Seven and One: Stephen Lord

What-ho! Millennium chums! Time for fan to fan to mesh once again in an beautiful display of cult communique. Yes it's Seven and One time; the fan interview on our favourite subject - say it like you mean it: Millennium.

This week Stephen Lord is our guest Millennium fan. A gent from Australia with a commendable choice of top Millennium episodes. A commendable example of taste marred only by his dubious love of The Bill.. :)

So without further ado..!

1. About You.

My name is Stephen Lord. I live in Adelaide, Australia and write moderately supernatural crime fiction (as yet unpublished). I also work in community radio and spent far too many years hanging around university English departments before realising I wasn't a good enough bullshit artist to make it as an academic :) .

2. Why are you a fan?

1997 was what our American friends call my senior year of university. It was also, as Dickens put it, "the worst of times." Millennium was one of my only respites from a very trying period. My fondness for the show has endured over the years and it continues to inspire my writing to this day.

3. How long have you been a fan?

Since Channel 7 showed the pilot in Australia thirteen years ago. After a promising start, they treated the show very poorly and there were quite a few episode I never saw until I bought the DVDs.

4. What's your favorite episode?

SEASON 1: Pilot

SEASON 2: Jose Chung's Doomsday Defence

SEASON 3: Antipas

5. What's your favorite scene or moment?

So many to choose from, but top of my current list is this exchange from Goodbye Charlie.

LARA: You should have no trouble acting depressed

FRANK: I'm not depressed, I'm just quiet.

6. If a movie was made which characters would you like to see in it?

Frank, Catherine (in flashback obviously) Jordan (all grown up), Peter Watts, Lara Means, Emma Hollis and of course Lucy Butler.

7. Why do you think Millennium should come back?

Because it deserves a proper resolution, and the idea of one man doing all he can to protect his family against violent crime as our world hurtles towards its own demise is more resonant today than it's ever been. We're ten years into a century that some thought humanity would never see, and instead of laying the foundations for a golden age of technology, achievement and understanding, we keep making the same old mistakes and hiding from each other and ourselves because we're afraid of what we might find if we look too closely. As the Megadeth song goes, "the world needs a hero" and that hero's name is Frank Black.

1. What are you watching right now?

Doctor Who (old and new)

Sherlock Holmes (the 80s and 90s TV adaptations with Jeremy Brett)

Midsummer Murders

The Bill (more out of habit than genuine enjoyment I'm afraid)

Please keep these coming and do not hesitate to send us all your thoughts and queries on anything Millennium and Frank Black related and you do not have to use your real name to qualify. If you would like to complete the brief questionnaire I have listed the questions below for your perusal. Email your "seven and one" profile to info@backtofrankblack.com and we'll share you those responses to the Millennium world!

Ezekiel Editorial: News Round-up

First off, we (myself, Troy and Lance) are very encouraged by the interest in our teaser we set at the beginning of the week. From the stats as well as the emails and comments, we think we're onto a good thing. Again, we're still working out the details, but we're hoping good things will come out of this, worthy of the interest we're getting. So thank you for your patience. This is Lance's brainchild we're juggling and its great having the man himself playing such a powerfully proactive force on behalf of BacktoFrankBlack and the fans of Millennium. More when it comes.

Second, a letter to Big Light made a request for Millennium this week to the usual tune of "Has there been any indication that Fox, may decide to approve a Millennium movie?" (it's a tune I like. :)) X-Files 3 was also mentioned. Frank's blog reply was "I’m afraid I have no news about a potential Millennium feature. No news yet on X-Files 3, either, but I’m taking notes!" Always nice to know people are continuing to directly ask that question, and Frank is - as he has said categorically to BacktoFrankBlack, he is very open to doing Millennium once more.



- Morgan and Wong next week, as you could tell from our wondrous little trailer provided by our video editor Josef. We have the Glen Morgan interview lined up, along with a great competition, exclusive guest articles, a DiRT special, M&W video avatar and a look at Morgan & Wong's work across the board.

Special thanks to XFN for keenly supporting their humble sibling with news of this event. It is of course of interest to X-Files fans being Morgan & Wong being such an incredibly relevant part of their mythos. Please show the same courtesy if you have a moment to support their community ventures. They have a lot of great things going on there.

Special thanks got to Big Light again for doing the same and throwing our promo up on their blog. Support from both giants never goes unappreciated.

FINALLY

Seven and One, our regular Fan Interview questionnaire is now archived on the website at the bottom of the interviews page. Seems only fair that the fans get the same page as the cast and crew being as relevant to any revival. Enjoy a trip down memory lane with those. I'll post another up tomorrow perhaps.

Look out for our new video archive. That should be on the site by the end of the month - all things permitting.

Morgan and Wong Week

Millennial Group Sessions 22: Pablo Coffey

Welcome to the all new, revised BacktoFrankBlack podcast, the Millennium Group Sessions!

This is our twentieth-second podcast! Today we'll be talking with "Wide Open" antagonist, Pablo Coffey for a very enjoyable forty five minutes or so. Pablo is a big Millennium fan and talks about his role in Millennium, his dynamic with cast and crew and his feelings on the show as a whole. A very pleasant fellow - enjoy!

Aside from his role as Cutter in Millennium season one's "Wide Open", Pablo has acted in hit shows such as Poletgeist: The Legacy, De Vinci Inquest, Andromeda, Harsh Realm and The Dead Zone. We are thrilled to have Pablo on the show!

To listen to the podcast, you can listen to our stream by clicking play below:

• Or download our MP3 file directly by right clicking this link and selecting "save target as"

• You can also subscribe to the Millennium Group Sessions on ITunes by searching for the Millennium Group Sessions and selecting subscribe. The latest podcasts will then automatically download to our ITunes player.

Subscribe to our twitter feed, subscribe to Itunes or simply check back each day to this blog to catch part two on release.

Please leave a comment for John in our comments. Thank you!

Happy Birthday Millennium: TIWWA! 9 years old!

Happy birthday to Millennium: This Is Who We Are! who celebrates their 9 years of Millennium support this week! That's pretty good fine damn amazing well going! If you've not visited This Is Who We Are - please do so. It is the quintessential archive for all things Millennium (and a vital resource for myself and Troy when it comes to interviews!)

I personally have a great affinity for Millennium: This Is Who We Are, through that resource site I was introduced into the internet web community.

"Last year, 2009, Millennium - This is who we are (excluding our forums) received over 87,000 absolute unique visitors, almost 125,000 visits and almost 476,000 page views. Millennium may have concluded on television years ago, but interest is clearly far from over. Don't forget that you can help show this by supporting the campaign to see Frank Black return at BacktoFrankBlack.com, Lance isn't done yet, and needs your backing to deliver the good message that Frank still has work to do.

Thank you for visiting the website over the years, and long may you continue to return for many more." Graham Smith (Webmaster)

Give them a warm birthday greetings on their forums.

Ezekiel Editorial: Content and Balance

Hello my snug cuddle-wumps and cushy-plushies! Just a small editorial again. Details details and more details. It's all in the details.

First off, later today we have a lovely interview with Pablo Coffey on the podcast. Pablo played the rather unforgettable house invader "Cutter" in season one's "Wide Open". He talks a lot about Millennium (with a lot of love), so please tune in for that whenever you have a spare moment.

On the end of the podcast we talk a little about this writing thing, a little of the background and a little why we're being such dreadful teases.

So what's coming up? Morgan and Wong week. As with all BacktoFrankBlack, things can't always go to schedule. It's the nature of this very large beast. We had hoped we could stave off the week so we could get another interview fixed, but being human and fallible as we are, we might not be able to kick that one between the goalposts. So we've moving on with that. There is a lot of risks in these campaigns - sometimes things don't go to planned. We've been asked where has the James Morrison interview gone, and like with John Muir, busy men are notoriously hard to schedule. They don't get paid, so we're really at the mercy of whatever free time they can give us. James has been a hard man to schedule and we've lost windows many times through the year (John was the same), but we'll do our best to get that lined up. You can ask myself, Troy - or Mark - and we'll all tell you the same: there is a LOT of hard work in getting these interviews and events to pan out (yes, events too, auction delayed by actors and crew being SO giving they want time to send more stuff), and for every 10 successes, you'll get 1 fail. But we will keep pushing. We waited a year for BacktoFrankBlack and Mr Muir to find a window that suited both parties, we'll do two years for Mr Morrison if needs be.

Bottomline, and I'll leave you with this point, is when it's quite on the blog front, more likely than not, it's because its busy behind the scenes. We have had some queries as to where some of the content has gone from the blog (any non related post feedback, please send to info@backtofrankblack.com and we'll address it without disrupting the blog), and that's the answer: if its quiet our front, it's because we're focusing on work behind the scenes. 90% of the work on this campaign is stuff you never see on the blog or social networks. Doesn't mean it isn't happening.

See our concern - and we'll openly share it with you - is when a campaign loses its novelty, we have to look at what we can do to make sure the campaign aspect isn't lost (and we're so glad to have people like Lance to throw ideas against our brain boxes to stop that happening: see the teasing!) . It would be easy to fall into a trend of related articles, fun interviews and commentaries for the blog, but we'd be in danger of losing out on what the campaign is about: a campaign. The more we focus on the blog, the less we can focus on the media, industry and Millennium crew. As I was forced to say (I hope not too rudely) to a colleague recently, we're not a fanzine, we're a campaign, so we can't always be on the blog to deliver fun and fab content - but we WILL try. And as always YOU can help.

If you have any ideas (the bumper sticker idea was an awesome one of late - and sooo obvious!), or want to contribute to the article or the campaign, email me at jim@backtofrankblack.com or troy@backtofrankblack.com We have some new contributors lined up this year (first will début on Morgan and Wong week), but if you feel we should have more "fan focused" content on the blog (and we know some of you do), step up to the plate: give us a hand in providing.

In the meantime, enjoy a little teasing, a little Pablo, some more Seven and One, a little Video Avatar and more website updates - all in the next 5 days!