SFX Issue 30

October 1997

The SFX Awards Highlights

The first ever live SFX Awards Ceremony was held as part of the Wolf 359 convention in Blackpool, 1997. And here’s what we had to say about it…

At the risk of every-body reading this saying, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”, one of the highlights of Wolf this year was The SFX Awards Ceremony.

Introduced by Dave, our Editor, and Claudia Christian, who showed a nice line in Janeway impressions and managed to make Dave’s hastily-written script sound almost professional, the event turned into a brilliant evening with real party atmosphere (despite the fact the winners had been announced in the mag months before, so B5 fans knew their favourite show was going to sweep the board anyway).

Highlights included:

• Bruce Boxleitner accepting the award for Best Individual Episode (“Z’Ha’Dum”) and being caught off guard when a ghostly voice asked him to “Jump, jump now” off the stage. He didn’t.
• Julie Caitlin Brown (Na’Toth), in a stunning dress she’d been telling everybody about all day, awarding a very bashful-looking Andreas Katsulas the Best TV Actor Award (the next day he appeared on stage during one of Bruce Boxleitner’s talks brandishing his award and teasing Bruce about the fact he’d beaten him!).
• Jason Carter bouncing on-stage to accept his award for Person Who’d Make A Good Doctor Who. As the, um, latest incarnation of the Doctor, he was given his award by a man who was there at the very first regeneration from Bill Hartnell to Pat Troughton – Michael Craze (companion, Ben).
• Filmed inserts from Terry Gilliam, who accepted the awards for Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and himself for 12 Monkeys (and who starting off by saying, “Hi, I’m Madeleine Stowe!”) and Dean Devlin, producer of ID4 , who made his acceptance speech from the set of Godzilla .
• Terrance Dicks (one time Doctor Who script editor) accepting the memorial award for Jon Pertwee.
• And finally, a moment which for many was the highlight of the weekend, JMS accepting his award from Gareth Thomas, dressed as Blake. The unusually quiet JMS was finally seen to show some emotion that weekend when he shed a tear or two...