was calling the fans loners, more that the fandom is lonely because it’s so small. You do cling o the few fans you can find, and you do need them because no one else you know gets it or cares, it can be a very lonely thing, being the only fan of something in your immediate social group.

I wasn’t crazy about Captains though I did deeply enjoy parts of the interviews often time it turned a little too esoteric for my taste.

But with Xena I’ll be really curious to see what he does. I’m especially curious to see how he handles the queer aspect of the show’s fandom because it is so VITALLY important to the show’s after airing success.

I mean the show has a lot of straight fans, but it’s following in the lesbian geek community is stratospheric you know? It was the first fantasy/scifi show to really embrace the queer community and, more importantly, CATER to it. And one of the primary reasons it continues to be popular is because that central love story is so incredibly enduring, and also relatively rare.

If he doesn’t touch on that then it will just be a documentary version of the fandom as outline in that one episode, Send in the Clones, and I don’t think ANYONE needs to see that.

I dont know why Shatner seemed to see such a different distinction between the two types of fans (going out on a limb here, but maybe he doesn’t have that big of a problem calling fans of a show he was not involved in “needy”) Pretty transparent if you ask me.

That being said, human beings are needy. People that go to clubs are there to dance and drink but also to have that precious human contact. People that go to Xena conventions are there to discuss, explore and have that precious human contact. We are social animals. Shatner is right, but he could prefaced that comment by saying, “and that is completley normal”.

Small? There are lots of fans! LL has a huge following,

“How about they love the show and love hanging out with other people who feel the same?”
EXACTLY!

It’s not as big as Star Trek or Sherlock or the Avengers, for instance. I didn’t mean that it was unremarkable or tiny, just that it’s not as easy to find people in your immediate social circle to dork out about it, and that can be a very difficult and lonely thing.

Yeah, what he said is true to the nature of all cons. They’re all about a need to connect with people who share the same interests. Nothing really offensive. I think he was being positive about it. It brings people together. I’m sure what he said applies to himself as well since he’s been to a lot of cons.

I think some of you are being way too generous with Mr. S. “People in need. People who are so in need that they cling to each other because of the mutuality of what they are” sounds to my ear like a patronizing insult. I’m sure he knows better ways of getting his point across if he doesn’t mean to be condescending.

What is a Klingon Omelette, and why would you put one on as opposed to eating it?

I think Shatner was referring to the gay fans attending the con. And Xenites, if you haven’t already, please like the Xena movie campaign on Facebook!

You can’t compare Xena to Sherlock or The Avengers. Xena is off air since 2001 and still has a strong and loyal fan-base, while The Avengers and Sherlock are a “now thing”, you can’t know how the fandom will be in ten years.
Xena, Buffy, Star Trek, Star Wars lasted in time and that’s is what make them classic in my opinion
(Sorry for my English, I’m Italian and sometimes I still make mistakes :p )

I wonder if he really gets what these cons are really like :/

Sarah.x

http://geekwatchhq.com/

I believe he interviewed some Xena fans during that convention and that’s probably the impression he had

He interviewed her and Renee. I don’t think he is jelous. Lucy wants to know when it will come out by the way.

I would need to see him make the statement otherwise I may read too much between the lines. Also the tone of the statement, I have now way of reading that from a quote like this one it can go both ways, but Shatner has a track record on this sort of thing

He wants to know why people come to conventions to dress up and pretend to be someone that they’re not – and be the source of jeering. This, coming from a man who makes his living pretending to be someone he’s not, being an actor. Dressing up in all kinds of clothing, putting make up on and relying on people (fans) to support his efforts – and it’s these fans that give him a very lucrative career so that he can spend his life in luxury making documentaries about other people who dress up and come to conventions. Ironic. And a bit clueless.

Those are the conventions, share and have fun with what you like. What is the problem? these comparisons are meaningless. If you are going to see others or enjoy your favorite series does not matter, that’s what you do at a convention. Although for me, Xena is the best!

eh, I don’t think he was making a distinction really :/ I think the same is true for Trekkies but it just came off that way on accident. Also, he went to a Xena convention so he probably loves the show, hahahaha and he is probably just as needy in that IT’S AMAZING TO FIND SOMEONE ELSE WHO LOVES THE SHOW SO MUCH AFTER ALL THIS TIME OF LOVING IT! The neediness comes from not having as much content as Trekkies and wanting for there to be more to come after being deprived of that for years..

I don’t think he meant to be offensive

I love the Shat, I swear I do, but there are days when I want to smack him upside the head with a live salmon. HARD. This would be one of those times.

i feel like your headline is a misquote, and that you have misread condescending meaning where there wasn’t any. but whatever, makes for a more galvanizing article i guess.

the point isn’t any pecking order, or hierarchy. everyone has been saying, relative to the general population, within someone’s geographic reach, there may not be too many people who have a strong geek on for xena. sheesh, fans are so protective.

holy crap did i ever catch a mountain of flack in a comment thread a while ago for suggesting that cons were an extension of actors jobs, and that the shows were going to work for them. many fans need to believe that everyone is in on the heady thrill and excitement, that it is exactly the same for actors, and that actors love being mobbed by fans every weekend all summer, answering the same questions, signing photos, and generally, working when people with normal jobs would have had time off.

if it helps to understand, he didn’t call anyone needy. the mary sue did that in their headline and falsely attributed it to him.

to me, it sounded like he was trying to sound passionate and grandiose–which is very shatnerian. i think people have their backs up immediately from the false and inflammatory headline, and that is the lens they are stuck with for the rest of the article. first impressions are a proven thing.

i don’t think there is a problem. i think the mary sue deliberately has tried to stir up controversy where there is none.

But I’m not a fan… well, I do reblog some Xena photoset on my Tumblr sometimes, but I don’t think that makes me a fan.
I’m past behind that phase, as Roger Murtaugh would say: I’m too old for this s&%t.
I was trying to stick with facts and my respond to Opal was just that. I’ve been part of the fandom for 12 years and I know fandom have a short life span usually. Xena, Buffy and Star Trek, even if they haven’t the amount of fans they had when they were on air, have still fanbase. And a strong one too, even if small.
So explain to me why you think I was being protective. Did my bad English give you this expression?

you sounded very defensive, as though affronted that Xena wasn’t being given its due respect. that in itself is a fannish over reaction, let alone that the show and its fans were not being called into question, just the fact that it might be hard to find other hardcore fans and that they may not be close by, thus the need for conventions.

and geeky fandom is NOT known for short life span, quite the opposite, it usually grows and becomes more frenzied. look, for example, at firefly–its fans have now blossomed to almost a cult. fans of original battlestar galactica (which ran 1 season over 30 years ago) were outraged when the series was remade. stop-motion fans hail 1933′s King Kong as their patron saint.

i don’t know if you are confusing “audience” the numbers who watched a show when on air with “fans” people who really like, or rewatch, or collect memorabilia, or continue to talk about, or go to conventions for. sometimes audiences dwindle to just the core fanbase, sometimes they grow with syndication. it’s fans that are on geek blogs and commenting in threads, and getting defensive about how their fan object is represented.

nobody was suggesting xena fanbase/fandom doesnt measure up, so your comment was out of nowhere, a defence against something no one was saying.

Sherlock? The Robert Downey, Jr. movies? How does that compare to Xena?

I was a early Star Trek fan despite Shatner’s cartoon acting skills-Then real ST came along with STTNG and Voyager. I am a Xenite and deeply resent this sexist dork proclaiming Xena fans as “needy”-I can imagine what he thinks we need.!..and must chuckle at Shatner’s bad rug and frantic attempts to keep himself in the spotlight.Give it up Billy, it’s long over. Leonard Nimoy is worthy of being invited to a Xena Con- for his fine acting and charity work in transforming the “Symphony” theatre in NYC into a real artspace. Billy’s just kind of pathetic-speaking of needy…..

DrPat

Xena Con 2013 was this past weekend, and there were probably 500 fans there… smaller than last year’s 2,000 fans, but that was because Creation (the company that hosts cons) said last year would be the last con and people broke bank to come. Then Creation decided to keep holding Xena Cons! (The next con will be in February 2014.) Last year, Shatner walked around and interviewed fans, and his crew filmed the audience & con guests. We didn’t see Shatner or his crew this year… did he lose interest in us? *shrug* Hope not! The Xena fandom mostly interpreted Shatner’s comments positively.