| Author: |
Louis |
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Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 05:54 AM EDT |
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7,667 times |
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 Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the Gallifreyan Embassy. I may have founded it and ran it for the first few years, but it wouldn't have continued on if it wasn't for the hard work of several people...
Special thanks to all those that kept the club going even when the times seemed very bleak. Hats off to Beth, Genie, Lois, Rosanne, and everyone else that continued the regular meetings, continued printing the newsletters, continued to represent the club at conventions (i.e. I-CON), and so forth.
Although I am proud that the club is still around after two decades, I am even more proud of the hard work, often thankless efforts that made by those that continued with the organization long after I and many others left to work on other projects and whatnot.
The origin of the club can be traced back to swelling of Doctor Who fandom in the States in the early to mid 80's. Although never considered "mainstream" the Doctor Who series caught on in a big way with science fiction fans hungry for new material (remember, it was a time when there were no new Star Wars films coming out in any foreseeable future and it was before Star Trek returned television with The Next Generation). Shown mostly on PBS stations across the US, it picked up new audiences spanning all ages.
At that time, there were new local fan clubs emerging centering around the series. Surprisingly, there were none in the NY metro or Long Island area at that time. Hence begat the creation of "The Gallifreyan Embassy of Long Island" which as the name implies covered the Long Island (both Nassau and Suffolk counties), New York area.
The First meeting was held in the Holiday Inn located in Rockville Centre, and the meetings continued through the generosity of club members opening their homes to host meetings. In addition to meetings, we were attending conventions, meeting and interviewing various cast and crew members of the series, volunteering at PBS pledge drives (for us, mostly WLIW on Long Island, but we also ventured to other stations including one in CT.
The club quickly expanded to cover other British science fiction, such as Blake's Seven, The Tripods, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and others.
Eventually the membership grow well beyond that of Long Island or even New York. After the cancellation or very long hiatus if you will of Doctor Who in 1989, the club still continued on and published newsletters even when there was very little news on the forefront.
Which brings us to today. New life and a revitalization of the series is upon now thanks to the efforts of Russell T. Davies and others. They have revamped the series and brought it into the 21st century. We hope to do the same with this redesigned Gallifreyan Embassy web site and our new internet presence.
With that said, special thanks have to go to all those that were there in the beginning as well as those that came onboard later on that made the club a success and allowed it to continue throughout the last 20 years. So hats off to you all! To name a few (I can't mention everyone here) special thanks to Kenny D, Beth, Genie, Keith, Lois, Denise, Rosanne, PJ, Pete "Bug," Tim, "Anti-Doctor" Chase, Andrea, Brian, Joe, Charlie M, Amy, Jeff, Katie, Christian, Alford, and the late Rob W., plus the many others that are not listed here, but you know who you are!
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"Barcelona"