S01 E07 - I Heart The 90's

Dylan is joined by Ben Verth, Mark Donladson and Richie Morgan to discuss all things 90's genre fandom and pose the ultimate question, was it all better back then?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Welcome back to To Hot for TV. We're the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe. But today, we're taking a more general dip into the 1990s. Now a subject that comes up a lot on this podcast on Doctor Who Too Hot for TV, on any podcast basically, that's got a bunch of 40-something white men on it who talk about media genre stuff. And that is, hasn't it all changed? Wasn't it all different when we used to consume science fiction back in the day? So I thought I'd get a bunch of elite podcasters together to talk about how much we heart the 1990s, or maybe we didn't, I don't know, we'll find out. So, from On the Time Lash, I've got Mr. Ben Verth. Welcome, Ben.

SPEAKER_05 1:26

Hello, hello, thank you for having me. I am so excited to do this. And that sounded really disingenuous. I actually mean it. Uh, any chance to just guff on about sci-fi in the 90s, I'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Look, if it's a iHeart the 90s programme, there's a lot of disingenuous people on them. So, you know, we've we we've ticked a box straight away. Also from On the Time Last, we've got Mr. Mark Donaldson. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Thank you. Um I am I am welcomed. Uh yeah, no, this is great. Um, the 1990s, nostalgia. I've been reading and I'm I'm gonna read a bit from it in a bit, but I've actually been reading A Classless Society written in the nineteen nineties, just for my general enjoyment, because as I've I was saying to I think Harry at the weekend, is that when I was writing about Doctor Who and Star Trek for a living, my windown was uh touching base with like politics and the real world because because that was kind of an escape from this fucking you know peripheral nonsense. So this is a nice mix of utopian nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, and the other voice you can hear is Richie Morgan. Richie, welcome to Too Hot for TV.

SPEAKER_07 2:42

Hi, thanks for having me. Um I'm also, as Ben mentioned, very excited because on my own podcast, when I get onto this subject, a voice in my head starts going, You need to stop. You need to stop bring this back in because nobody wants to hear this.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

I suppose there is a danger in uh giving sort of people like us the chance to wang on about the 90s because it's that kind of like it's the autism specialism thing, isn't it? Where you just you just kind of keep going and you've got three of us, so I I I I'd apologize for the edit in advance.

SPEAKER_06 3:20

Star Trek was better when it was 14 pounds a month in two episodes.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Look, all voices deserve a platform, so I know this this is our time. I was in Birmingham where I grew up the other day, just wandering around the city centre, which I hadn't done for ages, just going, that used to be better when that was a Sainsbury's, that was better when that was a comic shop, that was better when that was a regular shop. But it's just like, yeah, but the nobody else knows that, you know, like the kid that goes to that vape shop isn't going, oh god, I wish this was still a specialist sci-fi bookshop. It's just like wrapped up in my own shit and uh my own nostalgia, because nostalgia can be a dangerous thing.

SPEAKER_07 4:01

Do you think that maybe it bet it was better as a sci-fi bookshop than a vape shop?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

It absolutely was. It was better as a sci-fi bookshop, but you know.

SPEAKER_07 4:10

Place to get your mobile phone fixed.

unknown 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

The main sci-fi shop in Birmingham was called Nostalgia and Comics, and now it's still there, but it's called Worlds Apart, and it just sells fucking Funko Pops, and it makes me want to kill myself.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Oh, I think I went in there. I think there was still comics upstairs.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

There are, there's a there's like six comics.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

It was like a for it did a Forbidden Planet kind of thing where it's like just tat downstairs, some interesting, you know, uh like antique comics upstairs, but yeah.

SPEAKER_07 4:38

I went for a job interview at Forbidden Planet maybe about 20 years ago, and I remember even then they were like, look, we're not when we did the interview and I talked about I was really into comics at that point. And it was a real like the the woman who was managing it was just like, look, we're not really bothered about comics anymore. It's kind of more we're moving more into toys. Yeah. And it was a real f feeling of like, oh well, I like toys. But now you realize that I I every so often, every couple of years, I'll walk into Forbidden Planet and go, what the fuck? The the one in Glasgow has a giant Chewbacca Funko pop sitting in the middle of it. And it's just like terrifying anyway.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

That would have been made of cardboard in the 90s, you see. Anyway. When I say to you, 90s science fiction fandom, what is the first thing that pops in your head, Ben Virth?

SPEAKER_05 5:29

Okay, uh I've been thinking about this. The decade can be drawn across two lines. First half of the de uh the decade is Star Trek the Next Generation, and everything spins off from that. Second half of the decade is the X-Files, everything spins off from that. Uh so when you say that, it's X-Files and Star Trek the Next Generation. Um those are the two kind of uh for me central things that I really enjoyed. Uh, but I also feel like everything else orbited those two shows as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Okay. Richie, what's the first thing that that that pops into your head when you think of the nineties? And it could be a place, it could be a TV show, it could be a magazine, whatever.

SPEAKER_07 6:13

Well, no, it was about m the first thing that popped into my head was magazines. Because it was just sort of like this hunger for information just was like tr, you know, because we didn't h have the internet, it was just like buying magazines and and um trying to see what was going on in America and what exciting things were coming our way. So it was uh and just that I I feel like that's where like, you know, all your information, like someone was about to die in your favorite TV show, but you don't know who it was, yeah. Or there's an episode coming up where something mad happens, maybe maybe the Enterprise is doing a saucer separation or something.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

It's like I know I've got that to look forward to at some point in the next six months, so it's like I remember um on that subject reading in the SFX's spoiler pull-out um the plot of the X-Files episodes where Skinner wakes up next to a dead sex worker and thinking, ooh, that sounds really dark and gritty and interesting. I can't wait for that to be on BBC too in eighteen months or whatever it was. And now that's just how you live your life. Yeah. Mark, what about you? So you kind of said nineties fandom, and I think for me, nineties fandom is the Claremont Bar in Edinburgh. Because I walked in there with my friend Leo as two shy, awkward teenagers in nineteen ninety god, seven, I think. It was either sort of late ninety seven or early oh no no, I can date it. Yeah, it would be I think late ninety seven or early ninety-eight to go to the Edinburgh Doctor Who group where everybody there was at least twenty years older than us. Um apologies to anybody who might listen to this who's like, fuck off, I was I was in my twenties still. But yeah, that it was that, it was kind of this sort of feeling that hey, all the all these guys like know what they're talking about, and they can get like Doctor Who that you haven't seen, or we would all sit and talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the X-Files or other stuff, because that was the I think that's the thing that Love of Monsters gets so right about sort of fan groups is that yeah, you all kind of start off with a kind of interest in in one thing, but then you find all these these other shared interests that kind of keep you going. So it was that, and that was kind of a gateway to lots of other interests, really. Um so yeah, it's it's that. It's kind of that kind of fan community, which ultimately, in a kind of long circuitous route, has led me to this very podcast talking to you, lovely gentlemen.

SPEAKER_07 9:02

Well, it's it's funny, I like I think your point and my point specifically come together in this. Like, I feel like there was a real hunger for information. Yeah. For me anyway, if you know we need love stuff and it's like there's other stuff going on, and like being able to speak to people that knew stuff. Or as yours are like an untapped resource for getting copies of videotapes as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

And it wasn't pre-internet, but it was pre I guess it was and it wasn't even pre-message board, I suppose, but it w it was definitely kind of pre-that pre-sort of social interaction online being a kind of I guess okay enough replacement for actual in-person contact. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Um because you're you'd only be online if you're really lucky enough to have the internet at home. The chances are you're only on for 20 minutes a day or something. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So it wasn't a social platform.

SPEAKER_05 9:53

Sorry, can I sorry, I completely misunderstood the question. And I feel like I uh just said something.

SPEAKER_07 10:00

No, it was no, I don't think you misunderstood the question. No, because it was it was like a word association thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, but it's the first thing that comes into your head.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

And you're right, Star Trek and the X Fos were the two, probably the two biggest shows in the 19th century. Yeah, they were spot on.

SPEAKER_05 10:14

Yeah, but that's just dry shite. I mean, like on a on a personal Yeah, but on a on a just like what Mark and Richard say, just on a personal level. Just uh because I I spent um I spent a couple of days working out a proper chronology of all my memories. Um wow. I I organized fandom for me did not start until uh 2003. Specifically the 6th of January 2003. That's the first time I attended the Edinburgh Doctor Who group. Um it was uh with my friend Sean. It was after we'd gone to see Star Trek Nemesis in the cinema. Oh my god. The 90s the 90s fandom for me are two people my friend Sean and my dad. Um my dad we were watching Star Trek The Next Generation, primarily uh six o'clock on Wednesdays. Uh that's that's uh that's a lot of the decade, and there's other orbital stuff as well, because it wasn't just Star Trek then, when that became popular, you had uh Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, and then there were repeats of The Avengers over on Channel 4, and there was Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers and all that kind of stuff, so there was all of that kind of stuff, but also my friend Sean funneling me his VHSs, or rather his brother's VHSs. That's how I got my Doctor Who fixed. But the 90s, pretty solitary. My fandom is just two other people, and it's like as Richie said, it is it's just a thirst for knowledge. Uh-not necessarily to find another person, it's just to satiate yourself and fill in all the gaps.

SPEAKER_07 11:51

It's funny, your uh your like your chat about your friend. I had a friend, because I kind of got into Star Trek, it was always about, but I kind of got into Star Trek when my stepdad asked, started asking me to tape it for whatever reason. I don't know if he was working or what, but he was like, Can you take that from me? And I would sit and watch it. And I got into it. And then my pal at school, so I I guess there was there must have been a run of next gen on BBC Two, and then there was a full run again.

SPEAKER_05 12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 12:12

Yeah, they ran So I was on the second run, and my uh my pal from school, Colin, who was like a a next gen obsessive, I would talk to him about it at school, and then he would sort of drop tidbits about episodes. He'd be like, Do there's an episode where this happens or an episode where this happens? And then he would bring the tapes down to my house and we'd sit and watch them. So I watched all of it comp and we're doing a full watch through the next gen generation now, and I think it's the first time in my life I've done it in order.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 12:37

Because when I got into it back then, it was like, I can't wait. I'm gonna have to watch these episodes that you mentioned. So he would bring them down and we'd get a chippy. And so yeah, that was that was a big part of part of it for me.

SPEAKER_05 12:49

I mean that sounds magic. It does phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

That's phenomenal. But but there was also that thing like in the 90s of like, I don't want to go down the old cliche of, oh, if you missed it, you know, you missed it. Um but you did.

SPEAKER_07 13:02

But also there was the thing of like No, it was a real point of oh my god, yeah, yeah. Sorry, keep going.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

But also the videotape thing, you could still get those episodes. But the problem was like, I remember like my dad and I would go to uh global video in Marchman and we would rent Oh my god, I know exactly.

SPEAKER_05 13:21

It's uh it's a curry place.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Yeah, on the yeah, I think yeah, I think so, yeah. It's like a really nice house. It's better in the 90s. It is actually a really nice house. It's on two levels.

SPEAKER_05 13:28

It was like it was the plate, it was a really small building on two levels, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

No, but you're not thinking of ABC video, which used which was like the one down. It's also in Marchman, but it's so you've got global video was on the top of yeah, and then there was ABC Video.

SPEAKER_05 13:44

I just wish to apologise to all listeners that have mixed up.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

This is very niche Edinburgh content that I think should be excised from the podcast. Anyway, the point I was making was but I remember because I think I don't know if we'd missed Star Trek Night. I I don't know the chronology of this, but I don't know if we'd missed Star Trek Knight or if it had come out on VHS before Star Trek Knight, but I remember my dad and I on a Saturday afternoon, like my mum and my sister were away, or maybe my mum was working actually, my sister was just you're gonna have to watch this. We went and got Caretaker on VHS or the Star Trek Voyager pilot. We rented that, went back and watched that um on a Saturday afternoon, and it was magic. Like my dad and I had a lot of like as I got older, my dad and I had a quite a few classes and stuff like that, as I suppose you kind of do. Um but yeah, as a kid, like it's the same as you, Ben. It was like watching Star Trek the Next Generation with my dad, and like I rem I distinctly remember uh getting ready to watch the best of both worlds part two, and my grand being like, Were you watching this because he used to watch it as a kid? I'm like, no, I'm watching it because it's brilliant. Like it's it's the most exciting thing on television.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

For me, there's this thing that when I think about it, it sort of brings together a lot of the things you guys were saying. I think of shops. I think of like be it specialist comic shops or HMV or sci-fi shops, and just walking into these worlds and with like four pounds in your pocket or something, and not being able to consume it all, and just one spending hours in there. I used to bunk off school quite a lot, sometimes by myself, and I'd just wander around these shops, and you see a video for like Moonbase 3 and go, well, what the fuck is Moonbase 3? And you're never gonna buy it because there's all these other things that you want more, and then there's rows and rows of magazines, some of them are show specific, some of them are for like horror films and stuff you've never even heard of, and then there's fanzines at the bottom with terrible drawings on them and like stapled together. I can smell them now. Um, and it's just that thing of like these shops were like a gateway to that whole world of like what am I gonna buy? Like, am I gonna spend four pounds on two magazines or one Star Wars book or like an action figure from Batman or something like that? And it's just that the these spaces that were like the gateway in.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

I think that's a really important point. Oh fucking I would sound like such old men. It's like a 40 or sketch from the.

SPEAKER_07 16:22

Listen, you're just gonna have to you're gonna have to.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

I'm gonna lean into it, but I think there's something in that in terms of because I wonder where that comes from now. Because like I remember like when I first got in Stockton in the early 90s, being in John Menzies on on Prince Street in Edinburgh, in upstairs, where the books are, I can visualise it. The escalators to my right, and there's a stuck there's like a row of books, and I've got time working.

SPEAKER_05 16:50

You're making it sound like nightmare. Where am I? Like one of us has got a big helmet on, and you're stuck with the negotiate John Menzies.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Pick up the coffee of time run revelation. Um but I remember picking that up and staring at it for ages because it was like Sylvester McCoy is Doctor Who, and I think I must have just seen Battlefield because I've got a real memory of being really annoyed I missed the last episode of Battlefield. I think I've talked about this one on the time last because my parents wanted to go to the pub because it was like a really nice summer, like summer's day, and we went to the Gilsland Hotel, which is this sort of little hotel in the centre end right. It's got a big beer garden, but also crucially, it has a it had a pub, it had a bar inside because it's a hotel that had Battlefield Part 4 on the tell. And I watched Bessie drive off, leaving this sort of smoke, the flaming trails behind, and a man turned around from the bar and said, You can come in and watch it if you want. And I ran away. But so I remember I remember holding that copy of time of revelation, what is this? This is amazing. And I think that kind of and also I remember as I got older, like going to HMV on a Friday when school kicked out with my mates and looking at VHS covers and going, This is exciting. Like, what's this? Like, what's this Doctor Who story? Because you were into Doctor Who and you're like kind of picking together, piecing together, well, that's a great cover. Oh, that sounds really exciting. You didn't have fan wisdom telling you, it's actually blocks, mate. I don't buy that. Like you're piecing it all together. And I wonder where that comes from now. Like I feel now there's this kind of overwhelming. Yeah, it's all there, and it's quite overwhelming. And I think there's like there's this kind of pressure on people to kind of, well, you gotta get in on the ground level. No, you fucking don't. Like obviously a lot of modern telly is made like that. But I think stuff like next gen, you know, like all the like even Buffy, like I don't think you have to dive in episode one. Like pick you can cherry pick things. That's how we used to do it. Like it's you know.

SPEAKER_07 18:49

Yeah. Yeah, it's about yeah, and then like as you say, if you if you missed something that was gone. I had the the furious phone calls to n various a number of times being like, Did you uh any chance you taped whatever it was I was looking for? And be like, No, I didn't tape it.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Why not? Because you could also you could pick up videos, but they were if it was Star Trek, it was two episodes or what have you on a thing. If it was a Doctor Who, it was one story. But generally it was two episodes of 50-minute episodes on a tape. And like the idea of owning up the whole of a series of Star Trek or something like that on video was just impossible. It was like, surely that's what millionaires do.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

Because it's never it was never in any child's head that they would have a complete collection. Yeah. They just went we we like Mark said, because I used to do it with my friend Sean, Friday afternoon after school, we'd go into uh either HMV or Virgin and Urban Outfitters now. Uh so much better in the 90s.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

They just had a And they've got the cheek to sell this like nostalgic 90s style t-shirts as well, that bastards.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:00

I just wanted to so I went well last time I was in Edinburgh, uh I went in because the archaeological architecture of the building hasn't changed. There's still that kind of like that central stairwell down. And at the bottom of that, when it was uh Virgin, that was where the kind of the big wall of all the face out Star Trek videos would be at this time. It was DS9 at Voyager. And I went into the shop just to get that kind of you know little nostalgic hit. Obviously, it's all closed now, but the fucking they looked at me like, sorry, are you in the wrong place? Because you should not be in an urban what are you doing walking around.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

I bought the right there.

SPEAKER_05 20:38

But that's what it was. Like you would go in and you would read the back of these videos and you get the synopsis and you'd look at the video artwork, which especially DS9 video is stunning artwork. But there is no point did you think you were gonna have it all. You were just gonna get either the first of a season or the last of a season, or if there was a two-part, or you buy a movie, or something like that, it was the cherry picking. And I want to feel like this is an original thought, but I suspect because I can hear it in Mark's voice, is the reason that fandom across the board is so toxic now is because uh nobody has had to work for it in in terms of it's just it's all there. You can stream it, you can do whatever you want. We used to have to go into video shops and we have to like prize open the centre of SFX and read about what's happened, and you know. We had to go to Star Trek the exhibition in Edinburgh in order which essentially was just loads of spoilers because it was all stuff from episodes which hadn't been broadcast if all you had was the BBC.

SPEAKER_07 21:36

Odo's head in a glass case, remember that?

SPEAKER_05 21:39

At which point I had not seen DS9, so I was like, what the fuck's gonna let alone Voyager? Everybody just has it handed to them now and it makes people so f uh metaphorically fat and complacent while we were lean young geeks back then.

SPEAKER_07 21:57

It's hard to say that like having everything available. At your fingertips is worse than what we had, but it does like it removes the investment. I mean, it's probably why Ian Levine thinks these AI recons are perfect, because he spent so much money on them.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

I I said this a couple of times at the weekend when they announced that they'd got The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet back. And I was saying, like, you know, like in 2013, there was the Omni Rumor where they said, Oh, there's 97, they've got them all. They've got them all. And I was like, if 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who dropped on the iPad, I wouldn't give a fuck. Because like it's just, it's just like a big glut of content. Yeah. Whereas like this kind of like, oh my god, we found these like two magic. These little jewels. And it's like, oh my, that's so exciting.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

It's like going into a shop and buying a video. You've got to choose all of them, and it's these two episodes you're gonna you're gonna jump into.

SPEAKER_07 22:56

It's hard to imagine discovering something. And I think I think that's a big part of where our love of things come from. You've got to make a kind of one-to-one connection, and you can only really make that one-to-one connection with a lot of things if you find it yourself. The thing that always amuses me about, or the thing that's kind of like mad about the internet for me is all the stuff that I was at, like the sort of video games and all that sort of stuff I was in as a kid that was like only I liked among my friends. You get on the internet and you realize that was one of the most famous things ever made. And everybody knows what it is. So you lose that kind of This is mine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's uh I mean, you don't want to get too much into like this is mine and nobody else's because that's obviously where kind of toxic fandom comes from. I need to tell I need to tell you what my trick was for the VHSs, because when I was uh I can't remember how many seasons of DS9, but at some point my main source of watching New Duty Space Nine was the videotapes. And I had a paper round, and this paper round paid me £10 a week. And when a videotape came out, you could get it in MVC if you had a card for like $11.50 or $12 quid or something. And my mum worked in the town in Livingston where the So I always gave her my tenner on the Monday and I would say, I need you to go into MVC and pick up this particular volume that's just come out, I'd write it down for her, and then she would come she was a nurse. She was she would come back at like nine o'clock at night and she would hand me the tape, and it was Oh, it was just such a wonderful feeling. But also knowing that neither of us ever mentioned it, but also knowing she had to throw in the extra couple of quid every single time because I was only handing her a tenner and bless her, she always was just Yeah. That's amazing sold at the end. I know.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I remember my mum coming back with a cr a fucking fruit box, you know, like those like big boxes they put bananas and shit in. Come back with one of those full of like Target novelizations, going, Oh, they were selling these down Oxfam. And I never asked how much she paid for like a lot of like a lot of Target books in a charity shop. Because it was that thing of like, oh, you're really into this. I've seen this, here's a lovely surprise thing. And I think like I think I think that still exists. I think there's a lot of that idea of like kind of parents handing stuff down because ultimately I think that is kind of like Star Trek and Doctor Who particularly. I didn't find those things by myself. Those were like my my dad's. Well then Doctor Who was like my mum and my dad kind of going, we watched this as kids. Star Trek was very much like my dad was like just really like next generation and was like, We're watching this.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

A lot of my Doctor Who collection as a kid, and I had quite a big collection, was somebody else's. And my nan saw a card in Sainsbury's on the notice board going Doctor Who collection for sale. And we went down there, and this kid had gone off to university, and they'd said to his parents, just sell it off. And everything was 20p. So I just went back there week after week after week, and then it must have been near my birthday, and eventually my uncle went back there and bought the rest. So I just bought this and I we can't have spent more than 20 pounds in total or something like that. And that child's name? David Tennant.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

I just got a sort of a memory flash there, and I'm sorry to hijack your podcast delegate. Hijack away. Is my question to the other Edinburgh folks. Is um what was your first trip to the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet?

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Oh fu oh gods. Um it would have been when it was still on Bristol Square, but I can't remember.

SPEAKER_05 26:42

Yeah, that place lives in my dreams.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

I remember buying Oh, actually, I think I do I think I do remember this. I think I was there with some friends from primary school, and I feel like I bought a Ren and Stimpy comic. That rings a bell. I feel like that is my earliest memory of um Like I love that. But yeah, it's such it was such a great place.

SPEAKER_05 27:09

Like it was my I remember my dad had obviously been doing some work at the museum or the university or something on that day, because the he burst in uh that night to tell me he'd found he called it the sci-fi shop.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:24

Because he he used to have that kind of if I can't remember exactly what the thing is, like he used to call Pete uh Pete Posselthwaite Pete Entwistle, you know, like it kind of vaguely sounded like But he was actually right because Forbidden Planet took over the original shop that was there, which was called the Sci-Fi Bookshop. So he was right. But it was when I went, it was the Forbidden Planet. And that place was just uh there was a there was a point where there was i i th it ceased to be the unveiling of Christmas presents or birthday presents in the house. It was always just money to go to that place. And that place was just stuffed full of Star Trek videos, Doctor Who videos, Star Trek micro machines, Star Wars micro machines down the stairs. It was wonderful books when they when like when uh the paperbacks, Star Trek paperbacks were out. Um It was there that I remember seeing the front cover of uh the Doctor Who novel Father Time and just being like, What is this about? The doctor's lost his memory and he's looking after a kid, and it was just it was just that picture on the back of the book, which is the TARDIS standing in in a garden in a snow drift. I was like, This is Tell me all about everything. I just wanted to stand in the middle and just like you know, like the fucking you know, just link it up to my head in some way. It was such I just remember the first time going and my mum and dad parking up and we went in and I was like, oh my god, how do I kiss and caress this for the rest of my life? And then it lost something when it moved to the bridges. Like, you know, it did lose something, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

It was almost like it was too big.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

Yeah, I I got to meet uh Robert Beltran and um Andrew Robinson there because they used to do signings. They used to do signings there. In fact, I didn't see her at the time, but Michelle Nichols Michelle Nichols was there, and I think Walter Koenig as well. They haven't done signings since you know at least a decade, maybe 15 years. But, you know, that original place at Bristol Square was just oh my god, I just want to cry thinking about it now. I I shouldn't have drank red wine whilst we were recording this.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

I think it's quite a nice Thai restaurant now though.

SPEAKER_07 29:40

So yeah, that's what's around about Um Yeah no, I was gonna mention the uh like to take it back to the Star Trek exhibition. Like the gift shop at the back of that and being told you can have one you can choose one thing. And I got a d I got a data that you could open his I think you could open his arm. I don't know if you could open his head. Like it was like a little yeah, it was just a little data action trigger.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

You can open his back. Oh, you've got that's it. That's the one. Yeah, you can open his back, and you can also hang on. Yeah, you can open his arm as well.

SPEAKER_07 30:17

Wow. It was his arm. Oh my god. I didn't remember it.

SPEAKER_05 30:20

February to May 1995 at the City Arts Centre in Edmund.

SPEAKER_07 30:24

Is that one of the gods There's uh there's someone well, I think it was Ben that shared it ages ago, but there's someone's someone went in with a camcorder and filmed the whole thing. Yeah, it's still on YouTube. It's on YouTube with like 50 views or something. Sat and watched it all day.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

I th I think that came to Birmingham because I remember at certain points a Star Trek exhibition passing through, a Doctor Who exhibition passing through. It was always at the Science Museum because everybody went science, science fiction, same thing. From doing research on this and other things, it feels like they either start in Scotland or London, and then it's whatever other cities they can take them to throughout the UK. So you will have got ones that we didn't get in Birmingham because uh nobody in Birmingham probably kick gave a shit. I know that Birmingham had the the weekend that it was on, it was called the Festival of Doctor Who, Birmingham's Festival of Doctor Who. And the only the only thing I can find out about that is that the exhibition was on, but it was a festival. But John Pertwee was there, but it was the 90s, he was everywhere.

SPEAKER_07 31:27

The festival of Dogwe. It's uh it's mad the stuff that happened that has now just disappeared into time. Like you think everything's on the internet, it's not especially for stuff like that. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Well yeah, I mean, as part of doing this podcast, like just finding out that there was an immersive aliens experience in the mid-90s in Glasgow.

SPEAKER_07 31:46

In Glasgow, alien wars.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Yeah, and then in London, and it's just like just a bunch of tourists being menaced around, like kind of abandoned shopping centre by somebody dressed as an alien. It's like I remember we used to be a proper country.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

I never I never went in the end, but I remember do you remember Quasar in Edinburgh? So it was like a it's kind of it wasn't laser, it was like a cheap laser quest, basically. That's where like most of my friends used to have their birthday parties and stuff. I remember a I distinctly remember a poster in the sort of little waiting area going like all like advertising like alien knights so like you could come to Quasar. I knew you were going to this guy dressed as the xenomorph who would like stalk around the I was like, that sounds it wasn't no, not anything.

SPEAKER_07 32:37

And I like I never saw it either, but it was what it's it's the same as Alien Wars. Alien Wars has become sort of part of the lore of Glasgow people of a certain age. They'll all mention Alien Wars, but I I yeah, that's not something I ever experienced.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Owen Owen told me uh a story that Gav had told him about it, where halfway through Alien Wars, this woman has kind of approached the the group. I was like, Oh my god, thank God you're here. I was part of the last group and they've all left me behind. Uh, can I join you? And they're like, Yeah, yeah, sure. And then they're kind of walking through the cord, and then the fucking xenomorph comes out of a wall and pulls this woman through the wall. Anyway, a week later, they're all at work and say, Do you think that was about you?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

I've got one more thing on shops, and then I won't say anything more about them. There was a shop in Birmingham called Reader's World, and it was in my mind it was the size of a school hall, but it probably wasn't. And it was this you walk down these steps and you're in this vast hall full of magazines and books, and that's all it sold. And half of it was Doctor Who magazines and Dream Watch and Kerrang, and then the other half was just pornography.

SPEAKER_05 33:56

Another sort of pornography.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Let's jump a bit into magazines because uh Rich, you mentioned earlier this was like your primary source of sort of like collating information. We talked before about how the information's there now. I the other day I remembered Space Above and Beyond, and within 10 minutes I knew all the key facts about Space Above and Beyond. Whereas a new series called Space Above and Beyond in the 90s was like a mystery. This could be the greatest show that was ever made. Would I ever get to see it? When would it be on? So I it's magazines, fanzines, things like that. Like are the key ones that you went to personally?

SPEAKER_07 34:38

Uh well mine's was Starburst and TV Zone, and uh I did do official Star Trek magazine as well. That was boring, wasn't it? Those I had I don't know, I've got all these stories, it's all they all come back to the same teacher, but I've got one teacher who was uh like obviously had a picture painted of me. There's three separate stories. The first one hang on, hang on, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Your teacher had a picture painted of you. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_07 35:02

Like he must have had a mental picture. He must have figured figured out what kind of person I was after a certain amount of time, but I remember story number a little off the shoulder, Richie. I remember one day I was sitting in class, and for some reason I decided that I was going to try and re if I could remember every episode of Red Dwarf in order, so I wrote them down in a big list. But this was while the teacher was talking, and he did the whole, have you got what is it you're doing there? Let me see that. And then of course I had to go to the front of the class and hand him a piece of paper, which was just every episode of Red Dwarf opening to seasons on a piece of blank paper.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

And he just I remember him looking at it and then looking at me and being like, You're gonna go far, kid.

SPEAKER_07 35:56

Story number two, it was a similar thing. He's like, What what have you got there? Again, pulled up to the front of the class. It was Star Trek magazine, front cover, quark and you could tell he was like, I wish this was pornography, honestly. And my third story, we were doing we were doing a chemistry thing, the third for the story, we're doing something in chemistry. I probably told this story on a podcast before. And I was crap at chemistry, but he was going through, and do you know where so often a teacher would go and that is and then I'd say a a student's name and that is Richard? And I'd be like, I don't know. He's like, Come on, and then would say the answer. And then a voice from the other side of the class went, Now ask him something about Star Trek. Um I can't remember how we got onto that. The funny thing about magazines. What magazines, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

I think what what differenti I think what what makes that a very 90s story is that if that happened today, you'd be fast-tracked for an autism diagnosis.

SPEAKER_07 37:02

100%. A hundred percent, yeah. But yeah, sorry, the magazines, yeah, I think the magazines were just like I can't remember if we talked about it's that thing when we all talk all the time. It's like, did we say this on a podcast or in a group chat? But we were looking at T V Zone and how TV Zone and its credits said something like LA Office or something like that. It was like American Office or whatever. And it's like that is definitely a guy just in the States that tapes episodes and sends them over. So like your screen caps in the magazine were all like you know, taken from VHS. But it it really was just like because American TV really did it, must have ran something like six months ahead of us sometimes. I mean, because of piracy we get thanks to piracy, we all get everything at the same time now. But it really was like it would get released and then you know, it would take about six months before we saw it. Which means it was getting reported in magazines, you would be like, here's here's some things that were that's happening in in Deep Space Nine or Buffy or whatever, or the X Files or whatever. And it really was just like this oh my god, I can't believe what's what's about to happen. But it's also it's a weird thing to be like, I know what I know what's coming up. In the zoom, I know what the developments are. Yeah. But it was always so exciting, or just seen an episode title and known vaguely what it's about. And it's just like so there's it's weird that there's sort of really specific episodes of Star Trek that stick in my head as weirdly significant, but when you watch them, nothing really it's just because you remember the anticipation and how potent it was. I was in a charity shop a couple of weeks ago and I found the VHS for Scorpion part one. Brilliant. And I just the the the whole like the image of the front cover of that video tape, the Prussian rush that went through me was unbelievable. I nearly but I didn't buy it, but God, that was exciting.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Because I remember that. I remember that kind of like, oh, there's something coming that's worse that that makes even the Borg scared, and you know, oh shit, what's this gonna be?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

So there was a thing with magazines at the time where so I bought Doctor Who magazine, that was the one I would buy every month. But then there was SFX and there were TV Zone and Starburst and all these things. And I think it's like on one hand, you're getting the spoilers from the States. On the other hand, they're sort of shaping your initial sort of fan thought. So it's 80s Doctor Who is crap, you know, Tom Baker's the best Doctor Who, that sort of thing. Like, and you you kind of like that that's the general consensus in fandom at the time. Or is it because DreamWatch was previously DWB. We all know DWB was Gary Lee who waged a war against 80s Doctor Who. And then Doc Two Magazine was Doctor Who magazine, SFX magazine. Visual Imagination is a company that was started by Stephen Payne, formerly of DocTwo Magazine, The Dwas, played the Audio Doctor once in the audio visuals. Payne bought the rights to Starburst magazine from Marvel UK, quit his job as a teacher, and made quite a success of Starburst magazine. So then he started a couple of other magazines: Cult Times, Film Review, Movie Idols, Shivers, Space Junk, TV Zone, Ultimate DVD, The Works, and Expos. So the whole of sort of British fandom's opinions on a show was one guy running all of this. And from sort of bitch I've read online and conversations I've had with people, he was it was very much like I have a narrative. And he he just had these 10 platforms to basically review, like if you flip through those magazines, try and find a positive review or a positive letter about the Paul McGann TV music movie. You can't because it's fucking heresy to say it's any good.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Well, I was gonna say, are things that different now? Because I mean, obviously, we're it's we've replaced magazines with with websites, but you know, you've got Valnet who own all like, you know, comic book resource, screen runs, all these companies. Um and a lot of that is just churning out the same kind of Star Trek, Starfleet Academy shit, and all that kind of thing. There was a thing the other day where Giant Freaking Robot, that dreadful fucking website that nobody should read, was advertising for writers who specifically hated Starfleet Academy to write articles about it. Wow. So, like it's you know, that kind of idea of I have a platform now and and this is my opinion, and I want other people to spout that opinion and spread that opinion, that is also the right way media. Uh, but we're not gonna go into that right now. But um, yeah, that is that is how it works.

SPEAKER_07 41:57

Do you want to hear something incredible? Because you you told me this recently, Dylan. You gave me the you told me about this recently, could you ask me to read you the staff from the T V zone magazine? I really hope I've I'm hoping not retreading all ground here. But like it made sense because I'm going through when I went through the magazine, it's like even when they're talking about other things, they have to bring Doctor Who back into it. Also, this so this issue of TV zone that I've got, gen the Genesis of the dialects repeat had been on and hadn't done too well. And they're like even the magazine was like, that's it, you can kiss goodbye at Doctor Who now. Stop coming back now. There's clearly no interest in it.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

If Genesis can't save us, nothing can.

SPEAKER_07 42:34

Exactly. But I I'm not gonna read the whole review, but let me read this bit of this an episode of the X-Files. You know the episode Millennium where they bring back Lance Henriksen from his spin-off. So anyway, by the way, the reviews are like you can see there, there's not a lot. Yeah. That's a review of an episode, right? So X-Files, Millennium, they gave it five out of ten. Uh I wonder what would have happened if Millennium had made it into the 21st century. As it is, this superhero team-up between Frank Black and Mulder and Scully is a bit of a letdown. It's reminiscent of nothing so much as Doctor Who's first team-up story, The Three Doctors, for which William Hartnell was so ill he filmed his scenes in his garage and had to lecture the other two doctors from the safety of a television screen. If I had hired the perfectly healthy Lance Henrickson as Frank Black, I'd have let him play an active role in proceeding before this climactic scene. Now, that is a significant chunk of that revenue devoted to talking about the three doctors.

unknown 43:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 43:36

Which is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

It it's bizarre. It's like everybody's um you know, I'm the same to a certain extent. Their default fandom is Doctor Who, so we've got to we can't let go of it despite the fact that all these other things are on TV at the time. Yeah. So it it's like it you it doesn't matter how far away you get away from the show being cancelled, you'll go through a DreamWatch magazine. Magazine, there'll be an article on due south, and then there'll be an article on the X-Files everywhere because we don't be so dismissive of due south face.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Yeah, yeah. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

But somewhere in there, there'll be an article on why the demons is fucking great, even though everything else is current. It's just like, no, we need to remind everybody that John Perk me was a great doctor who well, speaking of John Perk me and magazines, can I just read to you?

SPEAKER_02 44:25

So I well I was in Glasgow uh a couple weeks ago and I nipped in I just was wandering around um the West End and a wandered into a charity shop and I picked up two copies of Dream Watch, a copy of DWB, all of which are from the nineties, and obviously all of which from the same people. Um and also and also a copy of uh Dr. Foo magazine from the 80s, which isn't relevant to our purposes right now. But it was interesting. I took them up to the till. One was £2.25, one was one pound, one was £1.75, and uh one was £3. And the woman at the till was like they're very individually priced, aren't they? I was like, Yep, somebody's been on eBay. But the reason I bring I bring it up in uh Dream Watch, so this is from J this is the dated July 1996, but it's actually so it would have been published in May, so it's the first Dream Watch after the TV movie has gone out. Crucially, it's the first Dream Watch after John Pertway's died. So speaking about, you know, if you're saying it's all very reverent towards John Pertwy, the contents page lists uh tribute to John Pertwee on page number eight uh and the little uh subheading is says, Despite his age, many were shocked by the despite his age Many were many were shocked by the surprise news of this actor's death a week before New Doctor Who returned to BBC One. We pay tribute to Doctor Who's most flamboyant figurehead. I mean that's just bad writing for us despite his age, many were shocked by the surprise news Hang on a minute, if you're saying he's an old cunt, of course he's dead, it's not surprise news then, is it? Just opening this up, it's an incredible little um so you've got just the kind of things that it kind of highlights. So John Pertry tribute, obviously. Then there's uh coverage of the X-File season three currently showing on Sky One and coming to BBC Two this autumn, so reviews of sort of episodes that have gone out, then a reader's survey result, then like a big preview of kind of Star Trek's 30th anniversary and what they've got kind of planned. Then a feature on Adam Adamant Lives because it's also celebrating its 30th anniversary. And then an interview with Claudia Christian about Babylon 5. I mean that's that's the 90s, you know, that's it in a nutshell, isn't it? You know?

SPEAKER_07 46:51

Did Adam Adamant ever get a repeat? I feel like I've never seen a single episode of that.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

There is only all about it, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 46:58

No, there's loads of them.

SPEAKER_05 47:00

Well, there was loads of them, but I think three only three survived, did they not?

SPEAKER_01 47:04

No, there's I've got a whole box set of them down there. Oh right, okay. There's a bunch of missing ones. Second one.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

What's it?

SPEAKER_05 47:11

I remember getting uh a DVD from Colin Young, the the perennial man who would hook you up at the Edinburgh Doctor Who group. Uh and I just remember him giving me like a big like fucking videotape of Adam Adamant Lives and he going, that's it. And I think there was only three episodes. Maybe they've discovered more or there probably was at the time. Um but I remember really enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Yeah. It is great. I've got no urge to re-watch it, but I remember watching it and thinking, oh, this is bloody good. But like, life's too short to watch Adam Adamant twice. I mean, this I go back to my original statement.

SPEAKER_05 47:47

There's not that much.

SPEAKER_07 47:51

I think it's interesting your like it's funny. I because uh the first time you had me on the podcast, I think we talked about my journey into sort of liking Doctor Who. And it was the magazines for me, because in the 90s, I I was just as a as a kid and a teenager, I was like obsessed with television just in general. I wanted to know everything that was going on in tele like science fiction television, obviously not other stuff. But like so the way that these magazines talked about Doctor Who to me, it was just this constant, like being constantly fed this legend, this legend of television. So it was like it it all sort of soaked into me, and eventually I was like, I have to I have to see this. But it was weird, but at the same time, yeah, you're right, it was also like uh every adult you spoke to was like, oh yeah, we used to watch that, it's not very good.

SPEAKER_03 48:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:42

What was uh what was everyone's first Doctor Who magazine?

SPEAKER_02 48:47

I could tell you this, it was the one it's got Peter Davison on the cover, and it's I think it's like a promo shot from like the visitation or something like that, um, where he's just in a wood by the TARDIS. Uh and inside it had the comic strip, it was like a one-off it was like that p that gap between the Underground Zero and Endgame. So you've ended the seventh Top Threra in the comics, you're about to start the eighth Top Thiera, and it was this kind of one-off strip about what it was to be a fan and be a creative. Um, and I didn't really appreciate it at the time, and then I read it again a couple of years ago, and I was like, what a lovely, what a lovely piece of work that is. I think I talked about it on Jim Allenby's podcast, but yeah, it's it's that was my I can't remember what the number is, but yeah, that was my first my first Doctor Who magazine.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Mine was the Doctor Who anniversary, 25th anniversary special magazine, which was like uh I'd not long got into the show and it had it was this red sort of almost like target bullseye type thing, but with pictures of all the doctors in colour, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a picture of Colin Baker and thought he looks fucking cool. That was my main takeaway. But not the last then, what about you?

SPEAKER_05 50:07

Uh I've got the exact date um here. Uh my uh my first Doctor Who magazine was in May 2002, and it was uh it had a Suntaran on the front uh with uh little pearl earrings like Anne Robinson, and the main chunk of inside was uh Gary Gillett's uh essay on why Doctor Who is a quiz show. Uh they're all like it's obvious it is that point where they're probably running out of steam in terms of like this is the show has been off air since 1989. How do we keep this alive? It was it was a very thin little edition. But it was just before Doctor Who starts going back up again uh and leading to the new series. But I just remember getting that and uh I loving the unchecked sense of humor because you're right, like I also got Star Trek magazine and loved it, but it was so pole-faced. Yeah, Doctor Who magazine had personality because nobody was looking at it, nobody was checking it, but they were just definitely and I was just like, fuck, this is uh this is my c this is my kind of people reading and writing this, you know.

SPEAKER_07 51:23

That was the mark of a good magazine when they had like when every photo had a funny caption. Yeah, yes, it was yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 51:29

Yeah, they used to love reading captions.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

You don't get funny captions anymore, really, do you?

SPEAKER_05 51:33

No. You're not allowed. Not in this day of brands. Put you in prison.

unknown 51:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Um, you were talking there, Richie, about the sort of legend of Doctor Who and learning it from magazines and things like that. But then I'm kind of interested, not just Doctor Who, but science fiction in general. How was it perceived outs outside of fandom? Because you've got the legend of this, that, and the other, but like, what was people's teachers, mums and dads, like what did no the normal kids at school, like, what did everybody think of science fiction and being into it?

SPEAKER_07 52:09

Yeah, it's a funny one, isn't it? I had a s I had a small group of friends in school that we kind of all enjoyed Star Trek. But even in that, I managed to get to the bottom of the pecking order by watching Babylon 5. So watching Babylon 5, everyone's like, that's a lot of shite, mate. Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because it's a bit you had it, it was your thing, and then every so often someone would take the piss out of you, but it wasn't I I was never I don't think I would say I was ever really bullied, you know, for anything like that. But um yeah, but the the the doc I do remember the Doctor Who thing specifically, like it really was when you spoke to adults, it was like, oh yeah, yeah, we used it was you know, they kind of just looked back and went, yeah, it was it's kind of old and a bit rubbish though.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

So I remember having some mates who like Star Trek and trying to get them to watch Time and the Rani and them just being like, What the fuck is this? Me thinking it was this big sort of you know sci-fi epic because it had it used computer-generated images. Oh yeah. Um There's a a a few key moments I remember in sort of the broader spectrum of how the public perceived science fiction, and me realising that you know I was like on the wrong side of the spectrum, I guess you would say. Channel 4 did a science fiction night. Uh, it was just after the X-Files got big, and the programming for it looked brilliant. It wasn't night, sorry, it was a weekend. It was a full weekend, which actually amounted to about four hours a night, you know. And they have this documentary hosted by Craig Charles at the World Science Fiction Convention.

SPEAKER_07 53:42

Uh he also seemed to be the go-to guy for all science.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 53:46

Because he did a bunch of that Star Trek night and he did Space Cadets and anyway, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

Because he's he's he's the cool face of science fiction in Britain at that point.

SPEAKER_05 53:54

But but to this day, because he pronounced uh he presents uh like uh paranormal documentaries on like UK history.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Oh, does he?

SPEAKER_05 54:04

As well, like to this day, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Right. So on this documentary, you've got cool Craig Charles talking about science fiction, and every fucking cunt they interview, it's you know, it's a really fat guy dressed as a Borg. It's a Klingon barbecue on the big breakfast with Danny Bear and Robbie Williams just laughing at these people. It's some guy who's got a folk band that does sci-fi songs, but they call it Filk because it's the music of science fiction. I've Googled it, it's not a thing. It wasn't a big thing in the 90s.

SPEAKER_07 54:36

It's it's just these fucking At least he's not playing the Star Wars version of jazz. You know what that one is? Jizz. That's a real thing. Go you could look that up on the Star Wars wing. I'm not Googling Jazz Jizz. Not for the third time today. Not again. Yeah, and in in Jabba's Palace, that's what they're playing. Jizz Jizz music.

SPEAKER_05 55:03

I mean Jabba's Palace already sounds like a euphemism, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 55:07

I mean Jabba's Palace fucking reeks of Jizz.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:15

And it's also because of the X-files. Not the Jiz. Um the next thing they show on this sci-fi night is just a documentary about UFO hunters, because people who like Star Trek and Babylon 5 are also UFO hunters. That that is the link.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

I was huge though at that point, like in the 90s. I remember as much as being interested in Star Trek and the X-Pirs and stuff like that, I was also like watching like fucking Scotland Today do the report about like alien abductions in Bonnie Rig.

SPEAKER_05 55:47

I'll tell you exactly that when that happened. It happened in 1995. It was the closing months of 1995. And this is this is where everything changes from just being Jerry Anderson and Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas.

SPEAKER_07 56:01

Oh, I thought you were talking about the Falkirk Triangle for a moment.

SPEAKER_05 56:04

No, no, no. Uh the inter the the sudden interest going from as like as I said at the start of this. Going from just uh absorbing Star Trek-esque science fiction to wanting some sort of real conspiratorial element with your science fiction is uh the Roswell UFO autopsy. Yes, yes, that is one of the benchmarks of sci-fi in the 90s and how people perceive it and how people absorb it. That kind of thing. X-Files made it possible. X-Files is such a defining uh it still is, it still is. I would argue that a lot of the just insanity that comes with conspiracy theories comes from people who grew up on the X-Files. But with the X-Files comes the Roswell. Roswell as a as a you as a UFO story was not a household name before this. Uh but 1995, in America, they released a video um presented by Jonathan Frakes called uh Fact of Fiction Alien Autopsy. But then they took elements of it and tried to give it like an intellectual makeup on Channel 4. I think part of this weekender, uh the dispatches strand that Channel 4 had, called it was just called the Roswell incident. And it was, I think, as defining a sci-fi moment as Ghost Watch was on television. And then after that, it was just floodgates opened. If you like sci-fi, you believed that cows were getting beamed up every night and eye sockets coming out and all that. That and I would also say the Louis Thoreau uh Weird Weekends where he goes he spends some time with people who regularly have cattle mutilations on their on their ranch. Those two moments.

SPEAKER_07 57:52

Yeah, that is yeah, you're right. The 90s was big for alien abduction stuff. 1995, X-Files, and then that that video. Then like there's sort of 50s B movie nostalgia as well going on.

SPEAKER_05 58:05

Yeah, because uh when Star Trek the Next Generation was off, they would regularly do B movies, Invaders from Mars. Fucking what's that one the uh Robert Wise directed it? Keanu Reeves did the Oh Day the Earth Stood Still. Yeah, that one kind of Earth versus the Flying Saucers, all that kind of stuff. That was on in that Wednesday six o'clock BBC Two space.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

And you'd you'd take what you could get again, it was like, okay, Star Trek's not on, the Avengers is not on, Jerry Anderson's not on, what whatever, as long as it's in that sci-fi slot.

SPEAKER_07 58:38

Yeah, that old War of the Worlds film, I feel like I don't know how many times I felt like that was on TV all the time. That's great, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

And Doctor Who and the Daleks, Channel 4, constantly playing.

SPEAKER_07 58:49

Yeah. I feel like the X-Files, the X-Files was a real turning point in terms of like cool people like this stuff now. Like, you know, when you've got like Jillian Anderson on the front of FHM and all that shit.

SPEAKER_05 59:01

Yeah, it's like it played on people's real life fears that someone, something, some big thing was trying to take advantage of them. Uh and then also, it was really sexy. I mean, the show itself was not sexy, but the promotion around it was sexy.

SPEAKER_01 59:17

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of makes science fiction mainstream and cool, which it hadn't been in Britain probably since the 70s. Not that science fiction was particularly sexy in the 70s, but you're right, it it just it hit that time of the lad mags uh where David De Coveney could be in there in an Armani suit and every with and everybody go, Look cool, and she could be on the cover in a bra and everybody go, Oh my god, science fiction's really sexy now in a in a way that just uh didn't quite happen in the past. And it's it's it starts that rehabilitation, doesn't it? That leads to you know, arguably like Buffy and then the superhero stuff and things like that, of like American science fiction being cool and sexy and something that anybody can get into and not just for nerds.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:03

Well, SFX used to have, as well as the uh the much fabled uh central spoiler pages that you had to uh cut open. It used to give away art cards, which you thought as a kind of sci-fi collector you were getting something valuable. But what you were getting are pictures of uh Jillian Anderson or Lucy Lawless or Jerry Ryan in some kind of spicy dress.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:30

Oh god, I had an Alison Hannigan on my came out of, but yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:35

Sarah Michelle Geller suddenly with very short stuff. Those were art cards.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

A slutty seven of nine. Yeah. I feel like the nineties for me transitions from Doctor Who magazine, Dream Watch, you know, and then it's like there's those kind of times where you go, oh, FHM's got Sarah Michelle Geller on it this month. Uh you know, I'm really into but I I should buy that for the interview. Better better be a good fan and buy that magazine.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:04

And of course, channel five brought us the Red Shoot Diaries, which had David Decoff.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:11

There's a lot of the cast of Star Trek Enterprise were in that as well. I didn't know that. There's the boy that plays Malcolm Reed. He was in a good few of those as well. Oh Jesus. This is an audio medium, so nobody saw Richie's face. It's a paled face there.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:34

Thinking of Malcolm Reed's vinegar face.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

This sort of leads nicely into television because we've talked a little bit about like those repeat slots on Channel 4 and BBC Two showing Star Trek and thing. Towards the later part of the 90s, things open up a bit more because I don't know about you guys, but in the early 90s, the thought of having Sky or cable television was just not something that would happen in our house. But at some point in the late 90s it did. And then you were opened up to the world of the sci-fi channel, which sounded magical. Wasn't that magical? The idea of a whole channel dedicated to sci-fi was just so exciting, and then you saw what was on it, and you were just like, oh. Yeah. But things like UK gold, even things like Bravo would show like movies like Tank Girl and things like that. And for me, that was all the stuff that you saw in the magazines or in the shops that you were like, I am never going to put any of my hard-earned I say hard-earned, I was 10. I put any of my pocket money or birthday money into any of these things, but I've always wanted to see it. And so that's the point where I amass a huge amount of things recorded from the television that I've had to this day. Like I've I've got it all digitized of like just trying to get into these different shows and these different cultures. So I'm wondering if you guys have got like particular keystones or certain shows or channels or things like that that made that that made an impact.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

I God, yeah, Sladers, I mean, I think but that was kind of a BBC2 thing. But I think I think we moved we did get Sky and then I could watch like the kind of later episodes and stuff like that. That weren't because there was there was a one where they try to do like a species style episode quite late on when Carrie Wooer came in. Uh and because they got it got a bit sexier and that was like quite uncomfortable watching it with your parents. But I remember that that so sliders watching that on Sky. I also remember does anybody remember early edition?

SPEAKER_07 1:03:37

Oh, is that the one about the he had he got the newspaper that told him the right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

He gets tomorrow's newspaper and it's like hundreds die in house fire, and he's like, Oh shit, I gotta go and stop this house fire. I remember watching that, like being really intrigued by the premise of it, and it's basically just Quantum Leap. It's it's just a different version of Quantum Leap. Uh I remember that. I'm trying to think of the stuff that isn't just X Files, Buffy, Star Trek.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:06

I think what you're trying to say is like a big thing that we've lost is like exploration and discovery. And for me, like so I've this very specific memory for me is having like a black and white TV in my room. And the black and white TVs would have a tuning knob rather than a so you'd be lying in bed late at night, sort of even though you knew where all the frequencies were, you know that but there was something really romantic about the idea of coming across like I remember the first time I saw Akira, it was on a black and white TV on a Saturday night, and being like, what the fuck is this? This is a cartoon, but it's mental. Uh or just like you know, things like that, or like or like late at night. You know how it was when you lived in Scotland? You know you know how when you lived in Scotland, Dylan, I think that a problem that we had as science Scottish science fiction fans is that you would turn on the TV expecting to watch your favourite TV show, and it would actually be children's Gaelic Entertainment.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

Doctor Man.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:07

Yeah, yeah, or uh Daniche. Um and so it would just be like, yeah, you're not you're you're not getting that. England is sitting watching a great episode of D Space Nine right now, but you're stuck with uh whatever this is.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:23

It was a voy rubbeard and a parrot, uh, and he would just talk to the parrot um in um Gaelic, and that would be 45 minutes of your time wasted. And were you talking about Dotterman? No, J and Ish used to do that as well.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:38

No, dude. Do the theme tune to DNSh was it is it uh on On Coron Four what's that song? The one that's like.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:49

So anyway, yeah. But then you would get like at 11 o'clock, you would get like Deep Space Nine would be on BBC Two, but you wouldn't know it was on, and you'd be turning through your channels, and like, oh my. God. And I remember seeing that the episode where O'Brien is like arrested. It was the Wharf it was two. It was the Wharf uh trial one where he There's episode D Space Nine where Wharf's on trial.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:13

It's such a there's something about going through your TV late at night and coming across something and being like, fucking yes. That's me settling in and just like having a great time. And it's just like everything I I'm trying not to sound too old man here, but with everything being on demand, but also our time is just so compartmentalized into our phone and all this other stuff. It just doesn't feel like there's any time to just sit and go through.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:41

You know, because that's how I got into Farscape. That's how I got into fucking Lex for my sins. And things like that, it was just like coming across it and being like, oh, what's this?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:50

I'm gonna sit back and watch this. Eventually, Space and Above and Beyond did come on channel 4 very late at night, and I finally discovered what it was. But also things like The Twilight Zone, just so that was something that was on the sci-fi channel regularly that was just like, oh, I I'd never think to watch this. And then other times, you know, it's some trashy mute movie with Christopher Leon or something like that, and then they they're gonna repeat five times throughout the week. But then, like, there was magazine shows as well that would show up on things like the the sci-fi channel, and it's clearly what I now know as the electronic press kit, which was just a videotape of interviews that they the and like B-roll from behind the scenes that they'd send around, and somebody at the sci-fi channel would chop it up, and then they'd cut to experts on science fiction, which would inevitably be that bold guy from The Gadget Show and Gary Russell and Nick Briggs, because they all worked on a sci-fi channel at the time. And I was just like uh and it'd be the making of Alien Resurrection, sci-fi scene, and they'd have an interview with you know Claudia Christian, and then they'd cut to the launch of Alien War and things like that. And it's like, again, we're not buying the Radio Times and stuff like that regularly, so you've just got to stumble over it. I remember stumbling over just on channel four Space Cadets, which loved Space Cadets.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:11

So Space Cadets, for anybody that doesn't know, and there's let's to be fair, there's no reason why you should, was just basically a sci-fi panel show hosted by comedian Greg Proops. But you would get the guests were Sylvester McCoy and Paul Darrow and Gareth Thomas and people like that. And it was William Shatner.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:27

William Shatner, yeah. Craig Charles kissing William Shatner, do you remember that? I do, and it was brilliant.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:35

In my head, I've watched it since, and it's tedious as fuck. But at the time it was the most amazing television I'd ever seen.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:44

For those of us in Council Teleland, we had uh I think we had two things. I remember sitting with my video with my finger hovering over the record button watching the Ozone hosted by Danny Minogue or Jane Middlemas or someone because they'd said we're gonna be shown the Star Trek insurrection trailer at some point. Oh and being like, I need to tape this so I can watch it again and again and again. And movies, games and videos, that was the other one. Movies, games and videos.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:13

Yeah, that kind of that thing of taping stuff off the telly. Like I remember when they announced I mean, I don't was this the 90s when they announced they'd found the lion, the episode from the Crusades?

SPEAKER_05 1:09:24

1999.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So because I remember that being an oh, it's gonna be on the National Laura, it's like a big Doctor Who thing taking place and you'd be yeah, poised to kind of record it. Because you wanted to document all this stuff, because I guess and it this carried on into the first Eccleston series. Yeah. Was this idea that you know we'd grown up at a time where we didn't have all of Doctor Who to hand and you had to kind of piece it together. So yeah, there was there was like a real thing of like kind of like taping bits and pieces and yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:56

Do you remember when uh the National Lottery they uh got this the cast of Star Trek the Next Generation? And they showed it was they'd come hot foot from the Leicester Square premiere of Star Trek First Contact. Fucking of the battle. So you got to see the the Enterprise coming in to save the Defiant from the The Defiant And then they all walked oh phenomenal thing. Patrick Stuart just like pressed a button and then they all filed out again. They didn't say a fucking word.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

There's nothing. But it was Did you not even go engage and then push the button?

SPEAKER_07 1:10:31

I think that was just gotta be an extra 500 quid.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:33

I think that was the first moment that I saw. Oh my god, the Defiant is in Star Trek First Contact. This uh oh, I just you know.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:43

Do you know it's funny? There's a clip going about of uh or I saw a clip the other day, I sent it to Leah because we're watching Next Gen, but uh it was someone cut all the times Patrick Stewart on SNL said salt and pepper. It's just uh Patrick Stuart going, Salt and Pepper. But I sent it to Leah and she was like, Oh my god, he presented Saturday Night Live, and I was like, you have no idea how powerful Patrick Stewart was in the 90s. Also, the world's sexiest man, I'm sure, at one point. Yeah, yeah, he was, yeah, yeah. And still is in my book.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

I I remember the one time I was allowed to be late for school was my mum let me stay because just as I was about to leave, they were like, and coming up at half past eight, we've got an exclusive look at the new Doctor Who, which was the TV movie. And I don't maybe I've been a complete cunt the night before, or maybe it was the one night I wasn't, but she was like, Go on, you can stay and watch that, and then you can go to school.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:42

Yeah, hearing something like that's coming up and then just having to sit for ages, like is this it?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

Is this it? Russell Grant doing star signs or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:52

Yuri Gellers come on to fix your watch.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:58

When a parent understands that this is important is one of the defining moments. Like being allowed a parent telling you, fuck school, hang on and watch this is I don't I don't think they as a parent understand what a defining memory that is for the rest of your life. Like, but a lot of my fandom is the moments where my mum and dad understand and and and do the thing. That Star Trek exhibition in Edinburgh, I went to it on the very last day. I think my mum and dad thought it was too expensive, he's not really into this kind of thing. Uh, you know, I we need him to continually badger us before we make the financial commitment. And I did it. We went to it on the very, very last day. And that is such a defining moment for me. That because I could have missed it. I could I could have absolutely missed it. And I uh knowing me now, I'd have fucking held that against them for the rest of their lives in my so like just being allowed to stay off school for a moment just to see the thing that you love. That's you know that those are those valuable moments, which I go back to the thing I said earlier. Nobody who hates Starfleet Academy has that as part of their emotional or fan makeup.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:33

You're right, those memories are so vivid. Like I remember my uh stepdad pulling me out of bed like quite late at night and sitting me down in the living room. Sitting me down in the living room and going, watch this. And it was the thing we watched the thing on a fucking 14-inch colour TV. Wow. Amazing. And it was uh it's just uh one of those things that just stick in your head. It's it's just it's sitting watching a film, but also it's such a potent memory.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:00

Yeah, yeah. I remember my dad saying, You need to watch this film, it's about it was RoboCop, but the main thing was he was like, There's a guy who falls into acid and then is hit by a car and explodes. Oh fucking ITV, cut it out. Of course it did.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:18

My first memory of RoboCop was uh my mum's friend had three kids that were older than me, and at one point they ran a video shop. And when my mum was hanging up with her friend, I'd sit through the back of the video shop with the kids, and they just made me watch horrendous stuff like RoboCop. Like like the just the full uncut version of Robocop and video. But I mean when you're a kid, it's just funny. But like I remember watching it on TV years later, and I'd be like, Well what happened to the man that explodes when he's I remember my mum being like, How do you know about that? No, tell me how you know about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:54

I my my my parents were quite terrible when it came to showing me things like that that I shouldn't. And it was fine when it was things like Terminator and Aliens, but I've got a distinct memory of just being sat in the living room watching Midnight Express with my parents at about nine years old and going, What's happening to him? Is it like, oh, he's been he's been very naughty. It's just like this is not okay. Because I think there's a thing for me, like, although there's an element of scariness, there's no difference to as a nine-year-old being scared by the curse of Fenric versus, say, the alien the xenomorphs and aliens or something like that. I mean, the law says there is, but uh like you you know, it's an equal amount of scariness, but you know, perhaps being seeing Midnight Express was w was bad parenting.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:43

Well that I mean, all that stuff was, you know. Yeah, we watched a lot of stuff that got at the video shop, and it was always funny because it was like Terminator. Terminator and Highlander are two examples I remember. It's like, you know, you've watched a lot of like Highlander, you see boys getting their head cut off and Terminator's got what it's got, and then like a very tastefully shot sex scene, right? Are you sure this is alright? Like mum immediately piping up, like, come on now, which is very funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:13

Yeah, I remember renting out again at about 10, 11 years old, my dad taking us to the video shop and thinking, Army of Darkness, this seems like a good film for the family to watch. And then we realized it was part of a trilogy, and we went back to the video shop, spoke to the same guy who was a Doctor Who fan and a Star Trek fan who used to get all sorts of stuff in. And uh he said, Oh, we really enjoyed that. Should we get out of the other two? Went, oh no, the first two aren't suitable for kids. Like the third one's funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:43

The third one is it is much more that kind of Sam Raimi Looney Tunes kind of slapstick. I think. But yeah. Would I show a kid Evil Dead? Probably not. Probably not. But I mean this is uh again, just sort of parents doing about the law. I remember going to see Star Trek First Contact with my dad, and I wasn't yet 12 and it was a 12. I think I was like a tw I think I would turn 12 like a week later, and I wasn't willing to wait. I'd had to see Star Trek First Contact, even though I think I could have got like a birthday trip to the cinema out of it. I was like, nah, fuck that. I want to watch Star Trek First Contact right now. And my dad was like, I'm fine, but it'll be alright, be alright. Um and we go up and he's like he gets fucking para. And he's like, right, don't stand over there. So stand over there, I scrap by the fucking picking mix, and I'll get the tickets, and you know, like so he's just like two tickets, please, Star Trek, first contact. But there's nothing in that that's I mean, but again, it's weirdly sexual. That that's the stuff that I remember being most uncomfortable with. Yeah, yeah. It's the board queen blowing on Data's little little skin flap.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:05

Yeah, I remember seeing that uh with my mum and being like, I w I and I love the rest of the film, but that moment I just wanted to seek to flap up and I could just disappear down into it. That was and it is not I mean I we're we're I think we're all four red-blooded adult men. I think we've but at that moment as a child it was um I mean the other interesting thing about that is uh I we went to see it on the weekend uh because my dad had gone to his pigeon uh fancier convention in black books, so that's just laugh at that. It's like of course my dad is just obsessed but with a different sort of thing, but he does everything I do, but it's pigeons rather than Star Trek.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:53

Oh yeah. It's my dad my dad like he he likes his Star Trek and he likes his dots who, but he's not like he's that's not his thing, you know. Football's his thing, and you know, like a few years ago, I think maybe the first Hooverville I did with with you guys, and I was like, Oh right, yeah, this is my away day, isn't it? Yeah, this is me getting on a coach with the lads and getting pasting. That's you at the World Cup.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:22

You gotta take a flight, you gotta get a big foam hand that says.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

No, that was Star Fury, you know, like because it's incredibly extortionate and deeply, deeply corrupt.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:31

You can edit that or keep that in Dylan, I'll leave that and say, that's the Copa America is what you've So I mean, while we're on conventions, were you people that went to conventions when you were younger?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:44

No, I don't think in uh well actually no. I mean not conventions. I think I must have been to a couple of the Doctor Who group events which just used to be like they would get an actor to come into the pub and sit in the function room upstairs at the Claremont. So that would be like Michael Keating and it was basic mostly Blake Seven, I think, in the in the 90s, and then they started getting some Doctor Who actors, but yeah, I wasn't going to I remember going to there was like an event at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh that um it was like a weird little tiny, tiny Doctor Who exhibition and that I feel like it was just merch. Which can't be right. But and there was like a w there was like it was like that alien attack thing that was like some actors who came out and got exterminated by a Dalek. I mean that sounds very It was raising money I I because I was like, I think I'm going insane because nobody remembers this. And I I looked into it last year when I was when I was unemployed for six months and trying to r trying to research a book that I have continued not to have written. Um but I was like, well now that I've got access to like a newspaper archive, I'm gonna track this fucking thing down. I know it existed. And I think and I basically found out that yes it did happen, I wasn't going mad, but it was like a fundraiser, it was like a fundraising thing for like cancer research or something, which explains why it was a tiny exhibition, it was clearly somebody going, I'm gonna just put my Doctor Who collection on like on display, we've got a full-size Dalek, and some mates of ours can get exterminated, and that'll be like a fun Doctor Who family fundraising day. So yeah, I remember that that's the that's the thing I most kind of remember from that kind of period. And obviously the Star Trek especially, but that wasn't really a convention.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:47

But I I used to go there was a regular Doctor Who convention called Panopticon, which if you've heard Doctor Who Two Off for TV, you probably will have heard me talk about before. Happened in Coventry the week after my birthday, so that was my birthday present every year. Got to go to these conventions anyway, have a great time, meet the stars, blah blah blah. I'm not gonna talk about how great it was, whatever. I was 14, probably didn't make the best use of my time there anyway. But the thing that fascinates me, and I remember seeing them at the time, and I had a little flick through some magazines before this, is the small conventions that I never went to around the UK for other shows. Because now we live in a world where if somebody decides they want to get the entire cast of aliens or next generation together at some supercon in Liverpool or Manchester or London, they'll do it because they know people pay for it. But at the time, that wasn't an industry. So if you were a fan of Star Trek or something like that, the guests you would get at your events were limited. And there's this one here. Assimilation Conventions presents the double main event running from the 11th to the 14th of October. So 11, 12, 13, four days. This is in South Harrow. There are two guests, which are Andrew Robinson, who played Garak, and Jason Carter, who played Marcus Cole. Both are making their first UK appearances. Four days, two guests, and there were loads of- I remember seeing a three-day convention for the X-Files advertised, and they had somebody who wrote a book and the guy who played Skinner, and that was it. It's like, where are they? I wanted who's documented them?

SPEAKER_07 1:23:24

That TV Zoom magazine that I was just reading from earlier has a bit about conventions at the back, and there's a Dew South convention, and it sounds like uh dinner. Yeah. But like we're like, we've got the guy, we've got Aga, not the guy from Dew South, we've got the other guy from Dew South. He'll be here. And know exactly what you mean because it seems there was a lot of that sort of stuff, but it was very funny to be like, if we're going to the Dew South convention.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:49

I like that noted sci-fi property to you south.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:54

But I had like and I hate myself, I hate myself for this, but I had a total aversion to the word convention for so long because it was just like it had because it was like the butt of so many jokes. Like uh the idea of it was just like you know, you know what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah. And obviously now I've been now I've been to conventions and just had a fucking great time uh and realised that this is what I should have been doing all along.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:21

So in my later teens when I was going away to conventions, I wouldn't tell my friends I was going. When I was 10, I would. But when I was 15, I still wanted to go, but I was just like, there's nowhere I can do that. I'd be like, I'm going away with my family somewhere, see my aunt. It's like what aunt or my aunt in Coventry, but you know, that's my auntie Key Merving. Because the the thought of and I remember a point I I didn't go to conventions really in my twenties or anything like that either, because it was just like it was embarrassing and weird, and then at some point you you get you just start to own your your nerdiness again, don't you? Yeah, do you know what?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:58

Well my my relationship with I mean I suppose there's a separate kind of conversation, but I think my relationship with conventions, like it is really up and down. Like I did those events with the Edinburgh group where it was just like one guest an afternoon. They were always great fun. And then I think like my first big kind of proper convention was the 50th. Right. And then I kind of stopped going to them for like another five years, then went to the Capital Sci-Fi Com when you hosted the Doctor Who Q ⁇ A, Ben stopped for ages. And then now I'm going to like a lot more of them. But yeah, I think it was I don't know, there was just something that maybe wasn't quite hitting right. I don't know what it is, but yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:43

My my first proper convention experience, I think it was like when you and I it was you and I, Mark, and we were in the bar afterwards, and it was it was it something clicked with me that moment that I realized that you were in a room full of people and you could swing around and start talking to anyone and they immediately everyone's on the same page. We're all here for the same reason, we all love the same thing, and I can start a conversation with you, and you know, and it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:09

Th there's a weird moment where you leave a convention and you're like you're on a train and there's a few Doctor Who nerds and then they start to or whatever nerds and then they start to dissipate, and all of a sudden there's the realisation you're back in the real world and nobody wants to talk about Star Trek Voyager or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:26

Yeah, it's Sunday afternoon you're hung over on a bunch of football fancs in the train. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:32

I know that exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:34

Do you remember when we went to the Android invasion day? There's a moment where you and I, Dylan, we we um we went to the train station and we were getting them different ends of the country, so we we part and then we see each other again uh standing either side of the train track. And I've got my little rolled-up kind of like a like a one-a-signed image, and you had like a bag of stuff. And I just remember us looking at each other and j just the weather and everyone else standing on these platforms, and just the mundanity of like modern day rail travel Britain just beginning to like wash over the colour that we'd like seen each other in across this weekend.

unknown 1:27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:25

You're just saying that the the creeping in of the real world, and it's like, yeah, there's there's nowhere that you find that more than standing on a fucking platform waiting for the train back to your shitty real life.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:39

I I had one where I left a Hooverville and the plastic bag that I'd had the stuff that I'd bought in split and just DVDs scattered down the tracks. Probably caused a train crash later in the day, who knows? And some got and I was so hungover, and some guy went, Oh mate, you've dropped your DVDs, and I just had to go, fuck it.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:58

Yeah, because I'm I feel Too ashamed to ask a guy to pick up you don't you don't want anyone on the platform being like, what's myth makers?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:06

Because it wasn't even it wasn't even something because like this was recordings of old Hooverville conventions with the most photocopied covers. Like an afternoon with Terence Dix. Now, no slight thank you very much to Steve Hatcher and whoever else for recording those things. But the thought of having to call someone from Great Western Railway or whatever it is, stop the chains! Go down onto the platform and hand them to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:32

Let me copy a Hooverville 7. Oh, it's just it's just over there. That rat snibbling on it.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:40

Did you know? I only discovered this last year because I had to go up into the projection booth to make an audio recording. But at Hooverville last year, the projectionist's like, hi, there's a third there's a third room. Oh yeah, you just shows that just shows recordings of old Hooverville panels. And he's like, nobody goes in there. And I was like, nobody knows it exists.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:02

You've just got the cinema screen showing rolling old cast interviews all day, and nobody knows it's so we've talked about conventions, and I'm aware we've been here a while, so I'll try not to keep you all too much longer. But Mark I'm having a great time, mate. Excellent for another four hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:21

I might pour myself a whiskey at some point, but uh keep going.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:24

The word local group and Edinburgh Doctor Who meeting and things like that have been mentioned a few times. Ben, you were a late comer to those relatives.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:34

Yeah, uh I didn't know it was 97 that Mark started going. Because it was 2003 when I started. That's loads. That's quite a divide. I thought we were only a little bit more. I was I went away for ages. Yeah, but I thought we were only like a couple of years difference, but like fucking hell, that's about you know, seven years, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:52

I think it was but it must have been it was ba it wasn't long after Tom Baker did his signing tour, which was what 97 late 97, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:01

I don't know. See, a lot of a lot of the stuff that you and Richie are saying, I feel like I am uh I I'm quite behind of um I because I didn't I think the the 90s was very solo. It's the 2000s where I start like engaging in conventions and going to local groups and all that kind of stuff. So hearing these stories, it feels like I know I'm probably older than both of you, but like uh it feels like you're from a generation above me in the way you in the way that you're talking in terms of fandom.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:32

It's interesting you say that because I still think of the 90s as quite a solo experience. The people I knew were my brother, my dad, and my mate Nigel. And that was it. Like going to those cons, those are the people I spoke to. Because most of the people at those cons had been going to cons for 10 years and were in their mid-twenties and stuff, and they didn't want to hang out with a 13-year-old. Well, some of them did. Um But like so it in a weird way, that was the two days a year or whatever where it was like, uh, I'm around other nerdy people, even if you didn't really speak to them. Whereas now it's much more sociable. Even the the group I went to, which would show just episodes like they'd they'd have an uh episode of Star Trek sent over from the States, they'd have an old episode of Ace of Wands, they'd show an episode of Doctor Who, it was just a mismatch of just sit in the room and watch it. Like, I don't like I said hello, but I didn't really speak to people. And it was just an excuse for my dad to sit in the pub downstairs for two hours while I watched some some shoddy old science fiction. It's like I don't think of those times as particularly sociable. Now, because of podcasting, we've got this amazing group of friends that has all happened just through going to science fiction conventions. And you can sort of walk into any Doctor Who convention now or Doctor Who gathering, and i any one of us would know somebody that we could strike up a conversation with. And even if we didn't, we'd find somebody.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:55

I mean, it's also that yeah, it's also that it's it's the thing about as you mentioned podcasting as well, but podcasting is kind of is a big part of the reason we're all ended up. Yeah. Yeah. Becoming such good friends because everybody has a doctor.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:14

We also have a sense of humor. I think that's incredibly important. Yeah. The thing that I there are people who define their fandom by the collection that they built or the uh the autographs that they get, or the I actually don't give a fuck about any. I've got bits, I've got models, I've got figures, I've got VHS, all that kind of stuff. Like I actually don't give a fuck particularly about the the physical stuff. Whenever I think about why I like this stuff, why I continue to like this stuff, it's always the people and the experiences and the laughs and the fucking hangovers and the shed loads of lager and all that kind of stuff. It's it's always but it's the experiences. That sounds so ridiculous. How a collector of experiences all of this, the the binding agent is not necessarily uh a knowledge of the facts, it's the chats.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:19

But but I think you like you say about the the it's the sense of humor as well, and it's and that's a real thing. But like 14-year-old me would have been mortified at anybody taking the piss out of Doctor Who because I took it so seriously and wanted it to be taken so seriously that it'd come back as a serious TV show. Now, you know, we talk every day about how dreadful the show is, like, and even the bits we love we're we're mocking.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:42

And it's not just about taking the piss out of it, but you know it it's not, it's not, but I think I remember like and I think actually I I I think the 90s, to sort of bring it back to to what we're talking about, is like I think that was a crucial part in sort of for me not learning to take well sorry, learning not to take this stuff too seriously. Because I was surrounded by like funny, funny people who could look at Doctor Who and take the piss but in an affectionate way. So people like Dave Owen, people like Robert Dick, like people who like understand that show and and are funny people. And that was kind of me at first, yeah, it's like, oh my god, like these guys hate Doctor Who. Why have I come to this room full of people that hate Doctor Who? But then the more time you spend and the more you're laughing, like it's like, oh yeah, it's just a silly, it is a silly show, like, and that's fine. That's kind of why we love it. It's why like whenever whenever people say, like, you know, our doctor's shit mate, why are you a fan of that? It's like, I know it's shit, mate. That's why I like it.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:45

Yeah. It's that that thing you're like, you're trying to tell me the Doctor Who's shit, mate. Come on, come on. I'll watch it.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:52

You know what I think in a constant state of embarrassment if any other living being is in the room looking at her at the same time.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:00

There's something about uh there's something about Doctor Who fandom, or maybe it's sh maybe it's general science fiction fandom, but as adults making friends, and it's like all of the people that we have become friends with. Because as you say, Ben, like for me as well, it's like it was a fairly localized experience for me. Again, it's that thing where it's like I feel like I'm the only person going through this. And then suddenly, like you could speak to su I could speak to someone any of you now and go, what does BBC2 at six o'clock mean to you? And you're like, it means it is absolutely formed who I was as a person. Yeah, yeah, god. You know, and it's like we all had those it's funny that we were all kind of having these same experiences in the 90s, uh, but we weren't sharing them and then we just Yeah. And I think that's that's quite special.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:55

There's a there's a really interesting thing, I think, like in kind of bridging a gap as well with like people who are like older than you. So like I th I remember I went back into Doctor Who Fandom in 2003, because the show's coming back, like I'm gonna get I'm gonna go back to the Edinburgh group. I went to that sort of Green Death event, which must have been 2004, I guess, was it?

SPEAKER_05 1:36:18

Irrelevant, Mark, this is about the nineties. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:21

No, no, no, but what I mean is that that kind of shared experience meant that I could kind of so like I d meeting Derek for the first time, like he's like sort of ten, fifteen years older than me. And that like we have those kind of shared experiences because I grew up if I grew up in two in the 2000s, I don't think I would have been able to build those connections with somebody who'd grown up in the nineties, if you see what I mean. There's just something about that that kind of period where all of this stuff was on the telly and part of the kind of popular culture that yeah, mate kind of helps you kind of bridge those gaps for like a generation before you.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:01

I think as well, and again, I try not to come across as too grumpy, but the volume of any TV show, like we get ten episodes of Strange New Worlds, for example, and then it's off for two years. Yeah. And you look back at Next Generation and it's on for half of the year, every year, all the time. So you're constantly like and because there's so much of it, you get to know every character in great detail, and they're just such a part of your life, in a constant state of being a part of your life, and that just again you can't make Telly like that anymore, you can't, because there's it has to hit a certain standard, but the fact that it could be on all of the time and it was just a constant, constantly happening to you, and but and it would only be a handful of shows as well. You weren't watching 20 prestige dramas a year or whatever. It was like, you know, you just had a couple of shows that you watched and they were on all the fucking time.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:01

And you'd have a week between episodes to think about what happened, wonder what's happened next, and then you'd miss something because something happened, and then it was like, oh, maybe I can find out what happened in a magazine, but then do I want to buy the magazine? Or oh, there's a there's an episode guidebook or something like that. And I I said this before, but it's it's that detective work, it's the patchwork, the part work. Every TV show of that era or every franchise is a part work that you're trying to piece together, and you never think you're gonna build the model at the end of it.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:31

Yeah. And I guess that's what Doctor Who kind of still has a little bit of that in the sense that there's so much of it that you just feel like you could never truly make your way completely through it. Yeah, I think there's that. And but I also think as well is that we live in a world where anything that can be observed about it, anything that can be observed about an episode of anything that goes out happens immediately. Yeah. Because everybody is determined and desperate to have, even if it's not consciously, their own take and their own observations that nobody else has said, and it's like a rush to get it, which means you just get every possible viewpoint hammered into you, and then you to the point where you're just like, I don't want to listen to anyone talk about I know I realize we're at the end of a two-hour podcast here.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:20

The end of the end? We haven't even gotten it.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:23

It's just part two. But it's like that all also that endless discussion, and then being able to look up an article and be like, here's all the Easter eggs, here's everything referenced. And it's just like, how am I discovering and how am I going, Oh, uh I noticed that. And like every time you notice something, and every time you pick up something, that that's a personal, as you say, it's the detective work, it's the investment, it's all of that stuff, and it's just it's so much harder now.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:52

What's happened? And you and I had this conversation, Richie, when we were thinking about the the film that we're still we are still making. But when we first talked about it, I was like, it would be really interesting to chart how in the nineties fandom was kind of piecing things together, it was discovery, it was kind of being open to like lots of other things. Whereas I think now, because that kind of media landscape of all these kind of like websites, some of whom I've worked for, they foster that kind of ident they're they're playing to an audience of fans, and you're kind of further entrenching fans in a kind of identity. And so you're kind of like in this kind of hermetically sealed box. So that you're either I think Ben, you and I have talked about this. You're either, you know, oh like I'm mad into this, or you're this kind of like big bang theory style, you know, magpie picking up like loads of little fragments of of kind of of culture, like, oh yeah, you know, you've watched five minutes of Star Trek, so therefore you're you're entitled to say Star Starfleet Academy, you know, is Star Trek gone woke. You've like you've picked up there, yeah. It's so yeah, it's kind of because everybody has to have an opinion, everybody has to have a have a say.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:17

So I I saw a TikTok that really annoyed me today. Um it was a TikTok. Welcome to Old Men. I think it'll annoy that it will annoy you when uh Oh it will a hundred percent. They there was two I I it doesn't matter that it was two women, but it was two women. And one was asking, they were talking about who are the five uh richest directors, and they were going through it and then they got to number three and they went, I'll give you a clue. Uh and um she went and the other person said JJ Abrams rather than George Lucas, but they said JJ Abrams and I nearly threw my phone as far away from me as possible. I just yeah. Can I just ask one more thing as well, just of the Edinburgh guides? What was your experience? Uh you know, we've talked about Doctor Who, we talked about Star Trek. I I I've I've feel like these are the kind of defining things for us as friends. Um how did you experience the release of the Star Wars special editions?

SPEAKER_07 1:42:38

Where did that do not get me started? Do not get me started on that.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:43

Specifically because Richie, you said we expect that everything lives on the internet and it doesn't. And there there are key memories where you just can't find it. Doesn't matter the Googling that you do for it. I saw uh a New Hope uh at Cannaired Park in a cinema that no longer exists, but there was like a whole weekend where they had like an X-wing fighter in the car park, and you could come and see it, and they had stormtroopers and a Chewbacca guy, and I have yet to meet another human being who had that same experience, though that place was heaving with humanity, and I'm like, one of the two of you must have this memory. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:21

No, I think I I did go I did go and see them at Canard Park, but it must have been after the big weekends. Because I remember my dad taking me to see them. Uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:31

And I remember going to see the Phantom Menace at the Dominion, uh, and there was like just kids just fancy. Ooh, the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey went to see blame my mate whose birthday it was.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:47

It wasn't me.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:48

Oh yeah. Whose birthday it was. I mean, fucking hell.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:52

I have a weird thing with Star Wars where it was like I played like video games or saw cartoon spin-offs, all that sort of stuff before I saw the films. Right. But it was a weird thing to watch Star Wars after playing the video game, like had it on the Nintendo, and uh there was a super it was funny because the super Super Empire Strikes Back has little voice clips in it, so every time I hear them in the film, I still think of the Snez like really compressed Darth Vader going in prison and things like that. Um but I was playing the games and it was my stepdad that went, Oh yeah, Star Wars, and he was like, You've seen Star Wars, right? And I was like, No. And he was like, Right, okay. And then the the next three weeks, every Friday for the next three weeks, we would get it was the first, you know, we got them all. And he could not shut up about what it was like to see that fucking opening shot in the cinema. Like on it, he's like, I went to see it with my dad, and it was just oh like the the audience was just you know, giving it all that and just you know, big talk about what it was like to see Star Wars originally in the cinema. And anyway, special editions come out.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:02

But there's Star Wars in the cinema. Can we go and see them? Do you got them on video? So I never saw them. Wow. I was oh humid.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:12

I'm the opposite. Uh but I'll tell my my my Star Wars uh Star Wars special edition memory would be Is it the Tazzo's and the Pogs?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:21

Oh, it's not here. It's not here. It's the Tazzos. I've got the Book of Tazzos. You got the Book of Tazzos, fuck me now.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:27

The book the Book of Ts. Oh, the Book of Tazzos. The Book of Tazzo. The Sacred Book of Tazzos. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:32

That was one of the sequel films, wasn't it? The Book of Tazzos. The Book of Tazzos.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:39

Yeah, the du and there was like five, I think it was five or ten, there was like fifty in total, and five or ten of them you could only get in Doritos.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:46

Yeah, yeah. I remember it well.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:48

Good times. It was everywhere, Star Wars at that moment. And I I won I won't take this on a big Star Wars thing, but a weird thing happened to me that is not a popular opinion. I have a non-popular opinion about Star Wars. When I was a kid, I had Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on VHS recorded from television. I think during that time I only saw A New Hope once at a friend's house. And so going to see it in the cinema was in the re revamped form was the first time seeing it. I remember thinking, well, this isn't as good as the other two. And to this day, I've just got no nostalgic attachment to that first film, even though the other two like I can quote almost verbatim. So it's just this weird thing of like for most people it's the trilogy, and for me, it's just the two films. I've never been able to get that magic of the first film. Uh, and that is bad parenting as far as I'm concerned. Too busy watching Midnight Express. Well, look, like I feel like we've had a good journey through the 90s, and like we to be honest, we could have just done two hours on magazines and two hours on repeat seasons and things like that. There's there's many things we've touched on lightly and not not touched on at all. But do we feel like we've got a a a good sense of what the nineties was like? But also like, do you think fandom is a more enjoyable experience now, or was it more enjoyable back then?

SPEAKER_05 1:47:22

It's a very different thing. Very different thing. It's more enjoyable now because uh getting pissed is amazing. Uh and as somebody who works in comedy or worked in comedy uh and knows loads of comedians, comedians getting together is nowhere near as funny as a bunch of sci-fi fans just shooting the shit at a convention hotel the night before a convention where they're drinking like fish and feel like there's no responsibility for them to enjoy the next day. Like it's it's great. Like it's uh and I again it plays into the idea that the the thing I enjoy about fandom is the sociability of it. Um The 90s was very s very solitary for me. Uh it was very different, but I know it is something that I love because it's something that I clawed around me myself.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:22

So that I am very uh happy uh and confident that this is something that I enjoy, that I love, that I love spending time with, and it's a great foundation for the friends you make uh in the 2000s and onwards. There is a part I mean that wishes I could go back to knowing exactly nothing so I could do it all again. Um but uh you know, like you know, even uh I I I sp I live in Ireland now. Uh you all you guys all live in the UK, and so it's a it's easier for you guys to get together. And I'll go to these conventions in Ireland on my own, and it just doesn't have the same tang to it when there's pals doing it. Um I watch it like it's a David Attenborough document. It's a very kind of you know it's transactional and dispassionate. But something like a Hooverville or an Android Invasion Day or uh an Edinburgh local group will always be the kind of the touchstones. Why do I love it? Because loads of other people that I like love it as well. It's just brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:30

It ceased to become an investigative thing that it was almost as in the 90s of piecing it all together and needing to know all these things and have all this stuff, and it just becomes, as you say, a foundation. Much like you, I went to a convention, I went to a wrestling convention the other day, and that was all of a sudden I was in a world where I didn't know anybody. And it was it was really weird. It was fine, I had a nice time, but it was again, it's transactional. So you It's this this sort of like overobsession as a child to something now though has led to like an entire social group and social life and podcasts and all these other things of which I'm very grateful and I don't think I like I I wouldn't want to go back to just that, oh, it's just a show that I watch. Although I just appreciate that's a normal relationship to have with a television programme to watch it and then never think about it again.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:25

Well the thing the thing is, I mean, like so just as a small closing statement, is uh I have already begun the infiltration of my son into things, into sci-fi things. And I've had to think very carefully how do I do that? That sounds really sinister, and I don't mean it to be sinister.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:44

Yeah, he's not gonna So not that Star Trek Kids show.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:47

Well, he's not interested in that. What he has enjoyed is Jerry Anderson. Now he loves Thunderbirds. Loves it, but Thunderbirds is 50 minutes, so it's kind of beyond his attention span. That's where Captain Scarlet at 25 minutes is the absolute perfect line. And he f we uh we watched this morning the the first episode of uh Captain Scarlet, uh, where Captain Brown's head explodes in flames, and I thought maybe that's too much. Maybe that's too much.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:17

But he What does he think of midnight X?

SPEAKER_05 1:51:21

Well we'll find out tomorrow. Just before it just before it was nearly uh Last time I was in Edinburgh, I brought him a lot of my 90s die-cast Thunderbirds toys that I had, and he's now um throwing into his spaghetti bolognese uh that metal Thunderbird 2 pod with a Thunderbird 4 inside, and um enjoying that he's enjoying it and also Are those the 90s toys?

SPEAKER_07 1:51:49

Because the older ones might have lead in them.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:53

I mean, he'll have enjoyed his life if it's a short one.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:59

Not to open another c conversation or anything, but there are key things like Doctor Doom, for instance, that I remember having toys of before I ever knew what they were. And like not like the proper articulated action figures, but just like here's a lump of rubber that and my nans bought me because it's vaguely science fiction. And so you're you're sowing the seeds there, you know, like he'll he'll remember that one day, and then before you know it, he's writing the Thunderbirds reboot in 25 years.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:27

I had a Lionel from Thundercats, which you had like a little ring that had like a little uh I don't know if you know if it's a power source, but like you would stick it in the back of Lionel's eyes.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:38

And I just remember as a child, I kept like licking licking the back of Lionel, I was just really enjoying the metallic taste.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:51

I'm uh gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:52

Is licking the back of the line of Lionel the episode?

SPEAKER_04 1:52:56

I just remember that's really tasty. Metal tastes nice.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:02

Like when you put a what like you put a nine-volt battery on your exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:06

I once put a plugged in charger to a Game Boy in my mouth. That was a horrible fucking experience. Oh my god. Because you're nine and you just think, oh good times.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:15

Lessons in electricity. That's a good podcast on that. That's the one that they're all waiting for. Lessons in electricity. How many times did you nearly blow yourself up as a child? I remember it was like I I I woke up on a Saturday morning, I have no idea how it happened, but the cable on my TV had broken, and I wanted to watch live and kicking, so I just did I plugged in the cable and turned on the TV and then tried to join the two wires like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:40

Like Baron Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:42

It fucking exploded in my face. It was a real like whoa. Have you got anything to add, Richie, besides your uh I would say uh yeah, no, I was gonna say, like, yeah, I'm kind of just echoing Ben in the sense that like I couldn't possibly say that it we're worse off now than we were because it's like I I do th I do think that we're a bit like, you know, boomers with the housing market and that we are the we got the perfect We may have lost out in the housing market. We just went off the perfect time for yeah. But like we got that sort of we got that just pre-internet bed of like you know, and then we had that period of time where we discovered torrent and we could just get whatever we wanted. And like we just had a real appreciation for that. Um and then like you know, Wikipedia, wikis and I th I do think that young people getting into sci-fi now are probably doing the same level of exploration, they're just doing it differently. And there's a lot there is a lot out there to kind of find. So I think and also as Ben mentioned, now that we're all adults um and the internet's helped us all find each other and and that sort of stuff. Yeah, it's great. It's great just, you know, getting to meet up with people and get pissed. And everybody can talk about the same thing and everybody's got the same sense of humour and everybody we can all make very obscure jokes and we'll all have big laughs about it. So yeah, no, I I uh I love I love thinking back on it. I love thinking about I like I just, you know, the feeling of jumping on a bus at eight in the morning so I can get to HMV to get the next episode of Deep Space Nine. That is obviously a very potent memory and just what it felt like to come home and put that on. But at the same time, we're definitely in a better place now for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:37

Yeah, I think we we are. But I think there's something interesting. Like I think a lot of the we haven't really kind of said this on this podcast, but I think a lot of the time when people talk about the 90s, they talk about how wasn't it incredible that all this old tele was on and and and all this kind of pop culture like sort of sci-fi was part of the kind of pop culture zeitgeist. And now we're we're in that exact same point. There's maybe a bit of franchise fatigue when it comes to and it's more superheroes than than sci-fi, but I think we are still very much in that period in which the geek has inherited the earth and and all that kind of thing. Um but I found something I just wanted to kind of close up with some uh COD intellectualism, if you'll indulge me. Um because I was I was reading this book and I found something like quite an interesting take on what was happening in the 90s in terms of kind of sci-fi. And yeah, I just thought it was quite interesting. So basically it's it's in a chapter from this book, A Class of the Society, by Alwyn W. Turner, who also wrote a really good uh biography of Terry Nation. Uh so there you go. But basically, it's kind of in this sort of there's a chapter about kind of cool Britannia and kind of what was what was kind of going on, you know, Oasis, blur, Brit pop, all that kind of thing. Um and it says there was a new myth being created here, a belief that everything good started in the 1960s, when Britain had led the popular culture of the modern of the Western world, a wish that such happy times might be recaptured. And for a brief moment, the comparisons were genuine enough. Uh The Beatles had commissioned album covers from the pop artists Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, and now Blur had a video directed by Damien Hurst. I'll skip ahead a bit, don't worry. The must-have toy for children was Tracy Island after the BBC began screening old episodes of Thunderbirds, and the James Bond franchise was successfully relaunched with Piers Prosnan and Goldeneye. So yeah, whatever was it thus, mate? Nostalgia? We we were born out of nostalgia for the 60s, and we're now here tonight being nostalgic for the 90s. It's just, you know, we'll wheel turns, wheel turns.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:47

And there are people now becoming fans of things from the noughties and beyond who will be sat on uh a podcast or whatever the equivalent is in the future. Go. Wasn't it wasn't it better when everything was on iPlayer?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:01

Well, because it's cynical as cynical as I was at the start of this podcast, kind of talking about like, well, where do where do people discover things now and all that kind of thing? It is streaming, ultimately, it is streaming, it is people looking for stuff like all those people that watched Friends when it went up on Netflix, you know, for the first time. And yeah, there was all the endless tedious discourse, but there was people who actually were like, Yeah, this show is really funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:24

That'll be their favourite show. There'll be somebody who sees an episode of Star Trek Discovery or Strange New Worlds or Academy or whatever, and they'll go, Oh what, there's more Star Trek? And they'll go on to Paramount Plus and they'll watch the whole thing. I couldn't have dreamt of such a you know. So I it they will discover it in a different way and form their own opinions and pull opinions from online and what have you. As you say, the cycle continues.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:53

And with that, they all retired from podcasting.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:59

There'll be some 20-year-olds here next week. Well, look, lads, thank you so much for joining me today to relive the glory days of the 90s when everything was better. It's been an absolute hoot. Let's go around and if you've got something to promote, please promote. Let's come to Richie first.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:20

My podcast, I hate Doctor Who, will be back at some point. I've just moved house and had lots of stuff work-wise. So uh I've just not had time. But I will be back very soon, and uh but there's loads of other episodes if you haven't heard it before. So go and listen to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:36

Excellent. Mark. After some time away, on the time lash is back, baby. Uh we've got like a new series. Well, we've not got like a new series, talk properly to you. It is a new series. We've got a new we've got a new series looking at the shootiga era. Uh yeah. So we're doing the old the old on the time lash format. We are doing the podcast pub crawl through dot who old and new. We're pairing up the shootigawa era with whatever classic series stories we haven't yet discussed. So prepare for the connections to be quite genuous.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:11

And that is, of course, you and Ben Virth. Ben, do you have uh do you have any words to add to that or anything else you want to plug? Oh boy, do I!

SPEAKER_05 2:00:20

Uh no, Mark said it so eloquently. Uh and uh yeah, I I've enjoyed recording these episodes, uh stacking them up before we kind of release them so there's no kind of six-month mid-season gap. Yeah. Which is kind of the on-the-time lash start.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:38

Which is very 90s, to be fair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:41

Um but I think uh I I I having to do the start every that podcast topology that everybody does. Well, it's been a while since my last episode. Sorry, guys. It's like yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:51

Yeah, basically. But uh anything individually to plug? Nah, not in the slightest. Um just listen on the time lash and uh we'll see you for a pint at the next convention that we're all at together.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:05

Exactly. Don't talk to us though, we're too busy being dead cool.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:08

Yeah, we'll be the we'll be the loudest, yeah, most obnoxious table.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:12

Just follow the laughter, and it's us, and it'll be us telling our amazing jokes and being great friends.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:22

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as it helps people to find the pod. Look for Too Hot for TV on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at TooHotTheNumber4 Pod. That's Too Hot the number four pod for the latest updates and additional content. Next time I'll be joined by Liam and we'll be looking at the expanded universe of Millennium. But until next time, I've been Dylan.

SPEAKER_07 2:01:47

Uh I've been Ben.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:49

I've been Mark.

SPEAKER_07 2:01:50

And I've been Richie.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:51

And this has been Too Hot for TV.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:40

I lost Data's arm flap on the floor, and I just want to make sure that I'm not 90s problems. I think well you you said nineties fandom.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:52

So I supp I suppose for me Sorry, hang on two seconds.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:03

There we go. I turned my ear my Bluetooth earphones off. So it's like producers tell them, no, don't go down this planet. Don't no pull back.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:10

If you could walk back a sex worker comment smile.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:14

Hey, at least I said sex worker, not prostitute. Uh I think we should be clear. Which we would have said in the nineties. Which we would have said in the nineties.