User:Boradis

Greetings! I'm a Whovian going back to the early 1980s when a UHF station (remember those?) in my home town of Detroit used to show an episode of the show every afternoon for years. I loved that pacing — I didn't have to watch entire serials in one sitting, and I never had to wait more than a weekend to find out what happened next.

I have two meager claims to nerd fame.

First, during the initial run of "Firefly" on FOX in 2002 I was an active member of the official message boards on Prospero. During a discussion of what fans of the show should call themselves I asked "What were the rebels called during the war?" The next poster, MotherMagi, said they were called Browncoats. Sometime later I recall seeing the show's production assistant and moderator of the boards referring to us as such. I dug back through the archives to see if there was an earlier instance of that suggestion, and to the best of my knowledge I could not find one.

Those boards are long gone now, but I still know of no earlier instance of Firefly fans being called Browncoats. While I hope I'm right, I also welcome any evidence to the contrary. I wouldn't want to claim this and be wrong.

Secondly, in the mid 80s my cousin was dating John Rhys-Davies (the actor who played Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and Gimli in "Lord of the Rings") and he came to our house for Thanksgiving. Even though I was terribly sick that evening, he was a very gracious man and it was a big thrill to meet him.

So those are the most interesting nerd-related tidbits about me.