Doctor Who in Blackpool, Star Wars on Tyne Tees (1982)

A long time ago in a red anorak... 

1982 was a special year for Sci-Fi geeks. 

Blade Runner, Wrath of Khan, The Thing, Poltergeist, E.T. - all came out in the same year. But for some of us (kids who were too young to see most of those movies) 1982 was a chance to geek out in other ways. 

I was 9. 

And for me, the biggest events both fell on the same weekend in late October.

 I didn't sleep for nearly 36 hours. 

First of all, on Saturday, I went to Blackpool for the first time ever. I wasn't all that bothered about the lights or the fairground rides but in 1982 Blackpool was the site of the nearest Doctor Who Exhibition. And I loved Doctor Who. I loved it so much I was already complaining about how it wasn't as good as it used to be.

In 1982 Peter Davison had taken over as The Doctor - and although he was no Tom Baker (who was or ever could be?) it was still my favourite TV show. They brought back the Cybermen! And they killed off one of the companions! 

(I'm not sure what I was more pleased about. The Cybermen were cool, but killing off Adric was a genius move - how dare some kid get to travel with The Doctor when I had to stay in Newton Aycliffe and go to school all the time?)

They had a massive over-sized TARDIS just off the sea-front - I mean, how much more exciting could anything be than that? And then you went into the TARDIS. And all the time, the Doctor Who theme music was playing. 

Or maybe that was just in my head.

The Exhibition was extremely dark and extremely scary to 9-year-old-me. There was a Dalek at the bottom of the stairs - and it was LOUD. 

 

This was the closest you could get to real Doctor Who. I had Target books at home - I'd even had a little TARDIS picture-card from a box of Typhoo tea bags - but this was something else. The displays in Blackpool were things that had been on the telly.

Tom Baker had shouted at some of these monsters! 

Trying to get pictures of the displays was a bit tricky. If you used a flash (and the little flash cubes were bloody expensive) the light would bounce back off the windows - so it always looked like the Cybermen were spontaneously combusting.

 The one piece of Doctor Who merchandise I have from Blackpool is a TARDIS money-box. £2.50 in '82 - an absolute fortune and all the money I had in the world. It's still remarkably un-smashed.

 

 There is a completely wonderful (and free) downloadable book all about the Doctor Who Exhibition in Blackpool - and they've got much much better photos.

https://blackpoolremembered7485.wordpress.com

Sunday night was something else again. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, Star Wars was finally going to be on the telly. I was still exhausted from going to Blackpool (there and back in a single day!) but I might have loved Star Wars even more than I loved Doctor Who.

My Dad had taken me to see Star Wars twice at the cinema in early 1978. But by the time The Empire Strikes Back came out my Dad had a new family and I didn't have anybody else to take me. Seeing any Star Wars movie (even the one I'd already seen) was an incredibly big deal. 

For the very first time I bought the TV Times - just because it had Star Wars on the cover. I'm still confused about why Darth Vader had two lightsabres.

I suppose this was my equivalent of the Queen's Coronation or the Moon landings. It was THE big TV moment of my childhood. Sod the Royal Weddings, this was IT. 

I was even allowed to invite friends around to watch! I was never allowed to have friends in the house! But my friend's family only had a black and white TV (and he'd never seen Star Wars) so my folks allowed it - just this once. 

It felt like a huge event for everybody.

And it was just as wonderful on the small screen. Even with the picture cropped down and adverts every 25 minutes, it was a magical moment. There was also the brilliant mix of two logos - our local ITV station was showing Star Wars.

Star Wars was the sci-fi film that even non-geeks could enjoy - so back at school the next day it was all anybody could talk about. There hadn't been a TV moment like it since ITV had shown Jaws the year before.

 

I might have mentioned to a few people that I'd been to Blackpool, but Doctor Who was already starting to be a show that only genuine anoraks could love. We also went to Blackpool in 1983 and 1984 but for some reason we gave 1985 a miss, which is a shame - because that was the last year the exhibition was open. 

 

I did eventually make it back to Blackpool in 2004, just as a whole new version of Doctor Who was about to begin - and just as a new Doctor Who exhibition opened. It wasn't on the same spot, and it didn't have a TARDIS doorway but a few familiar faces were there.