I'm into science fiction (books, films, TV, etc.). My favourite sci-fi shows are:
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“Doctor Who,” a BBC TV series that ran for over 25 years, starting in 1963 (and I can probably tell you the plot line for most of them, too). Out of the lot, my favourite has always been Tom Baker's Doctor.
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“Star Trek,” though my favourites are the movies based on the original TV series, more than the TV series, itself. But out of the TV series I'd probably say that I have fonder memories of the originals compared against anything that came afterwards. “The Next Generation” eventually grew on me, but what a crappy name for the series, and they were far too pacifist. “Deep Space Nine” was generally as boring, or annoying, as a daytime soap. “Voyager” probably was the more interesting of the latest spinoffs. And I haven't quite decided what I think of “Enterprise”.
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I like the “Star Wars” films, though it's the originals, not the recent prequels, that I think are the best. There was more fun in them, and less lameness and pandering to an audience that's too young to understand the underlaying themes.
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My favourite science fiction film is probably “2001,” and about the only one that can justly describe itself as science fiction.
I enjoy these for what they are; entertainment. I find it baffling why some people become zealots about them, turning them into quasi-religions. And embarassing to be around fanatics who try and live their lives as if the shows were real, dressing up like the characters and roleplaying them, and endlessly debating the storylines as if they held the meaning to life.
As a youngster I can remember going on a tour through one of our local technical colleges, seeing all sorts of interesting (real) things, but ending up in a room where the Star Trek fans had set themselves up, many of them in costumes from the original series. I thought adults dressing up like that to be just plain weird, even more so as they tried to explain what they were playing at.
In the 1980s we went on holidays to England, and one of the things we paid a visit to was Madame Tussauds', where I was quite surprised to see that they had a Doctor Who exhibition. Naturally I had to get a photo (see below), but unfortunately Mum didn't have the sense to take the photograph from the spot that Tom Baker's model is looking towards. I fooled quite a few friends with that picture, but the direction of his gaze ruined the trick.
Photo taken at Madame Tussauds' in the early 1980s, with me on the left, my sister on the right, and the waxwork model of Tom Baker, as Doctor Who, behind us.
Many years years later I was given a handmade Tom Baker scarf (like the multicoloured one he had at the start) as a birthday present from the librarian in the school library where I was working (I was told that she spent about eighteen months knitting it). It was a very appreciated present, and is long enough to be wearable by three people simultaneously (and without strangling each other).
A moderately recent picture, taken in the early 2000s, with me wearing the scarf, while attempting to do a Roger Delgado “I am the master… you will obey me,” dirty look. It needs the 1970s heavy reverb to go with it.
Luckily most people don't seem to be aware of what it's a copy of, and it's not really strange clothing, so it's not like walking around in public wearing some costume from a TV show. Though I did once hear some kids exclaiming that they'd just seen Doctor Who as I walked out of our shopping centre. I nicked off around the corner so that they couldn't be certain, or be disillusioned (it probably made their day). But it just goes to show that the old adage of people not being able to separate the fiction of television, including the most inpossible and unbelievable fiction, from the facts of real life, is quite true.
Around the same time (late 1980s, early 1990s), I made a short Super 8 Lego animation, called “The Invasion,” and was involved in a community television production group's science fiction parody pilot episode “Space Trash” a few years later. The scarf didn't appear in it, though we did toy with the idea of someone walking past the camera with the scarf on.