Back in the latter years of the twentieth century, SpockSoc was founded, as UNSW’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Anime Club. We don’t currently know who founded it or when that was – the records of the Student Guild (one of Arc’s predecessors, which looked after clubs and societies at the time) are long lost, and SpockSoc’s own records consist of a shabby suitcase full of loose papers which were occasionally “tidied up” by successive generations of club executives – but we do know the club already existed in 1992, because that’s when the Anime Society split off to strike out on their own.
Thirty years ago, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy world was a fairly different place – in 1992, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its fifth season, Doctor Who was three years into what would become a fifteen-year hiatus, and the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film (starring Kristy Swanson) would come out in cinemas in July. But, for us here in Australia… well, if we wanted to watch sci-fi or fantasy, we could either wait several years for things to air on free-to-air television (usually very late at night), or else perhaps maybe they’d come out on VHS a little sooner. The internet was still in its infancy. Modem speeds were still measured in baud, Netflix wouldn’t be launched (as a mail-order DVD rental service) for another five years, and the only way to pirate something was if you had a cousin whose friend had an older brother with an Nth-generation VHS copy who wouldn’t mind making you an Nth-plus-one-generation copy if you provided your own blank VHS. And however you watched it, your average family TV back then was tiny – if the screen dimension made it into the double digits of inches at all, the first digit would always be a one. But most importantly, it simply wasn’t cool to be a sci-fi or fantasy fan. If you admitted to it in public, you were branded a geek, or a nerd, or worse, forever relegated to the stereotype of coke-bottle glasses and pocket protectors.
And that, as I see it, was the appeal of SpockSoc. Every Friday night, you could watch stuff that would be hard for you to find otherwise, you could watch it on a far bigger screen than you had at home, and most importantly, you could watch it with YOUR people. It was a time each week when sci-fi fans could just BE sci-fi fans.
Since then, well, the times they are a-changin’. The internet has become ubiquitous, streaming commonplace, and piracy… it’s become easy. The practice of airing shows in Australia on the same day as they aired in America or the UK (or anywhere in the world) went from being unheard-of, to being an amazing special offer, to being the expected norm. TVs have ballooned in size – while paradoxically, watching on your phone or tablet has also become common.
But more importantly, it’s once again become cool to be a sci-fi or fantasy fan.
And a great as that is, that, as I see it, has been the downfall of SpockSoc. No longer are we the sole source of the newest shows for most people, and though the campus projection screens are still bigger than home TVs, they definitely don’t hold a candle to the typical picture quality. And SpockSoc is no longer the place to be with YOUR people – YOUR people are now everywhere.
While overall membership numbers for SpockSoc have remained pretty constant over recent years, actual attendance at screenings and other events has dwindled. And then COVID became the final nail in the coffin. Since the campus first went into lockdown in 2020, we’ve seen zero new regular members. And as the last members of our current executive are graduating this year, we no longer have the ability to form a new executive, which means we no longer meet the requirements to be an Arc student society. We can’t even assemble the quorum necessary to formally dissolve the club. Tragically, it’s become time to call it a day.
We’ve had a good run, I suppose. We’ve been around longer that most current UNSW students have been alive – and even some of the staff. We’ve taken a club trip to New Zealand for the second Hobbit movie premiere (and saw Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, albeit from ten metres away), members of the exec have attended either the media preview screening or the world premiere of all three Chris Pine Star Trek movies, and we even almost got sued by MGM one time.
Nothing to do now but say Live Long and Prosper, May the Force be With You, and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish.