The Final Frontier 1

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THE HISTORY OF "THE FINAL FRONTIER" ------------------------------------- by Simon Plumbe (who else?) ----------------------------- Obviously, The Final Frontier is out, but how did it all begin? Well surprisingly, unlike most other disk mags, The Final Frontier has quite a long history. Where most disk mags are planned, programmed and released within just a few months, The Final Frontier has taken TWO YEARS!! Here's how...... July 1989 - I was attending a comic mart in Birmingham. One of the stalls there was run by the organisers of a DOCTOR WHO fan club. At that time I was quite a WHO fan (although not as big a fan as I am of TREK) and I wanted to try to get into fandom, so I got the information on their next meeting and left, planning to join. Mid-July 1989 - I went to see the DOCTOR WHO stage play "The Ultimate Adventure" in Wolverhampton. To my surprise, the people I had met a few weeks before were in the row behind me. We met after the play for drinks and I decided to go along to their next meeting at the end of July where I promptly joined the group. Yes, but what's this all got to do with STAR TREK? Read on..... 3rd August 1989 - I was in the pub (where else?) with several members of the group and a few friends. It was at that time when the group was trying to encourage members to set up their own spin-off groups as part of the main club. An idea sprang into my head and I suggested a local group to my two friends (Mark Haggett and Stephen Coller) who were with me. They both agreed and the club was formed. Mid-August 1989 - We surprised everyone who knew about us by releasing the first issue of our fanzine/newsletter, "TEMPORAL PHYSICS", less than two weeks after we were formed!! Although it was only a single double-sided sheet of A4 paper, it contained several articles written and produced by the three founder members. The magazine wasn't brilliant, but it looked reasonable considering the equipment we used - an AMSTRAD CPC6128, using MINI OFFICE II and printing it all off on a 9-pin dot matrix printer!! All the art and photos were included by cutting them up and sticking them on to the master copies with glue, which were then photocopied - well, it worked so don't knock it!!! Surprisingly, the first issue sold quite well considering that we didn't really publicise it and that the main group only had about 120 members. We sold almost 60 copies of issue 1!! The mag was full of spelling mistakes and typographical errors, but we decided to stick to this as our trademark!! September 1989 - Issue two was launched, this time with more writers and a size increase to 6 pages. As well as this we included a separate sheet containing a questionnaire aimed at helping us plan the group meetings (which we hadn't started) and improving the magazine. The questions included one important to me and to the future of the mag itself - Did the readers want to see non-WHO items in the mag? 21st October 1989 - At last - a meeting!! The group held the first of it's monthly get-togethers at a local scout hut (small, but cheap!). The attendance wasn't very high, but we covered our costs. The third issue of the mag was launched on the same day. The size was still 6 pages, but the front was taken up with the first of our art covers by Vince Hirst (who is hopefully doing some art for THE FINAL FRONTIER). 25th November 1989 - Issue 4 was launched at our second meeting with another increase in size to 8 pages. We had also received the results of our questionnaire and found that over 95% of the people who responded wanted to see non-WHO items in the mag so we devoted a page to reviewing the novel and film of STAR TREK V - THE FINAL FRONTIER. Now you see where TREK comes into it! 16th December 1989 - Another meeting, another issue. Attendance at the meetings was still very poor - we were only just managing to survive financially. Some of our members started to feel deserted by the main group who had only attended one meeting, and then they only turned up half way through to sell merchandise! I had started to receive the first real complaints about the lack of support and help we were getting. 26th January 1990 - After writing a lot of letters and a few phone calls, I had arranged and conducted the first interview for the magazine with one of the regular writers, Mark Pearson. During the Christmas period of 1989/90, Nicholas Parsons (he made a guest appearance in one of the stories that year - The Curse Of Fenric) was in pantomime. I wrote and a few weeks later received a phone call from him! So on the 26th January we went to the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton and interviewed him. 27th January 1990 - Our next meeting, our next magazine, this time increased again to 10 pages. This saw the change in production from the AMSTRAD to a PC compatible with a PANASONIC laser printer - the improvement in quality was fantastic and we even had access to a spelling checker!! The news of the interview went down very well at the meeting! However, around this time, we noticed that sales of the magazine were dropping by a considerable rate. Many of the members of the main club just stopped buying it. Most of them claimed that they didn't like it anymore - we started to suspect something! 24th February 1990 - Issue 7 was launched at our 5th meeting. The interview was printed in full taking up 6 out of the 10 pages. Incidentally, we were the first out of all the magazines to interview Nicholas Parsons (both fanzines and commercial mags) to print it!! However, sales of this issue took a massive drop and we suddenly found ourselves in trouble. Even with an interview, we were being deliberately snubbed by the main group. We decided to act! 24th March 1990 - Issue 8 and our last ever meeting! After an executive meeting of the main team behind the mag/group, we decided to pull out of the main group and become an independent sci-fi fan club focusing on DOCTOR WHO and STAR TREK under a new group name of INFINITE FRONTIERS. When we announced this to the organiser of the main group, he showed no surprise and I believe that someone was informing him of everything we were doing - or maybe I was just paranoid! The mag saw another increase in size to 12 pages and it saw articles on QUANTUM LEAP, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and a feature on Role Playing Games. A new era was dawning! Late April 1990 - A problem! A few days before the meeting I was called by one of my "co-organisers" Steve Coller called me to say that he couldn't attend the next meeting. Unfortunately we booked the scout hut through him and they refused to hire the room to anyone else! This left us with the problem of contacting our few remaining loyal members and telling them the meeting was off. Bearing this in mind, I decided not to hold any more meetings until we could find a new location. Because of this, the magazine was delayed and instead we launched an April/May issue at the end of May. May 1990 - This saw the launch of a new, re-vamped TEMPORAL PHYSICS. We had finally decided on a logo for the mag, and the artist, Vince Hirst, had experimented with a new type of shading that photocopied much better and gave us more detailed cover art. This issue saw the first part of our second interview, this time with one-time WHO companion Deborah Watling. A very good interview conducted by our fiction writer Mike Stevens. July 1990 - Another doubled-up issue. The final issue of TEMPORAL PHYSICS (issue 10 - June/July 1990) saw the light of day. Sales had slumped to an all time low and we weren't selling enough to recover our costs. The problem was that to receive the bulk discounts we were getting for the photocopying, we had to have over a certain number of copies and we were getting very close to that lower limit! August 1990 - No release this month, but we decided to try for one last edition as an August/September release. September 1990 - The obvious problem had occured. With the group effectively in limbo, I had lost contact with most of my writers so issue 11 was still only half finished by the end of September. At this stage apart from Mark Pearson, I was the only writer! I decided to call it a day. October 1990 - While talking to some of the few people I was still in contact with, a small group of us decided to re-launch the magazine as a 32 page magazine being released every two months, the first of which was to be in March 1991. We had started to plan our publicity and I had managed to arrange a deal with a local comic shop for them to stock the magazine for us. November 1990 - The turning point! After a few weeks, I was already having doubts over the success of the new magazine, especially the financial risk involved. Sadly, I abandoned the project. Late November 1990 - I had owned an Amiga for over 6 months, and I was a very enthusiastic PD fan. At that time I was tired of all the usual disk magazines that were available, and I still wanted to get into producing a magazine of my own. I was also starting to spend more time and money on STAR TREK and the two just fell together - why not produce a STAR TREK disk mag? THE FINAL FRONTIER was born. Late 1990 - Soon after I decided to produce THE FINAL FRONTIER, I contacted a friend, Laurie McCullogh, who ran a PD library called Lorenzo's Domain to see if he was interested in distributing the disk - he was, and I arranged for an advert on his catalogue disk to try and find some contributors. I also contacted another friend, Andrew Wilk. He wasn't a big TREK fan (although now he's quite a NEXT GEN fan), but he was a dedicated Amiga enthusiast and PD buff. He agreed to help out in producing the disk and creating the art for the menu screens. Late January 1991 - While loading a few TREK animations (by Tobias Richter), I read a message on the screen from Tobias saying "If you need a specialist animation, contact me." I thought it was a long shot, especially considering how well known Tobias is and that I am a virtually unknown person in either TREK fandom or in the Amiga scene, but I thought I would give it a try anyway. With saying that, it was only the cost of a stamp. 14th February 1991 - I received a letter and a disk with some EXCLUSIVE ray- traced art from Tobias. I was in severe shock all night! It took me over an hour for it to sink in, and when it did I immediately phoned Andrew Wilk to let him know the good news. At that time I was CONVINCED that the mag was going to be a complete success. I don't know the dates for the rest, but I'll mention key events anyway. Music - I wanted to have conversions of tunes from the films to accompany the text. Unfortunately, I'm no musician (yet!) so I contacted Laurie to see if he knew anyone. He passed on my address to Echo, now a good friend of mine, who started work. Also, I was in a local computer retailer in February, talking to a few of the staff behind the counter. One of them turned out to be a would-be musician called Barry Beale. He wasn't interested in TREK, but he leaped at the chance to get some of his work used! With saying that, he started to take an interest and he is now a very big TREK and TNG fan! (Both of these arrangements with the musicians were made in the same week!!) Unfortunately, neither of them were able to convert the tunes I had wanted, but Echo was able to supply me with the three tunes on this disk. They are all planned to appear on one of his music disks as well, but I was desperate! Graphics - As you may have guessed, I'm a big PD fan and I swap PD with people from all over the UK (and Germany - I didn't forget you, Tobias!!). One of my contacts, Ian Faichnie, was also an artist. I asked him if he was interested and it turned out that he was also a bit of a Trekker! After writing to him several times, he wrote to me with an idea for a title screen, and it arrived less than two weeks later!! Articles - I didn't get a great response to the advert on the catalogue disk from Lorenzo's Domain, but there were two main replies, Colin Gunn and Alex Kerr. Both of these wrote to me, and started writing almost as soon as I had replied to them. God, I love being a TREK fan! Another writer I had discovered by accident, in the same week as the musicians, was Tim Smith. He works in a video shop and I was in buying the latest TNG tapes and talking to him (I always talk to strangers in shops!) and he revealed that he was... you can probably guess the rest. I told him about the mag and he asked me what machine it was going to be released on. You can imagine my surprise when I told him it was on the Amiga and he said that was the machine he owned!! The final chance meeting was Richard Evans. I had met him in late 1990 in a comic shop in Birmingham. We started talking about the Amiga and we ended up swapping addresses with the intention of swapping PD. We agreed that he was going to write first. However, I hadn't heard from him for well over a month, and by that time I had lost his address! I promptly forgot about him (sorry Richard!). You can imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from him in June 1991! I was out at the time and spent the next few weeks trying to get back in touch. When I finally did, we exchanged addresses and I told him of the disk mag and my interest in TREK. Could you imagine how I felt when he said he was a Trekker as well! He said that his main use of his Amiga when he first bought it was art, and that he had created a large number of Trek pictures. He was also willing to write articles and reviews! I couldn't believe my luck!! An artist and a writer in one! One thing that has surprised me is the incredible amount of help that I was offered by all my friends etc. With my DOCTOR WHO club, I found that most WHO fans wanted to leave it all to the organisers and not get involved and that I literally had to beg to get contributions! Why did the original magazine fail? Well, it can be put down to a number of reasons - the main group, our faith in them, our lack of advertising, people not offering the help I needed to stay on top of things.... the list is endless. If you want to try your hand at running a club, we may run a series of articles in the future on how NOT to do it! Finally, I must say a very BIG thankyou to everyone who has offered moral support or helped in guiding THE FINAL FRONTIER from conception to it's final release. I couldn't have done it without you all. So thanks go to (in alphabetical order): Richard Arnold Barry Beale Paul Cuipeck of N.B.S. P.D. Cyborg Echo of LSD Richard Evans Ian Faichnie Jeremy Ford of TANK P.D. Colin Gunn Mark Haggett Terence Haggett Vince Hirst Alex Kerr Laurie McCullogh Mark Pearson Psycho of ASTAROTH Tobias Richter Tim Smith Titan Books Andrew Wilk