When Star Trek was due to be axed, they wrote letters in protest. Now fans mobilise on social media, picket the TV companies – and even go on hunger strike

Modern fandom can seem an alien concept. Gone are the teens penning heartfelt letters to their favourite pinups. Today’s fans – or “stans”, named after the Eminem song about an obsessive stalker – are an online army ready to take on anyone that might threaten the object of their adoration. Most recently, fans of the cult Netflix show The OA have mounted a global campaign to have it reinstated after it was cancelled in August. Their tactics have taken fanaticism to the extreme: one demonstrator has even gone on hunger strike.

Fandom and TV have long gone hand-in-hand. The television fan movement was arguably born with the 1966 campaign to keep a little-known new series named Star Trek on air. After low ratings for the first two seasons, NBC was ready to relegate the show to the trashpile. Hearing the news, husband and wife Betty Jo and John Trimble organised one of the first grassroots fan campaigns, kicking off a letter-writing chain that amassed over 110,000 missives and which led to the renewal of the show.

Other fans have been far more extreme. Post-apocalyptic show Jericho was cancelled by CBS after one season in 2006, prompting its stans to send 20 tons of nuts to the network’s offices in protest. Inspired by a line from the final episode – predictably, “nuts” – the outpouring of nut-based feeling got the show one more season (albeit before it was axed again.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nuts! The campaign to save Jericho.

Sticking with the foodstuffs, sci-fi series Roswell was kept on-air for four seasons of plummeting ratings after fans bombarded its channel with bottles of Tabasco. As part of the “Roswell is Hot” petition, it is estimated that over 3,000 bottles of hot sauce were sent in total, until the campaign ran out of heat and the show was cancelled for good in 2002.

When NBC threatened to axe high-school football drama Friday Night Lights in 2007, fans started sending streams of lightbulbs to their offices, as well as eye drops – a reference to the Dillon Panthers’ motto: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” They saved the show for three more seasons. In 2018, the Andy Samberg-starring cop comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine was rescued from cancellation following a massive Twitter backlash centring around the hashtag #SaveB99. The same year, another Twitter campaign ensured a two-and-a-half hour marathon finale for the cancelled Wachowskis’ sci-fi series Sense8.

Obscure tactics aside, what prompts such visceral reactions to these shows? For self-described “Brooklyn Nine-Nine fanatic” Jack Cartwright, it was much more than just an easy watch. “It might seem overblown to say this, but TV shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine genuinely provide an escape from the often brutal day-to-day of work and responsibility,” he says. “When it was cancelled, I had to get involved to try and keep it on air.” Cartwright, who is 27 and based in Leeds, turned to Twitter, regularly posting #SaveB99 and encouraging others to sign petitions to show the huge appetite for more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The best fans in the world’ ... Brooklyn Nine-Nine was saved after a massive backlash. Photograph: Fox/Getty

“When it got picked up by NBC, I was ecstatic,” he says. “It shows that while places like Twitter can be a toxic online space, they can also be a community for real, positive change.” Cartwright was joined in posting his support by celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Guillermo Del Toro – with Miranda eventually landing a guest spot on the renewed series. Showrunner Dan Goor responded to the campaign, calling them “the best fans in the world.”

For fans of The OA, though, the future is still uncertain. Created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij in 2016, the sci-fi show centres around the reappearance of Prairie Johnson, a young blind woman missing for seven years who returns with her sight restored, now calling herself The OA. Cancelled after two seasons, the show built a dedicated following with many fans identifying with the diverse characters, including transgender Buck and disabled Dr Marlow Rhodes. When the cancellation was announced, “discord groups” sprung up to organise flash mob protests at Netflix offices and coordinate calls to the company, as well as fundraise $5,000 for a huge #SavetheOA billboard in New York’s Times Square. The campaign has the feel of an insurgent political movement, yet it’s all for a television programme.

destiny☽ save The OA (@theOAagenda) THE BILLBOARD IS SO AMAZING❤️ IM SO PROUD OF US ✨ #SaveTheOA #RenewTheOA @britmarling @z_al @netflix pic.twitter.com/iddRV7Ef62

“I had never been so moved by TV,” fan and season-two OA writer Claire Kiechel says. “I didn’t know TV was able to do what The OA was doing – it thrilled my imagination, and gave me solace and hope at a time I had lost it.” She believes the outpouring tapped into the deeper meaning the programme had for many. “The cancellation of a show which, for a lot of people had become a therapeutic totem or beacon of hope, can feel especially personal,” she says. “What’s happening with the Save the OA movement is a microcosm of what’s happening in our larger society – the youth climate strikes, the calls for corporate social responsibility. We’re all looking at the narratives we’ve been living in and finding them lacking, and asking if we can come together for a better world. Stories matter and there is a moral responsibility that comes with telling them.”

The responsibility is so marked that one OA fan, Emperial Young, decided to go on hunger strike outside Netflix’s LA offices for a month – taking Sundays off – to protest her belief in its wider implications for society. “If nothing else I hope people can come away with the idea that art has an important place in the world,” says Young. “A lot of entertainment is feeding into the cycle of despondency, reinforcing the idea that we are powerless. The OA helps fight the hopelessness. Narrative can be a driving force that shapes reality.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It helps fight the hopelessness’ ... The OA. Photograph: Nicola Goode/Netflix

Nonetheless, Netflix has been unresponsive to the protests, while creator Marling seems to have cryptically confirmed the end of the show with a lengthy Instagram post, saying how the fans’ efforts have become its new driving force – something greater than the series itself. Perhaps this, not tons of nuts or light bulbs, is the legacy of fandom: creating communities beyond the shows they formed around.

“TV execs are losing out on a great opportunity – instead of seeing fandoms as enemies, they should collaborate with them,” says Kiechel. “Regardless of what happens with the show, I am lucky to be a part of this community and relearn what I knew as a child: art changes people. A story can give you the container, the metaphor, the name you’ve been missing all your life.”

McDonough is still helping to run the Save the OA campaign, mobilising their 1 million YouTube subscribers to fundraise and arrange flash mobs. Her message is clear: “We will keep going as long as it takes.”

• This article was amended on 16 October 2019 because an earlier version misnamed the actor Andy Samberg as Adam Samberg. This has been corrected.