IT'S BEEN ON the air barely a year and a half, yet TV's No. 1 drama has already inspired nearly a dozen unofficial websites, a fan club on America Online, and a newsgroup that could (almost) generate more Friday-morning traffic than alt.sex. But as diverse as these ER offerings are, some general principles can be extracted from them for the enlightenment of those who would like to set up a site on the World Wide Web devoted to a favorite TV show, movie, or recording artist.
Be obsessive. The urtext (or should that be ER-text?) of the ER-in-cyberspace movement, Donald Chow's endless, incredibly detailed answers to frequently asked questions(http://www.ualberta.ca/~vichan/www/er.html), leaves no kidney stone unturned. This astounding treatise includes synopses of ER episodes, from four-paragraph sketches to a 1,200-word exegesis on the Sept. 29, 1995, show, in which Chow delineates no fewer than five simultaneous plotlines, one of which involves prickly new chief resident Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes).
Be perverse in your choice of stars. You won't find much attention paid to ER mainstays Anthony Edwards or Julianna Margulies -- but there are pages devoted to heartthrob Noah Wyle (http://www.gti. net/will/noah); currently departed Ming-Na Wen (http://www.nd.edu/~aleyden/ ming.html), who played a med student; and Abraham Benrubi, the portly actor behind the admissions desk (http://www. halcyon.com/tedlewis/benrubi.html). Oddly enough, Christine Elise -- the one cast member you'd think would become a classic Net pinup in a league with Teri Hatcher -- is virtually invisible in this medium.
Indulge your creativity. Now appearing on Danny Green's exhaustive website (http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/danny/ er) is the ''official'' ER Drinking Game (''Ross gets puppy-dog eyes while looking at Hathaway -- 1/2 drink,'' ''Chloe smokes/drinks while talking about her baby -- 2 drinks''). And a Jan. 7 posting on the Usenet discussion group alt.tv.er hints at the spin-off of alt.erotic.fiction.er.
Geography doesn't matter. George Olund's Swedish website (http://www.dsg. ki.se/~b95-geo) is a game attempt at keeping up with the latest developments on ER, or Cityakuten, as it's known in the frozen north. (Laments George, ''Since ER ain't that 'big' in Sweden, it's quite difficult to obtain material.'') And those wondering ''Dove viene filmato ER?'' might want to check out an Italian site (http://www.altair.it/er) that contains no English whatsoever.
Be very obsessive. Notes one Windy City resident on the alt.tv.er newsgroup, ''Doesn't ER have any native Chicagoans on the production crew? How did N. SEDGWICK ST. become SEDGWICK AV. on the street sign? #1064 would be at the corner of North Avenue, which is a major artery, not the sort of side street where Mark pulled up.''
Crave verisimilitude. It only stands to reason that most ER fans would be as attentive to medical detail as a roomful of hysterical neurasthenics. That explains the page attached to the Wyle site in which a hospital resident in Chicago expounds on the show (''John Carter isn't a doctor; he's a fourth-year medical student doing an elective surgical sub-internship'') and the bibliography of ''good books to read'' in the Chow site, including the classic medical-school text Current Emergency Diagnosis & Treatment. Chow also features a handy glossary of impenetrable ER lingo, including CBC, Chem 7, and Tox Screen.
