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To make sense of my drunken encounter, I get in contact with Beckett devotee TJ Jeffrey. So incensed by the character's demise, she created a national protest movement along with a lady called Michelle, a NASA scientist who worked on the Orion Project. Together, in 2007, they led a march of fans wearing tartan underpants, who danced to a Scottish bagpipe band, as they protested outside the show's Vancouver studios. Long before the days of grown men and women weeping openly at the demise of Game of Thrones lothario Jon Snow, the "Save Carson Beckett" campaign generated global news coverage. The Today Show even sent a camera crew to Vancouver to film proceedings for a report, while the campaign won McGillion his place back on the show. Well, sort of: He later returned as a bizarre, short-circuiting clone."It felt like victory when they brought him back," Jeffrey, who now works as a broadcast journalist, tells me. "Some people were hugging and crying. We loved him, as Carson was just warm and this everyman badass." She adds, "The first convention I met Paul at, we met this girl called Vicky who brought her mum. Her mum got so drunk she got Paul to sign her arse. Me and Vicky ended up being housemates."Read on Motherboard: The Subversive Science Fiction of Hip-Hop
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And much like during our rather odd first encounter in Eastern Europe, the stories of the more intense fans quickly resurface. "I've had my fair share of crazies," McGillion says. "I've met a few who think this is reality and that I'm a doctor; they come to me with the most intimate medical problems, expecting me to give them a diagnosis. And when we were in the Deep South, there was a particularly menacing Texan queuing in a trench coat. He asked me if I would sign something special, to which I said, 'Yeah, that's why I'm here.' The next day he returns in the same exact clothes, in need of a bath, and slaps his arm on the table, and he's wearing this giant glove."The Stargate diehard was actually a man who unwinds by getting actors who play doctors to sign medical gloves.Read on Noisey: Y'all Ready for This?: Every 'Jock Jam,' Ranked
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