Hi, I’m James, Editor of The Companion.

We’re a passionate team of five full-time geeks – plus one or two equally enthusiastic interns, and a rescue dog – two from the North of England, two from the South, and a cheerful American to stop them from fighting.

Between us worked in a variety of fields, from film production to advertising and marketing to magazine publishing. We’ve written books and made shows for the BBC. Our last project was running MGM’s sorely missed Stargate Command app and when that closed we thought first of the fans. We met so many incredible people from so many different backgrounds, all drawn together by a TV show that gave them reasons to laugh, to cry, and to dream.

I get it, I really do. I grew up watching Doctor Who with my dad. I made fanzines to sell in my school playground, wrote fan fiction, and spent my free time drawing space ships for an interstellar empire of my own imagining. Eventually – after studying journalism and doing some other stuff en route – I leveraged that into a real job. I have a Star Wars tattoo, I obsessively seek out old comics and pulp paperbacks, and I have a regular Monday night appointment with my roleplaying group.

Fandom is a place where geeks can be themselves. When you put so much of yourself into something, you deserve to get something equally special out of it. For the rest of the world, shows like Stargate, Farscape, Babylon 5, Quantum Leap and others exist only as an afterthought. For most, they’re forgotten.

But to the fans like you – and like us – they mean everything and they deserve to be treated with respect. 

And that’s how The Companion was born. 

Your support allows us to tell the stories that really matter to the fandom. Thanks to our members we’re able to answer your unanswered questions in the show’s lore, to ask your questions of stars and showrunners, and produce thought-provoking video essays that send you scrambling back to the box sets.
 
This isn’t a hustle. We all love sci-fi and we spent a ton of our own money, crowdfunded like crazy, and worked long into the night to bring our community deeper, geekier, more inventive and more ingenious coverage than any other website. These are stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else, but nothing is too niche or too obscure for one of our epic 3,000+ word long reads.

You look like you could use a Companion, so why not sign up for a free trial?

James

Just a Few of the Stories That Matter

Brad Wright’s Rules of Stargate

We announced the co-creator of Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe, and showrunner of Travelers on Netflix, as an exclusive contributor. For his first article, Brad lays out the role that rules play in creating a compelling sci-fi setting.

Philip K. Dick’s Widow on Total Recall

The uncredited co-writer of A Scanner Darkly and an established SF novelist in her own right, Tessa B. Dick revists Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall to search for her late husband’s humour and heart in a film so superficially distant from its source.

Stargate Gets You Right in the Feels

We know what these shows mean to you. Despite our high falutin’  industry contacts, the articles that matter most to us are the ones that reflect your experiences. Our two pieces of analysis – one on Jack O’Neill and grief, and Sam Carter’s troubled relationship with her father – have prompted a response from the fans beyond anything we’ve ever experienced before. We cried and our members cried with us.

Farscape Has Not Been Forgotten

The power of this show is recognised right here on The Companion, from the genius of its visual effects and puppetry, to the risks taken by the cast and creators. For our long read on how John Crichton’s neural clone saga mirrored the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we worked with star Ben Browder to explore the decisions he made as an actor, which informed this harrowing portrayal of crisis and recovery.

Why Should I Pay For The Companion?

Your Companion membership means that we give you more of what you want. It’s an investment in great writing, production, and tech. It’s a sign that you believe in something and that the love you show your favorite sci-fi shows is real and that those shows matter.

This has been a tough year for the media and it crowns a pretty tough decade. All of us on The Companion have seen projects closed and talented people kicked to the curb. Nobody seems willing to invest in great writing, or great video, for its own sake.

Thanks to you, we’re able to commission not just established writers with great records, but also support new writers from among our members, give them a platform and help them to develop their skills. Thanks to you, we also brought a magazine back from the dead.
Given the team’s links to SciFiNow, we were heartbroken when Covid-19 forced the print magazine into suspended animation. So we worked with the current SciFiNow team to introduce SciFiNow+, a brand new fortnightly digital magazine available on The Companion and packed with the latest science fiction, fantasy and horror, a perfect accompaniment to our existing coverage.

Support us by signing up for a trial.

We’ll let our stories speak for themselves.

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