The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom
Blake’s 7 fans and actors mixed regularly at cons and on the pages of zines—until an anonymous letter changed everything.
By Lena Barkin
The main cast of the third season of Blake’s 7: actors (from left to right) Steven Pacey, Josette Simon, Paul Darrow, Jan Chappell, and Michael Keating.
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It started with an anonymous letter.
It was the tail end of 1988, and the letter addressed fans of the British sci-fi show Blake’s 7, which had gained a cult following in the United States. Printed in a popular letterzine, it concerned rumors that the show’s actors, who had been appearing at fan-run conventions on a largely volunteer basis, would deliberately switch over to professional conventions to milk money out of fans.
The letter singled out an unnamed prominent Blake’s 7 actor who was trying to launch a pro con for himself, along with scandalous “quotes” about how he didn’t want to spend time with fans, how he wanted to run fan cons out of business, and how he wanted to control the sale and content of fannish literature.
It was obvious to all who read it that the subject was Paul Darrow, the actor who played computer expert Kerr Avon, a lead character in all four seasons of a show with a constantly shifting cast. Darrow was incredibly popular in the fandom, and a mainstay at fan-run cons. The letter concluded with a suggestion to move toward fan conventions without any guest focus at all—in short, who needs him?
At the crux of the letter was a reasonable consideration of fan- versus pro-run conventions, but everything around it was inarguably inflammatory, an attempt to raise arms against a specific bad actor (pun not intended) in the fandom: “I won’t be controlled; I won’t be taken advantage of,” the anonymous writer said. “I won’t line a greedy actor’s pockets…in short, I will fight this attempt at a hostile ‘Federation’ takeover.”
Paul Darrow playing Trivial Pursuit with Blake’s 7 fans at Space City 1990. Darrow enjoyed Trivial Pursuit so much that the game became a mainstay at fan-run cons—and a selling point when Darrow tried to launch his for-profit one. (Via Pinterest).
The Blake’s 7 fandom had previously been very liberal in breaking the fourth wall between fan and actor, but a pivot to paid appearances threatened to build that wall back up. Instead of cons where fans and actors alike would discuss fanworks and play Trivial Pursuit in the lobby, the new focus would be on fans paying for photos and autographs from the actors. In the letter’s terms, the very soul of the fandom was at stake: If it wasn’t here to foster friendships and the creation of art, then what was fandom for?
At the time, no one knew it was a preamble to a cascade of events that would turn the fandom on its head—one that would raise arguments far beyond convention economies. While the creators of Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars had a wide range of relationships with their early slash writers, the core of Blake’s 7 fandom in the U.S. had been women who both befriended the cast members and wrote slash as an open secret. The anonymous letter would lead to a battle known as the Blake’s 7 Slash Wars; within certain con circuits, it remains infamous in the history of modern media fandom.
The Slash Wars happened in the late 80s and early 90s, but their central fandom questions are still being explored today. How much interaction should there be between fans and artists? How does capitalism interact with fandom’s gift-based economy? How public should fanfiction about characters portrayed by real people be? How do we ethically engage with the media properties we love when it involves so many conflicting people, stories, and viewpoints?
Blake’s 7 ran on the BBC from 1978 to 1981, but didn’t make it over to the States until the mid-80s. A science-fiction show about a band of rebels and ex-cons who take on the oppressive and totalitarian Federation, it’s often considered a sister show to Doctor Who, since it aired during the Fourth Doctor’s (the one with the long scarf) ratings high, and shared a host of creative talent in front of and behind the camera.
But the hour-long adult program was often a lot darker and more morally complex than Doctor Who, which spanned generations but was conceived of as a family edutainment program. Over time, Blake’s 7 built up the tensions and sacrifices that happen when fighting an unwinnable battle. The heroes often behaved selfishly or self-righteously; the villains had moments of weakness and despair.
Echoes of the Blake’s 7 effect on sci-fi television can be seen through beloved shows such as Firefly, Babylon 5, The Expanse, and Andor. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski once said it “wasn’t a direct inspiration, but I loved the tone of the show, and I think some of that filtered into B5.”
In the U.S., Blake’s 7 fandom started forming before the show actually aired on terrestrial TV. The archives of fan mailing list Lysator contain discussions about how difficult it was for fans in the 90s to circulate episodes—the only way to recruit newbies—since it was all based on physical VHS and screen recordings with a home camera. That is, unless you were lucky enough to stumble into a video room at a con. Some fans would put multiple episodes on a tape and loan them out to friends, but like much of fandom at the time, this was dependent purely on social networks.
Despite low-quality copies and limited access, there was still significant interest in the series. The Scorpio convention, named after a Blake’s 7 ship, was first held in Illinois in 1983. It’s possible that a few lucky fans had already participated in the fandom that was growing in the U.K.—the first con, Star One, was held in 1979, and the Blake’s 7 fan club newsletter Horizon debuted in 1980. Scorpio, however, was the first time American fans had a space of their own, years before the show would air on some PBS affiliates. (1986 in states like New York and Georgia; some fans in Chicago remember it as early as 1985.)
It’s significant that Blake’s 7 aired between the end of Star Trek: The Original Series and the first Trek film. For many, zine culture was just getting started. Media fandom conventions weren’t unheard of, but they were still defining what they wanted to be, and how to interact with guests. Some fans had come in from literary sci-fi fandom; their experience was heavily based on decades of writer-focused cons. Others were enmeshed in the practices of celebrity fandom, popular since the beginning of theater and film.
Paul Darrow and Leah Rosenthal at Scorpio IV. (Via Ashton Press)
Media cons were new and fundamentally different because of screen divide. Literary fans were used to writers being fandom participants at cons—and assumed that’s why actors went, too. One Blake’s 7 fan postulated, “Isaac Asimov and Andre Morton go to cons because they love Science Fiction… These people, and many like them, do not charge fees for attending cons… Mostly they go for many of the same reasons we all have … to get feedback on their work; to have a chance to get on a podium and panel and sound off on favorite issues; to browse in the dealers’ room and art show; to discuss elements of SF into the wee hours; to party!”
While fans could only speculate on the true motivations of the actors, the behaviors described were observed and accepted as standard. It’s also true that many successful sci-fi writers had risen up through the community, supporting this fan’s assertion that these writers “are a part of science fiction.” Science fiction literary fandom was like a really devoted writer’s group where successful writers could give back to the community that helped form them.
But the entertainment industry had long had different ideas about the roles of its stars. From the beginning of Hollywood, female fans were instructed on how to idolize actors. In her book Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity, Samantha Barras posits that, “just as fans sometimes controlled Hollywood, Hollywood also controlled fans.” By redirecting ‘movie-struck’ girls from aspiration to emulation, Hollywood told fans how they could dress like the stars and collect autographs, but weren’t allowed to be stars. The divide between actor and fan had to be strict in order to maintain control of persona and image.
When television sci-fi fandom allowed for the mixture of stardom with the informality of genre enthusiast, a new set of rules had to be developed. What happened with Blake’s 7 would wind up being the catalyst fans needed to pay attention.
In the late 70s and early 80s, American Blake’s 7 fandom was basically a big party with the actors. Fan Victoria Janssen remembers walking into hotel rooms where actors were sitting having drinks with well-known fic writers. “They didn’t have as much barrier between actor and BNFs,” she told me. “Someone’s in another country, you invite them up to your room, you give them wine and cheese or whatever.” Fans who got more involved in the participatory elements of fandom—running convention committees, printing zines—formed relationships with the actors they saw over and over again.
For their part, many of the actors traveled to the U.S. on their own money, awed that a fandom existed so far away from the reach of the BBC. Paul Darrow was certainly one of the most popular actors from the show, and he was notoriously charming at cons. Other leads, including Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating, Jacqueline Pearce, and Brian Croucher, were all well-known to sit and chat with fans over a drink. Or five.
In 1987, a run of misfortunes meant that strings of Doctor Who fans showed up to a convention where there were only Blake’s 7 actors, yet Darrow and Keating were so gamely enthusiastic that plenty of new B7 fans were made. It was subsequently dubbed the “Tour of Duty,” because so many unsuspecting fans were enlisted.
At the time, fandoms often had both fan-run conventions, which usually subsisted off of volunteer work, and pro-run conventions put on by for-profit companies like Creation Entertainment, where fans would pay a fee to attend and actors would get paid to appear. Fan cons were largely funded by donations from fans, and any proceeds from auctions or sales would be given to charities. Artists and writers usually only asked for money to break even.
Since fan cons were theoretically geared toward fans and were a space to participate in the gift economy, the focus was on fanworks—and in that era, zines were king. In creating a catalog of Blake’s 7 fanfiction zines sourcing from earlier online sites—as well as consulting the Guide to Blake’s 7 Erotica, published in 1996—I found fic at the time was segmented into a few major categories.
There was gen (general), the majority of what was written and distributed. There was adult, which meant the story was sexually explicit. And there was a slash, in an entirely different category from adult, which meant explicit and gay. Some adult anthology zines had a mix of straight and slash pairings, but there was very little mixing between gen and adult.
A Guide to Blake’s 7 Erotica, a 100-page-plus index of fanworks.
Gen zines were sold at fan conventions, and some adult zines were even allowed on display or advertised through fliers, according to fan Victoria Janssen. But slash zines were rarely distributed out in the open. Many authors wrote all three kinds of works, openly promoting their “socially acceptable” stories and saving their slash for zine lists and their circle of friends, occasionally under pseudonyms. An exception to the rule were fan-only conventions like MediaWest*Con, where slash could be sold openly; at cons with actors as guests, though, it was strictly under the table.
Throughout American fandom, the more risqué stories were something of an open secret; there was nothing but an age barrier to entry, but you had to go looking. In 1999, fan Dargelos recalls this early phase of fandom:
For years, slash wasn’t an accepted part of most conventions, even ZebraCon [a Starsky & Hutch convention], because it was incredibly controversial. I recall getting an early morning phone call from a fan who had reason to know things like this, during the course of which I was warned that if Code7 [fanzine] was published openly, there would be lawsuits.
This segmentation was often reflected in the zines themselves. 1987 Blake’s 7 slash zine Resistance had a sister genzine, Raising Hell; the zine Southern Comfort numbered their issues in full numbers for gen, half numbers for adult, and quarter numbers for slash-only stories (as in SoCo 8.75).The third issue of slash zine E-Man-Uelle in 1984 even required potential readers to submit an age statement and agreement to the content of the stories.
Whether adult or slash, a large number of Blake’s 7 stories revolved around Avon as the center of desire. Some zines, like Avon, Anyone? or Avon Calling were exclusively dedicated to ravishing the character; whump was particularly popular. The most prevalent slash ship was Avon with the show’s titular character, Blake, played by Gareth Thomas, but there were always strong contingents who wrote Avon/Vila (Michael Keating) or Avon/Tarrant (Steven Pacey). Essentially, as the little black (leather) dress of fandom, if there was someone you could imagine Avon with, it was written about.
Darrow and Keating looking at fanart at Scorpio IV Con. (Image via Fanlore.)
Outside slash, Blake’s 7 fanworks were unusually fair game for play in public. Unlike other fandoms of the era, there were few hard divisions between fans and Blake’s 7 cast and crew, the latter of whom reviewed fan stories, auctioned fanart, sent letters into zines, and updated fans through the same channels that the fans used to contact each other. In 1989, Darrow published a book about Avon—which many considered to be fanfiction of his own, especially since the cover art included work by a well known fan artist—and he and his wife contributed heavily to a fanzine about their careers.
The fandom was known for blurring the lines between the show and the fan—an early gen zine had the fictional crew of Blake’s 7 attend a popular fan convention. Unlike the indifference of the Doctor Who team, the litigious George Lucas, or even the welcoming but not-quite-getting-it Gene Roddenberry, Blake’s 7 seemed to be a haven for fic writers, artists, and any fan who wanted to have a highly personal experience with the actors and show.
It was, in short, a pretty damn great synergy between obsessive creatives. It couldn’t stay that way.
The anonymous letter was printed in the Dec/Jan 1988 issue of Federation Archives, with rare additional commentary from editor Linda Terrell. Predictably, it made waves—but most fans didn’t know it was only exposing the tip of an iceberg.
On January 2, 1989, a team consisting of Darrow, Blake’s 7 producer and writer Terry Nation, and fan conventioneer Laurie Cohen sent out multiple open letters, which they dubbed as a press release. The letters were mass-mailed, to be spread amongst fans and printed across zines. And they confirmed, at the very least, that the rumors of a pro-run con run by Darrow and Nation had been true.
One of the letters was from Cohen, who explained the reasoning behind the pro-con plan. Another was from Darrow and Nation, who were “angry about the irresponsible rumours and outright lies.” They felt betrayed that the information about the pro con had leaked early, without the fair and proper introduction to the fandom at large that it deserved.
Darrow and Nation also felt the original anonymous letter had left out several crucial details. Instead of a traditional pro con, their version would allow local groups to make each convention stop of the tour their own, with oversight and support from Cohen. There was no talk of censoring fic or raising commissions by 50% or “controlling” fandom, as the anonymous author had claimed—the tour had been in talks for a while, and they were excited about future possibilities.
They also released a document with a fictitious legal veneer, though no lawyers were involved. Addressed to three popular fic writers and artists—Federation Archives’s Linda Terrell, Ann Wortham, and Leah Rosenthal—it said they no longer had permission to use Darrow’s or fellow actor Michael Keating’s likenesses in any form. While the letter specified these three fans and included their home addresses, it was distributed widely along with the press release.
Finally, on the same day, Darrow wrote a four-page letter titled “UnWortham’s Lies,” which positioned fanartist Ann Wortham as the anonymous letter-writer. Wortham was one of the fans he was previously sitting and drinking tea with, but in this point-by-point disagreement, he disparaged Wortham as much as possible, even going so far as to call her charmless:
“Unwortham’s Lies”
It wasn’t even clear to other fans at the time that Wortham was the author of the anonymous letter—though she was. When she would later own up to it in a letter published, once again, by Federation Archives, she speculated that Darrow must have found out from a chatty fan who had been sent the letter before it was published. Even with the relatively unkind portrait of him she’d painted, the rebuttal seemed like an unreasonable response to a debate over the economics of conventions. But the truth was soon revealed to be much more personal.
Immediately after the packet of semi-formal letters were released, Darrow’s wife, Janet Lees Price, sent out an open letter questioning the credibility of Linda Terrell. Even though Terrell had only published the anonymous letter, Price seemed to confuse her with the person who’d written it—the person who’d accused Darrow and Price, via their attempts to shift the fandom from volunteer, fanworks-focused cons to pro, profit-focused cons, of attempting to control fandom, and fanfiction specifically.
Price had previously regarded Terrell as a close friend, but in her letter, she accused her of spreading malicious gossip, framing her as a “malign influence.” But she also directed her ire towards fanfiction—or, at least, one controversial subset of fic. While Price reaffirmed that she got great pleasure from fanfiction, she happened to find slash fiction “tasteless” and a “gross impertinence.” Terrell had until that point been using the pseudonym London Bates to write her slash stories. Why didn’t authors like her use their real names?
If you were wondering why opinions on slash were jammed into a letter that was supposedly about Terrell spreading lies, you would be justified. Yet suddenly, the debate shifted from conventions to fanfiction—and especially slash.
Running conventions was a safe and accepted pastime for fans, but slash was another matter. Male homosexual acts had only been legalized in England in 1967—barely a decade before the premiere of Blake’s 7—and Stonewall happened two years later. While many worried about the legality and legitimacy of any fan activity, slash seemed to be the most precarious and dangerous of all.
The result of these letters was Terrell had been openly acknowledged as a slash writer—by the Blake’s 7 creator-side itself. Terrell, Wortham, and Rosenthal had been publically targeted and implicitly outed, while Darrow, the most-liked actor on the show, was demanding fans choose sides, equating neutrality to betrayal. If you didn’t take a stand against Wortham and her clan, you were for them.
The subsequent events of the Slash Wars took place at conventions and in letterzine pages. While themes and facts varied, the crux of the issues remained the same.
Conversations centered on fan vs. pro cons—where both sides had arguably reasonable points and concerns about the future of fandom—but also on the ethics of slash zines, BNF cliquishness, and a West Coast (Paul sycophants) vs East Coast (BNFs in a power play) rivalry. The argument spun out to encompass almost all of fandom discussion, as noted by multiple letterzine editors, who begged fans to send them letters on other topics.
Within the zines, fans spoke out on both the actors and on the nature of slash. One fan wrote a letter that literally ends in the phrase “Don’t Like; Don’t Read,” one of the flagship slogans in some fanfiction corners today. The fan surmises, “If you feel personally offended by it, were raised on the equivalent of Tatooine, or just don’t grasp it, then stay away from it.” Most people who disliked slash used relatively neutral language about it, although there were some who found it disrespectful of the actors. Multiple people feared it was the beginning of the end of Blake’s 7 fandom, now that there were seemingly so many huge conflicts.
At the fan-run Gambit convention in February 1989, producer and writer Terry Nation—who had released the original packet with Darrow—read aloud a letter from Darrow in absentia. Darrow again asked fans to take sides in the issue against “those who would wish him harm and ruin his reputation”; in typically dramatic Darrow fashion, he compared those who wished to remain neutral to Pontius Pilate.
The special addendum issue of Federation Archives later that month was extremely revealing—not least because there had been a promise of no more addendums. Editor Terrell took a lot of care to include letters from both sides of the argument, although one side had letters that seemed much more vindictive.
These letters came in all kinds of flavors and stances, some pulled as editorials from other zines. Most of them expressed frustration at the growing tension, as many fans felt they could no longer enjoy their fandom, or feared it was going to fall apart because of the in-fighting. Most notably among them was the one in which Ann Wortham admitted to having written the original anonymous letter. She said she'd received responses before it was even printed in FA—meaning that it and her name had probably been leaked.
Another letter discussed the fact that the year prior, con organizer Kathy Hanson specifically named Terrell, Wortham, and Rosenthal to the Darrows as writers of slash. According to Wortham, the couple had known about slash’s existence for at least a year and, while not thrilled, weren’t outwardly hostile. But she later noted in her Federation Archives letter that it might have been this discovery of their “friends” writing it that caused the Darrows’ harsh backlash.
Darrow at Unicon ’89. (Via Pinterest).
Many fans took the actors’ side: the Avon Club Newsletter printed an editorial calling the anonymous letter “grossly inaccurate and hurtful,” claiming the pro con was a move on the part of the actors and producer to curb the overpowered dramatics of BNFs. Articles like “Stand Up, Avon’s Angels” and “The Paul Darrow That I Know,” argued that Darrow was a very sweet and kind man who demonstrably loved his fans and wanted Blake’s 7 to be a fun, joyful community.
The divide was obvious. Those who supported Darrow had to do so unquestioningly, to preserve the innocence and spirit of fandom. The affinity that fans felt for the character Avon was equally strong for the actor—a transference that often happens in fandom when a character breaks out.
Fans often self-identify with their affinity object, and in many ways, an attack on fandom becomes an attack on the self. To question a fan’s loyalty is to question the fan’s personhood. But actors also feel protective over the characters—they’re portraying them, a fundamentally different experience from fans’. Their work can lead to a sense of ownership and responsibility, especially if it’s a particularly meaningful or revelatory role, like Avon’s breakout status of fan favorite.
It’s when these interpretations and senses of ownership are in conflict that the actor’s perceived power becomes a weapon. Paul Darrow had no control over Avon, but he did have his likeness, a studio contract, and a good relationship with the producer. To reject Darrow would also mean rejecting a large aspect of the show, and what drew the fandom together.
By the early 90s, the big party Victoria Janssen recalled from the early days of Blake’s 7 fandom was long gone. Its upper echelons had clearly split, the factions were almost codified by name in the final issue of the zine Magnificent Seven, where the editor thanked her friends for being on the “Right” side.
The furor over these debates eventually subsided, but they inevitably left scars in the fandom. Sides had been taken and friendships had broken up. Slash writers kept writing slash, actors kept going to cons, but it was never quite the same.
Pressure Point editorial, April 1989
Blake’s 7 letterzines from this era show a remarkable amount of investment in the series. While the main conflict of the Slash Wars centered around the inextricable differences between the industry-side folks and fans, the letters from all parties speak to the true community that had formed around a television show.
Actors and other creatives should be paid for their work, including public-facing activities like promotion. But for many, fandom is a space outside of “work”; the labor you put in is for social capital, personal enrichment, or both. If you are paid for your labor, are you still a fan? Or have you crossed over to the industry side?
The social acceptability rules can vary by type of art, modes of distribution, or the specific nature of a fandom itself. The necessity of navigating the web of social politics is one of the reasons fans often don’t like intrusion from show creatives—they can feel like bulldozers. The Blake’s 7 conflict highlights the incongruity between fans and pros, partly because the shift in the actors’ attitudes felt like a betrayal. They were behaving like fans before, so why do we have to treat them like actors now?
As the fandom moved into the early digital age with email lists and personally hosted sites, slash became a more widely discussed topic—keeping pace with the general proliferation and acceptance of the genre across all fandoms. Fans did not stop reading or writing slash, but the very public divide continued to cause tensions within fandom. Even recently—decades after all of this went down—I was advised at a Blake’s 7 con to keep some discussions and activities secret because a well-known fan was still adamantly anti-slash due to her friendship with Darrow, who passed away in 2019.
The Paul Darrow memorial display at the Forever Avon convention in 2022.
The con itself, though, showed me just how alive the fandom remains. In 2022, I traveled to the small town of Didcot in Oxfordshire and spent 48 hours among the kindest and funniest people I have ever met. Three years after Darrow’s death, there was a little table full of framed headshots and photo stills as a memorial, delayed by the pandemic. The next day someone handed one of the photos to me—I was a new fan, and they were cleaning up and it had nowhere to go. It’s on my nightstand now.
I stayed up until 3 A.M. drinking wine with fangirls of all generations, where we talked about famous fans and gossip from previous conventions. I went to a secret sharing of horrible 90s cut-and-paste NSFW manips that were not allowed to be mentioned in broader company because some would take offense.
An array of costumes from the show at Forever Avon.
There were sci-fi models of all kinds, a costume display, a quiz show, and an hour-long conversation with multiple cast members from the show. June Hudson, the designer of some of the show’s most iconic costumes, complimented people on their cosplays and autographed postcards. People shared a lot of lovely Paul Darrow stories. My group went to visit some of the shooting locations and came across a local summer church fete; we spent an afternoon on the river eating questionable park-stand hot dogs.
Despite the troubles that had plagued the generations before mine, the feelings inspired by the dystopian show were ultimately optimistic.
Late-night drinking and reminiscing with fellow fans at Forever Avon.
In some ways, it’s gratifying to know that these skirmishes around commerce and debates about slash fiction are as old as fandom itself. Fans and creators have been trying to negotiate these spaces for years, and it helps to see cases in which they were both successful and unsuccessful.
I don’t think the lesson here is that we should completely decouple actors and showrunners from fandom. Blake’s 7 fandom didn’t fully collapse, but the unofficial heads of fandom made it painfully awkward for everybody else. When mom and dad are fighting, you’re not going to want to sit at the dinner table.
The events are remembered as the Slash Wars, but they all started because of discussions around fan economy. Fandom has always struggled to find balance between the personal and the professional, between the gift economy of fan spaces and the capitalist entertainment industry. This moment is a perfect encapsulation of the messy fallout that happened when the rules were still being hammered out: they were written because of this.
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Lena Barkin is an independent fan studies scholar and culture writer. Her contributions include academic talks, published chapters, and feature articles for Polygon and Nerdist. Her current projects include her newsletter The Fanthropologist and local film programming. You can also find her on Bluesky.