1972, anyone?

I was six years old, and I was obsessed with Star Trek. My memory is obviously rather vague on some of this, I may have been watching some episodes even earlier,  during 1971 (Star Trek aired on the BBC here in the UK pretty continuously from 1969 to 1973, with further re-runs later that decade) but I know that I was definitely watching it in 1972, if only because I had the Star Trek 1973 Annual as one of my Christmas 1972 presents. Well, I was ‘into’ all things space by then: I remember my the bedroom wallpaper was Apollo-themed imagery: the lunar lander on the moon, the moon rover etc. Yep, six years old and the die was cast, marked for life. My adoration for Star Trek was inevitable: William Shatner is not just an actor to me; he IS Captain Kirk.

We were still sending astronauts to the moon that year. Sounds incredible now, doesn’t it; I was watching Star Trek episodes for the first time and men were walking on the moon on Apollo 16 and 17.  I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I suppose to a kid like me back then, it seemed possible, almost an ordinary job, like being a policeman or a teacher or a plumber. We were going to the moon, surely Mars was next? My favourite episode of the children’s cartoon series Mr Benn was the one when he went into the costume shop and put on a spacesuit; first aired in 1971, it was repeated for the first time in 1972 (episodes were repeated twice a year for two decades!)  and I would always watch the show hoping he’d pick that spacesuit again (crushed disappointment when he didn’t).

Receiving Star Trek Annuals for Christmas became a regular thing: I’d have the remaining Annuals each year, 1974 through to 1977. The tradition was myself and my brother Steven would each have some Annuals for Christmas, one of which we’d each get to unwrap as an early Christmas present on Christmas Eve… maybe to temper our rising pre-Christmas Day excitement to make my parent’s lives a little easier. My Christmas Eve treat was always that year’s Star Trek Annual (I think Steven’s was the Tom & Jerry Annual). The Star Trek Annuals obviously capitalised on the popular run of the show on the BBC,  reprinting three issues of the Gold Key comicbooks (originally printed in the USA from 1967 onwards.) I didn’t know any of that Gold Key stuff at the time, I always assumed they were new comics made just for the annuals, nor that there had actually been Star Trek Annuals for 1970, 1971 and 1972 beforehand. Curious to think that while Star Trek was ‘new’ here in the UK it was old history in the States, cancelled and done. Films and television shows had longer lifespans back then if only because they took longer to cross the pond and reach the rest of the world- not like these days with global launches. The world was a bigger place back then. Maybe infinite to a six year old.

You cannot imagine how thrilling just the cover of that 1973 annual was, the Enterprise, the alien planet with the shuttle on the surface. Living here in the Midlands in the UK during the early 1970s, Star Trek really was something special, so exciting- sure, it was from Hollywood, USA, but it might as well have been from another planet entirely for a young kid growing up here. I wonder if some of its appeal of those annuals were the bright colours- our television back then was ‘only’ black and white so when watching the tv show I was ignorant of all those bright colourful uniforms, sets etc. that burst into life in the comic strip.

Thanks to the research done by more committed Trekkies than I,  I’ve seen the transmission records for Star Trek on the BBC and its really odd how they did it, showing episodes in haphazard order- I appreciate there was no genuine continuity in Star Trek, it was from a time of episodic television, in which episodes generally hit the ‘reset’ button they ended, but it does seem curious how the BBC scheduled them. By 1972, the show had already been aired in its entirety and was now being repeated, albeit they were all new to me, unless I had indeed watched some the year before. But looking at it now- they repeated the season one finale, The City on the Edge of Forever, before the midseason Menagerie parts one and two which themselves aired before ‘proper’ season one opener The Man Trap. Its enough to make any Trekkie dizzy looking at it these days, but what six year-old kid cared about any of that?

I note on the transmission record that The Menagerie parts One and Two aired on 26th January and 2nd February 1972, actually  a few weeks before my birthday, so I was still just five, but I guess I must have seen them then because those particular episodes (like the scarier eps of Dr. Who) made such a mark on me (and wouldn’t be aired again until November 1973). I remember being scared witless by the Talosians, they haunted me for some time- maybe it was Alexander Courage’s eerie music that freaked me out so much. Its funny how you never really shake off those impressions from watching stuff at an early age. The Menagerie Parts One and Two remain two of my favourite Trek episodes (in fact I watched them again only a few nights ago) and whenever I watch them I always get creeped-out, as if that five-year-old kid buried in my subconscious relives those old shivers of fear. Likewise whenever I hear the music on that soundtrack boxset I have on disc it gets a tingle down my spine.  

Its those core impressions running deep. Just like when I rewatch Jaws, having been scared witless by it when I watched it in the cinema in 1976. You never forget that feeling and it lives on whenever you revisit it. Well, for me anyway. Maybe everyone else grows out of it, ha ha.

On the subject of films, Clapperboard started in April 1972, a children’s show about cinema hosted by Chris Kelly –  the ‘seventies really was some kind of Golden Age for Children’s television. When I got older I’d rush home from school to catch it (it aired on Mondays, at 4..25)  and it was no doubt a formative experience that instilled in me the seeds of my love of film. It was really quite intelligent and in-depth considering it was a ‘children’s show’ – back then such programmes didn’t talk down to the audience, and Chris Kelly was a great presenter. Two episodes about Space: 1999 in 1975 were especially interesting (I particularly enjoyed episodes looking at visual effects) and were included as a special feature in Network’s Space: 1999 Blu-ray set of season one. I wonder if Granada have many Clapperboard episodes on tape in the archive? You’d think they would have some value as an historical record, with regards its interviews over the years, if nothing else . I suppose Clapperboard was in some ways a children’s alternative to the BBC’s Film…. show which started its own run presented by Barry Norman in 1972 with, yes, Film 1972 (it changed its title with every year, and ran for over forty years, albeit it was never the same once Norman left it).

Other television shows that started in 1972  were Record Breakers with the great Roy Castle presenting, and the lunchtime mainstay Rainbow (although on that school lunchtime front, I much preferred Pipkins, which started the following year). Also 1972 saw the start of Sykes, the Eric Sykes sitcom that’s a cheeky favourite of mine. I think Eric Sykes was a really funny adult to us kids, he was great at physical humour, exaggerated expressions etc. I bought the complete series on DVD a few years back. Sykes was basically a colour remake (or reboot?) of his hit sixties comedy series, and used the same scripts,  and has dated a lot but remains great fun- a nostalgia trap, certainly. But then again, for those of us who lived it, I suppose everything from the 1970s is a nostalgia trap. Okay, maybe not those Donny Osmond singles. But I do still rather like the New Seeker’s “I’d Like to Teach the World To Sing (in Perfect Harmony),” a song I remember well from the Coca Cola ad of the time, albeit that used different singers.

But here’s a curious thought: we had astronauts on the moon, and we were (in the UK, anyway) four years away from Jaws, six years away from Star Wars, and ten years away from Blade Runner. It was all coming.

But not the astronauts on Mars, or me becoming an astronaut. Mr Benn got nearer to that dream than I.