I’ve recently been binge-watching Sci Fi shows thanks to the plethora of streaming services we have. Disney plus seem to be leading the way with another series of The Mandalorian, and the rather excellent and poignant The Orville (see March 18). Seth MacFarlane’s genius shines through as the creator of The Orville, almost as much as brightly as his Wikipedia entry reads.
But it got me thinking about how other Sci Fi on the telly as influenced me. Star Trek the original series and Dr Who jump out at me, as I watched from our black and white TV in the early seventies. We lived in Hong Kong, there was one channel, and that was broadcast in monochrome.
Jump forward five years to colour, the BBC, and life in the UK, and I remember dashing home from swimming lessons to watch Blakes 7. I was the only guy in school who did NOT have a crush on Supreme Commander Servalan, favouring the action-packed Jenna instead. Of course, the Hitch Hikers TV series introduced me to the fact that Sci Fi could actually be funny, even though the story starts with single most unfunny event in world history. I realised drones could be depressed, and aliens could be accident prone, and that there was no reason for the comic timing of Stan and Ollie that I loved so much, not to be teleported to the moon and beyond.
And while everyone was going ‘oooh’ as the colossal Imperial Battlecruiser moved above us, on and on, filling our cinema screens in 1977, and others went ‘ahhh’ as Princes Leia shot back with a blaster bigger than she was, I was more concerned about how the Wookie washes his fur, why don’t they have toilets on the Millennium Falcon, and what does happen if you pick up a light sabre at the wrong end?
It was entirely the fault of Douglas Adams, you see.
And then, the terribly serious and dramatic Space: 1999. Wow. Those Eagle space ships! I had a series of long and terrible first-world, middle class conversations with my father just before Christmas. I desperately wanted an Eagle Transporter. No, wait, an Eagle Freighter. No, a Transporter! On and on I went about it (while everyone else wanted an X-wing or a Falcon). In the end, Christmas morning came, I bounded downstairs, ripped open my parcel, and there it was; the Eagle Transporter. Sat on top of the Eagle Freighter. Mum and dad had bought me both! How lucky was I?
But then, with the moon being blasted out of orbit, and them having no trees, where did they get the paper for their computer printouts? All those cash register receipts and punched cards? I ask this very question in my short story, The Man Who Sold The Moon, coming soon.
Meanwhile, if you like Star Wars, but have never seen the opening to Space: 1999, check this out courtesy of Galactic Nonsense.