Quark's Corner interviews the founder of SpaceOpera.com (née kethinov.com) Eric Newport where they discuss the old site, its origin story, and how it evolved into SpaceOpera.com.
Notice the site looks different today than it did before?
The content currently hosted here on SpaceOpera.com was originally located at kethinov.com until today. This site was originally launched in 2004 as a subsection of SpaceOpera.com founder Eric Newport's personal website kethinov.com. However, the readership of the episode guides and critical reviews on the site grew to such an extent that it warranted separating into a dedicated publication which relaunched as SpaceOpera.com on the site's 20th anniversary today on August 1st, 2024.
Read more about the history of this site, its origin story, and how it evolved into SpaceOpera.com in Alex Muldwych's interview of Eric Newport below. This interview was originally published at Quark's Corner on March 11th, 2024:
Alex Muldwych: Can you tell us about your journey into the world of Star Trek fandom?
Eric Newport: Like many people, I watched it as a kid. My grandmother and I used to watch it together in particular. She especially liked Voyager.
Alex Muldwych: What role do you think online platforms like Kethinov play in shaping discussions and interpretations of science fiction media?
Eric Newport: People like episode guides with critical reviews. Especially if the reviewer is particularly good at assessing stuff using a consistent criteria. If you've got reviewers you trust, then whenever you're trying to decide what series or what episode to watch, you can get a good sense of whether or not it will be your cup of tea by seeing what they say.
Alex Muldwych: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind starting Kethinov and your journey into the world of online sci-fi reviews?
Eric Newport: I created the site in 2004 when I was a teenager as a college dorm room project. I had a lot of friends who were interested in trying out Star Trek, but by that time there had already been hundreds of episodes aired and a whole bunch of movies, so newcomers who just wanted a taste but didn't want to commit to the whole thing weren't sure where to start or what episodes to try.
After giving several people recommendations on what episodes to start with to see if they'd like it, I decided it might make sense to just publish these recommendations on my personal blog, which is what the Kethinov site began as. But as I got into it, I realized it would be fun to just rank-order every episode to see which ones were the best and the worst using a standardized criteria that was as objective as possible; to whatever degree these sorts of things can be objective.
From there, I decided if I'm going to rank-order the episodes, I might as well establish a consistent formula for how to write reviews, so I looked at other reviewers and ultimately decided my reviews should follow a format that merges the approaches of Graham Kennedy and Bernd Schneider, who were my favorite reviewers at the time and whose sites I thought were the closest to what I was trying to do. [My site won Bernd Schneider's September 2008 EAE award. Thanks Bernd!]
Once I decided on a review format, I went on a marathon of writing reviews. TNG reviews were first, which is why most of my TNG reviews are among the worst I've written, haha. Re-writing the oldest reviews is one of the things on my to-do list, as I've gotten better at this over the years. After I completed the TNG reviews, I got requests from folks to add more reviews like DS9, Voyager, TOS, and the films. I also reviewed Enterprise shortly after it aired, as I'm doing with the new shows now.
Alex Muldwych: How do you think the landscape of online media reviewing has changed since you first started Kethinov?
Eric Newport: My site was one of the earliest Star Trek episode guides, and its popularity is driven largely by being so early. There are a lot more people in this space now; especially big review outlets. Personally I think all the big review outlets suck, because their writers aren't experts on the franchises they're reviewing, so the reviews tend to be shallower. The smaller, more dedicated sites are still the best, with Bernd Schneider's being my favorite.
Alex Muldwych: How do you think Kethinov has evolved since its inception, both in terms of content and presentation?
Eric Newport: I added more reviews, other TV shows, and my writing style has matured considerably, but beyond that the site hasn't changed much at all. The code that drives it is largely unchanged since 20 years ago (gawd I'm old now) and it's getting increasingly rickety and difficult to maintain, but duct tape and bailing wire has kept it online so far.
Alex Muldwych: What motivates you to continue reviewing episodes and maintaining Kethinov after all these years?
Eric Newport: The biggest thing that motivates me to keep doing this is the fact that I've somehow managed to get a good-sized and loyal readership despite putting zero effort into promoting the site. I'm really not sure how so many people found the site, but I'm glad people like my writing style, so I hope to keep improving the quality of the writing, the presentation, and the amount of content available over time.
Alex Muldwych: How do you approach the process of reviewing each episode of these shows?
Eric Newport: I value consistency in my assessment process above all else. I'm sure most people don't always agree with everything I say in every review I've ever written, but I would hope people at least notice that I'm consistent. The storytelling I review positively and negatively follows a clear pattern of valuing suspense over mystery, scientific accuracy over pseudoscience, rich world-building over lazy reboots and retconning, and so forth. Other people might have different priorities, and that's okay. As long as the reviewer you're reading makes their priorities clear and assesses things consistently, it will be easy for you to tell if the episode or series will be your cup of tea based on their assessment of it.
Alex Muldwych: Any plans to start another show on your site of have you thought about one but changed your mind?
Eric Newport: I've got a total redesign of the site in a brand new codebase in the works that I plan to launch for the site's 20th anniversary later this year. It looks so much better. People are gonna really like it. Once it's launched, I'm planning to expand the content considerably as well. I'll be catching up with reviews of all the current Star Trek shows my reviews are behind on first, then I'll be adding new shows too, such as The Expanse, Killjoys, and other space opera shows I get a lot of requests to review. I will likely be doing collaborations with other reviewers to expand the content even further as well and I'm exploring more multimedia content formats too besides merely the written word. Stay tuned!
Alex Muldwych: What is your favourite Star Trek series and character?
Eric Newport: DS9 is my favorite Star Trek series. Garak is my favorite character.
You can also read this interview at its original location at Quark's Corner here.