Well, actually, there's nothing wrong with BEING a fan.  Everybody is a fan of something.  (Or should be.)  But I'm talking about the effect fandom can have on a medium.  —It happens in every field, but it's most noticeable in the entertainment medium.  I want to look at Star Trek.  (I can't think of a better example when it comes to the subject of fandom.)

Gene Roddenberry, (or Harlan Ellison, if you follow certain theories), created Star Trek out of nothing.  I like to think it was Roddenberry, because he was an ex-cop who had virtually no writing back ground.  Ex-cops with twenty years or so on the beat are not fan-boys.  He came up with a workable idea and turned it into a moderately successful television show which in later re-runs found great appeal with the mentality of the late sixties and seventies.

Then came Star Trek, the Next Generation which, at its height, was being watched by almost everybody on the continent.  60% of us claimed to be ‘Trekkies'.  People of every demographic group were paying close attention.  Even my dad knew was a ‘holodeck' was.
  
So what happened?  Why does the public at large no longer give a hoot?

Well, for one thing the various avenues of possibility in the Star Trek story world became exhausted.  The ‘holodeck', once an element of fascination and mystery, was episode by episode taken apart and reassembled until everybody knew everything about it.  Mystery gone.  No need for stories.  As with all the characters.  One by one they were explored until the viewers understood them inside and out.  And with no need to explore them any further, public interest moved on.  That's how stories work.  

The other thing which happened was that half way through the production of the second to last season of The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry died.  And in my opinion, Star Trek died with him.  Without a competent leader to take his place, the army fell into disarray.

Oh, and I do consider Star Trek to be dead.  The last two movies were embarrassing examples of the corporate exploitation of a creative property.  Perhaps, if Paramount had found some passionate creative genius who could regard Star Trek objectively and who had decided to lend his or her talents to the problem of doing an interesting film treatment accessible to the general public, then perhaps something could have been achieved.  (Look at how Disney benefited from the Howard Ashman/Alan Menken team taking over story production.  The result were films people cared about.  Little Mermaid.  Beauty and the Beast.  Aladdin.  —That is, until the Ashman/Menken team dissolved and Disney fell back into the cycle of formulaic ‘creativity'.  —Nothing wrong there, mind you.  It just isn't special).

With Roddenberry out of the way, the loudest fans, (NOT my dad and the general public at large), cried that they wanted a darker, grittier Star Trek, when Trek was never meant to be that way.  When Roddenberry was still alive, the writers knew what the boundaries were.  They rightfully feared that their work might meet his eyes and have to stand his scrutiny.  I recall watching an interview with one fellow who said something to the effect of: "Yeah, well we (the writers), kept saying, we should give Star Trek an edge.  You know?  Do a Miami Vice kind of thing, but Roddenberry always said ‘no.'  He knows what he wants and he won't deviate from that."

In effect, Roddenberry's presence caused the writing staff to write responsibly.  To observe the rule, ‘just because you can doesn't mean you should.'  But now that he's gone, the suits can do whatever they like.  It's Paramount property.  So what sells?  They gave the bulk of Star Trek's control to some hot young producer (Rick Berman) who's vision, they thought, was in line with what the public wanted to see.  (And, as a suit might think, would therefore generate the most money.)  As a result, we got to see Data saying "Shit."

Thus Star Trek, once loved by more than half a nation, is a ghost of what it once was.   My dad doesn't know what the heck a ‘Quark' or a ‘Voyager' is.  The greatness is gone.  Star Trek is now an exercise in obscure genre mediocrity.  Nobody cares anymore.  And this despite the fact that the Deep Space Nine spin-off has matured into an otherwise very nicely produced and reasonably well written show.  The problem is that a lot of things are nicely produced and reasonably well written.  Universal appeal, however, takes something very different.  It takes vision, and Star Trek has probably lost that forever.  The die hard fans though, they just wont let it die.  And the suits are more than happy to provide.

I wonder what will happen when Lucas passes on.