From mailing bras to starting malicious Internet rumours, devoted viewers try all sorts of things to protect what they love.

Yesterday was her 30th birthday, but the celebration was likely somewhat muted ... because yesterday was also Jolene Blalock’s last day in outer space.

Star Trek fans - Trekkies, as they are somewhat grudgingly known - predictably reacted with outrage and indignation to last month’s announced cancellation of the current spinoff series, Enterprise.

On Friday, Feb. 25, a couple hundred of them gathered outside Paramount Studios in L.A., capping a week of sign-waving, banner-bearing protest, from New York to L.A. and as far away as Germany, Israel and the U.K.

Inside the studio gates, on the Enterprise soundstages, the mood was one more of subdued resignation, as the cast and crew - some of them Star Trek veterans of 18 years - prepared to start filming the series’ final episode, which wrapped yesterday and is scheduled to air May 13.

"It is sad," related Blalock earlier that week. "I think most of us here are still in active denial. But you’ve got to know, going in, that these last few days are going to be highly emotional."

To the fans, perhaps a startling admission from the woman they have come to know as the ostensibly emotionless Vulcan, T’Pol.

But then, being a Star Trek fan has never been about having a firm grip on reality.

A strong sense of community, yes. Admirably utopian ideals of inclusion and tolerance and benevolent technology ... absolutely, yes. A smug, blindly righteous sense of entitlement when it comes to their shared obsession ... yes, of course. That’s what makes them the acknowledged gold standard of cult and genre fandom.

But that isn’t going to save their show. Not this time, anyway.

Truth be told, not even the Trekkies have been particularly enthusiastic about Enterprise, a prequel series set during the formative days of Star Trek’s galactic "Federation," a hundred years prior to the original adventures of Capt. James T. Kirk and his intrepid crew.

Even Bjo Trimble, the mother of all Trekkies, the original fan activist who "saved" the 1960s’ Star Trek with a then-unprecedented letter campaign, and who then spearheaded the successful initiative to have the first NASA space shuttle officially dubbed "Enterprise" ... even she has gone on record as one of Enterprise’s earliest and harshest critics.

"Get someone who knows Trek to write the scripts," she famously complained. "Get someone who knows Trek to direct ... but do you think Paramount has the good sense to see this? Nah!"

"I don’t think you can just throw anything out there and expect people to swallow it," agrees Blalock. "There is Trek lore and Trek history to be followed and adhered to."

A former fan herself (her favourite character as a kid was, not surprisingly, Mr. Spock), the actress, despite her vested interest, has never been shy about dissing her own show.

"I mean, we started out with 13 million viewers on the pilot, and we somehow managed to drive 11 million of them away."

Ironically, things had improved dramatically - in terms of content, if not resultant ratings - in this fourth and final season, under the stewardship of producer and self-confessed Trek geek Manny Coto, who brought back a lot of the self-referencing retro continuity the hardcore fan just can’t get enough of.

"That was a treat, a joy to do," Blalock enthuses. "It was an unexpected surprise to have the scripts that we did (this season). And I am grateful and thankful for that. It was fun to come to work again.

"And it was certainly much better than spending another season doing what we had been doing. It said a lot about the potential of the show."

There is an awkward silence when the subject of the final episode is broached. "I don’t know where to begin with that one," she finally stammers. "The final episode is ... appalling."

She feels sorry for the fans. "I really am touched by their outpour of support, and their display of passion for the show. I was sort of caught off-guard. I didn’t know that they were so adamant.

"But, you know, they really aren’t saying anything new. They’re just saying it louder."

The Enterprise protests, however sincere and passionate, have fallen on deaf ears - even the pointy ones within the Trekkie community. The turnout for the Los Angeles rally was a mere fraction of the number of fans who will routinely line up for hours for an autograph from any anonymous alien actor at even the smallest Star Trek convention.

There have been full-page ads in showbiz trade papers, letter-writing and Internet campaigns, and an amusingly ambitious fundraising effort intent on raising the $36 million required to underwrite another season themselves (one fan organization claims to have already collected more than $60,000 U.S., with $3 million more promised from "anonymous sources" - all together not quite enough to keep the show going for even two more episodes).

The emphasis has been placed on the hopes of a pickup by the Sci Fi Channel, the genre-dedicated American cable service analogous to our own Space: The Imagination Station. And indeed Sci Fi would appear to be the logical second home of an extended Enterprise run - until one takes into account the fact that, historically, the channel has run only the syndicated original episodes of the 1960s Star Trek, and none of its subsequent spinoffs.

Fans tend to gloss over the realities of the business, like the fact that the four Star Trek franchise series are produced and owned by Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS and several cable services ... none of which is the Sci Fi Channel, which is in fact part of the GE-owned NBC Universal conglomerate.

So a deal would be in nobody’s corporate interests. The bottom-line decision has already been made to focus on the moribund Star Trek movie franchise. A script has been commissioned (from Band Of Brothers scribe Eric Jendresen) for an 11th Star Trek film, also a prequel, supposedly set between the Enterprise era and the original adventures of Capt. Kirk.

The idea being, one can fairly safely deduce, to re-purpose expensive existing props and sets while hiring an all-new cast of unknowns, rather than pay the inflated fees routinely demanded by established series actors.

Enterprise itself will survive, on DVD - the initial release is cannily scheduled days before the final episode’s air date - and also in television syndication, where it has already been pre-sold in 49 of 50 major U.S. markets, and here in Canada on Space.

As for the Sci Fi Channel, well, whatever money they have is being spent on shows in which they have an active interest, such as the Farscape miniseries and the reborn Battlestar Galactica ...

Genre television has a long history of proactive protest. Following in the fannish footsteps of Bjo Trimble, there have been several similar, if smaller successes since: the restoration of Quantum Leap (soon to be revived yet again as an all-new series); UPN’s adoption of Buffy The Vampire Slayer; the feature-film resurrection of creator Joss Whedon’s also-cancelled Firefly (the film, Serenity, premieres Sept. 30), the dramatic re-invention of Battlestar Galactica ... though to be fair, in most of these latter cases, fan action was really only partly responsible.

Not so the rebirth of the fan-favourite Farscape, which was axed abruptly in 2002 by the originating Sci Fi Channel, also at the end of its fourth season - and, much to viewers’ chagrin, at the point of a very provocative cliff-hanger plot turn.

The series makes a miraculous return (to Canada - it has already aired in the States) two weeks from now, March 25 and 26, on Space. A two-part miniseries, Peacekeeper Wars, will answer all the unanswered questions and give the fans some well-earned closure.

"This special television event would not be a reality were it not for the tireless, unwavering efforts of the Farscape fans," acknowledges director and executive producer Brian Henson. "They believed that the epic story we were telling was something special and deserved a proper ending."

`The person who sits there on the Internet attacking you is the first person to come up to you at a convention and love you.’

Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, on sci-fi fans

Interestingly, given the cliché of the average sci-fi geek as a pimply adolescent male living in his parents’ basement, the successful Farscape campaign was generated and sustained primarily by adult female fans.

While it’s true the general sci-fi fan base has broadened as the genre has matured - according to Space exec Isme Bennie, the station’s demographic is roughly a 60/40 male-to-female split - female fandom does seem to be a particularly potent part of Farscape’s after-the-fact longevity.

"The women who watch Farscape tend to be well-educated and well-informed, and they are very aware of their power as a coveted viewing demographic with disposable income," says Barb Schober, a prime mover behind the offshoot "Save Farscape Canada" initiative.

"They joined the campaign at one stage or another because they were emotionally invested in the show. Rather than sit around and watch it disappear - and lacking the option of physical violence - they decided to put their energy and talent to use doing what it took to change the minds that needed changing. The whole thing has been amazingly strategic, particularly in the efforts to grow the viewership and target advertisers."

To that end, the uniquely imaginative ’Scapers created and distributed a wide range of promotional materials, from calendars and cookbooks to the more traditional buttons, postcards and posters.

One particularly clever ploy, "Brascape," had women fans demonstrating their gender-specific "support" by mailing their bras in to Sci Fi.

"Women are taught from a very early age a different way of problem-solving than men," suggests Nicola Wood, another key Canadian ’Scaper. "Female methods of problem-solving involve co-operation, communication and non-hierarchical thinking. Woman are taught to co-operate with each other, rather than compete."

Just like Bjo Trimble.

"Bjo is a perfect example of how women network with other women to provide support, information and direction. She networked with Farscape fans very early in our campaign efforts. She and her husband shared inspiring words and gave us good advice."

(Trimble, despite her stated misgivings about Enterprise, was also supportive of that campaign, and was planning on attending the Paramount rally herself - until her mother died a few days prior.)

The sad truth is, sci-fi fans (of either sex) can also be their own worst enemies.

Take the case of Battlestar Galactica - on the surface, an unparalleled sci-fi success story, having magically morphed from a cheesy, ’70s-style TV ripoff of Stars Wars into the biggest hit in the history of both Sci Fi and Space.

As a result, the reimagined space epic has been renewed for an extended second season of 20 episodes, to start shooting in Vancouver later this month.

"It’s exciting," burbles Katee Sackhoff, the actress who has emerged as a standout star in her role as the cigar-chomping ace fighter pilot, Starbuck.

"The fans are really enjoying it, I think. And by that I mean the true sci-fi fans, as opposed to the ones who were just in love with the old show. Because it isn’t the old show. It’s nothing like it, really. It just shares the same name, and the names of some of the characters."

And therein lay the problem. For years, fans of the original show - with original star Richard Hatch (not the Survivor champ) as their vocal point-man - had been agitating for a revival of Battlestar Galactica ... as it originally was.

What they got instead was an all-new, grittier, more dramatic and credible take on the premise, further elevated by the presence of actors the calibre of Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell and Canadians Michael Hogan and Callum Keith Rennie.

Sackhoff almost immediately became the focus of hardcore fan outrage after daring to take on a role - the daredevil Starbuck - that had originally been played by a man (The A-Team’s Dirk Benedict).

"I didn’t get it," Sackhoff ruefully recalls. "I really just didn’t get it. It was frustrating. I mean, to go from winning this part over so many girls that auditioned for it, to immediately, before we even started shooting, taking the brunt of all this misdirected rage.

"What bothered me was when they started attacking me as a person. I mean, they don’t know me from freakin’ Adam, and they’re sitting there saying that I slept with the casting director, and that I’m fat ..."

All now has apparently been forgiven. By the fans, at least. Even Hatch has embraced the new Battlestar, and has appeared several times in a recurring role.

Sackhoff says her face-to-face fan encounters have been markedly and surprisingly upbeat.

"The person who sits there on the Internet attacking you is the first person to come up to you at a convention and love you," she says, laughing. "I would be really surprised if anyone ever came up to my face at a convention to say, `I really, really hate you, you fat-ass.’"

And if they did?

"It would only motivate me more. Because at the end of the day, I really don’t give a shit. It’s all about the work. And this is a terrific show - incredibly well written, brilliantly acted. And it just keeps getting better and better."

She has to excuse herself now - surrounded by her boxed belongings, she is in the middle of moving into the new house that Starbuck and Battlestar have paid for.

But don’t cry for Jolene Blalock - for her, unemployment is likely to be a very temporary situation.

"I’m just coming from an audition right now," she reveals, "and I’m very excited about it.

"I love auditioning, the entire process, going out and meeting people in the industry. It’s been four years since I’ve been out pounding the pavement, and I miss it. It’s a place of the unknown, and a place of infinite possibilities. And I like that."

Pre-Star Trek, and post-modelling career, the San Diego-born Blalock got her earliest on-camera experience here in Toronto, co-hosting a TSN show called The Big Spike with the late Dan Gallagher, while studying comedy improvisation at Second City.

"I was dating my husband (Michael Rapino), who lived there at the time, and I would spend my summers there. I loved Toronto. I had a great time there."

Unlike many of the Star Trek actors who preceded her, between Enterprise’s abbreviated run and her essential unrecognizability under the Vulcan wig and ears, she has no fears about being typecast.

"I’ve been blessed," she says. "I’ve been working incognito. No one really knows what I actually look like."

Which does not take into account the nearly naked photo spreads in Maxim and other men’s magazines. But it’s pretty clear what she means. She does not expect the Star Trek association to affect her future acting career one way or the other.

Although she readily admits that, just in case, "I am going to keep the ears."