Science Fiction Past.
We’ve all watched them. Back in the 70s and 80s, they were at their best with the original Star Was & Blakes 7. Better times, and a far more innocent age.
‘If his ship is as fast as his boasting, we ought to do well.’
Obi-Wan Kenobi, ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope’.
Well I’m 52 just a few days from now (a whole year older and certainly never a year wiser!)
I can remember the day really well. I was at school that day, a Friday as I recall, my friends and I all came running out of junior school, smiling & shouting gleefully as kids used to do then (that we had just ‘broken up’ for the Christmas holidays, for three whole weeks.
You remember those days don’t you, you know, the ones when kids were happy and always enjoying themselves, at a time when they could be allowed to play out in the streets because their mum or dad told them they could.
Parents safe in the knowledge that they would be safe to enjoy those moments to grow up in their communities.
My brother had been waiting outside to pick me up, ‘the older brother chuffed to bits’ because our mum had let him borrow the car at long last!
We planned to have some fun and start the holiday by visiting our local cinema to watch the very first Star Wars Episode Four: A New Hope. It was 1978, so I’m having to dust off my memories somewhat!
The intention to write this is not to present a review, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief, and keep reading on!
What I attempted to do here, is to draw your attention to the time period, to the late 70s (yes, a pretty long time in the past,) but nevertheless a time of safe fun and childhood innocence at play.
Around the early months of that same year of 1978 (just rewinding back a bit around 11 months) our television sets were playing the first ever showing of Blakes 7, another great original sci-fi classic.
Although the best thing about Blakes 7 was the spaceship, the Liberator. Sci-Fi nostalgia fans can watch this to their hearts content on SKY (Forces TV, channel 181.)
Once more, this was a total time for fantasy & pure enjoyment. As a child this was another of my favorite sci-fi titles of the time, and at nearly 52 years-old, they both are still very much in my permanent memory stores in my greying head.
Why, because they were fun, television and sci-fi were just that, light-hearted and nothing more.
Fast forward to now, twenty-one years into the 21st century, and what do we have?
- Violence, injury, and death on our television screens
- Daily TV bulletins of ‘breaking news’ about mindless massacres by crazed gunmen let loose in our children’s schools
- Children no longer able to safely play in their hometown streets, for parent’s fearing stabbing or kidnapping fears
- Dangers sounding of climate change scares
This is what our world has now become, a sad, dangerous, and what can be a lonely place to be.
The age of childhood innocence has left us, and what do we leave to our children in the future but climate changes and damage.
Is there really any wonder at all as to why there is so much mental ill-health in our world today?
I had no intention to rain on everyone’s parade but, the issues that we are facing today are out of control.
Our Governments prefer to talk with big words that they got out of a cereal box that morning for breakfast (when I was a kid, I used to find little toys in these packets.) and when they all get into Parliament what do they do all day, stand around jeering at each other, and use those those big words that they learnt at breakfast!
No mention of what they are going to actually do… it’s just all words and nothing much else.
It’s time to change, and that time is now.
If you’d like to buy me a birthday coffee then thanks in advance for that (at my age, I reckon I’ll buy some ‘Just For Men!)
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