Lunar Module and the Call of the Sea (Part One)

I

On Monday mornings at infant school, we did something called ‘News and Stories.’ These days it is known as ‘Show and Tell’ but ‘News and Stories’ had an additional ‘learning to write’ component. We would draw a picture and then take it to the teacher. She would write what you had drawn underneath. You would then copy the words and then stand in front of the class to tell everyone what you had drawn. Usually, the pictures depicted something that had happened within the family. Sometimes, it would show a present received, a new toy, perhaps. But on one memorable day, I gave the teacher a drawing of a lunar module.

I had watched the moon landing a few weeks earlier, my parents waking me to witness history, and I became obsessed with the space programme. I would do an anti-gravity ‘moonwalks’ around the garden with a saucepan on my head, pretending it was a space helmet. I would stack cardboard boxes to make a launchpad. I would jump as high as I could, pretending that I was Apollo 11. I was desperate to be able to jump high enough to leave the earth behind and travel through the stars: a wish that has never left me.

My picture depicted Astronauts (still worthy of a capital A) bouncing around outside the module, another rocket in the sky and a green blob representing the Earth. In the background, I could be seen floating above the most exotically named area of the moon I knew – the Sea of Tranquillity. She looked at it, screwed her nose up and said:

‘What is it?’

With pride at my masterpiece pricked, I said, ‘It’s a Lunar Module’. She sighed. Looked at it again, grimaced and said, ‘You can’t just make WORDS up!’

The phrase was still not in common usage, but her ignorance of such a monumental event shocked me, even at that age. I protested, explaining that a lunar module was a real thing. Mrs Mitchell refused to believe me, tearing my picture up and sending me to sit in the cloakroom ‘until I could tell the truth’.

I think she was particularly annoyed with me, as the previous week, I had presented a picture of new pyjamas. The pyjamas were not the issue, but she did not understand what was drawn on them. ‘It’s the pattern,’ I said, ‘it’s made up of these curvy things.’

I drew a picture of a paisley teardrop for her. She looked at it and sniffed. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘there is no such shape!’

I do not think I ever really recovered from the lunar module comment (or the bizarre idea that a drawn shape could not exist), and I couldn’t understand why something so obviously real was being called into question. Her comments and reactions so shaming that thoughts of being an astronaut went right out of my head. (As it turned out, I was not particularly good at science, so the chances of being an astronaut were slim anyway. However, I will always wonder what might have happened had I received some support and encouragement) and so, I kept an eye on the space programme… but quietly. I did not want to go through that humiliation and upset again, so thrilled in secret.

As I got older, I began to marvel at the pictures taken from subsequent moon landings, radio telescopes, satellites, Skylab, the lonesome bravery of the Voyager probes. I dreamed of one day travelling to the planets and beyond. I would watch for eclipses, Leonid’s, comets. When I reach my mid-teens, I would walk to the park on cold winter nights and sit on the top of the slide in the playground I wanted to be closer to the stars and imagined the spiral arms of the Milky Way embracing me, comforting me with the thought that one day I would be lost in its frigid wonder.

II

As a teenager, and in part due to the early exposure of the Apollo missions, I became obsessed with science-fiction: Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein, Niven. I saw these not just as entertainment but as a covert manual of possible worlds—a comforting way of navigating the future when it finally arrived, or at least preparation for what might be. The disappointment and melancholy at its non-arrival take us deep into hauntological space and gives an additional frisson to the phrase:

‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… ‘

This famous tagline precedes the opening chapter heading and text crawl of every Star Wars (Lucas, 1977) movie to date. It is the perfect illustration of the confusion of hauntology. The future is ray guns and lightsabres. It is Galactic Empires and faster than light spaceships, robots and clones and alien species. The optimist in me might say that all these things are in our future. Indeed, some of these concepts are being studied and experimented with at the time of writing, but this promised future is a spent Force.

The present perceives Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as a ‘classic’ movie. The vision of the future presented by Director George Lucas is already obsolete. With the opening line, you could argue that it has built-in obsolescence. The vision presented belongs in the recent past (1977) and the distant past (A Long Time Ago…). Despite its age, it remains both futuristic and nostalgic. So potent a mix that we hold onto it, clamouring for more of the gracious past-that-is-a-future or a future-that-is-a-past. 

Star Wars itself holds a special kind of nostalgia for me that trips into melancholia.

III

For all intents and purposes, Star Wars was made for me. Okay, not me personally, but being a thirteen-year-old boy in its year of release, I was very much the target audience. However, my relationship with Star Wars is a bit complicated, fraught, even. I love it, but that love did not come easily.

My parents had recently changed from The Daily Express as their daily newspaper to The Sun (I know, I know – in their defence, they always referred to it as ‘The Comic’,) and in the movie reviews section there was a ‘coming soon’ article that featured some very fuzzy pictures that had what I considered to be very stupid names attached. I dismissed it.

A few months later, my friend Liam excitedly showed me something he had bought. I saw the cover and read the title ‘Star Wars Treasury Edition.‘ (Thomas, 1978) I rolled my eyes and said, ‘Is it that stupid thing where everyone’s got numbers and letters for names?’ I couldn’t remember the now household names of R2-D2 and C-3PO.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but it’s not stupid! It’s amazing! ‘

I was less than convinced but agreed to read it. When I say, ‘read it,’ I mean that we were going through a phase of ‘reading’ comics, as you would when ‘reading a play’. We took different parts, did different voices for each of the characters and really cemented them into our psyches.

Pretty soon, having been absolutely blown away by the story, I had my own copy. It went everywhere with me. I studied it intently and knew every frame and every single word of the script. I could recite it. Eventually, I recorded myself reciting it onto a cassette and listened to myself reading it as I looked at the pictures. I know. You don’t have to say it. I know.

It was not until I left home and moved to Sheffield that I really started appreciating Star Wars as a movie, now retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It was shortly after I had moved there that it finally made it to TV. I did not have one in my dank little bedsit, so didn’t notice it had been on, but a friend told me that he had videoed it – along with Doctor Strange, the awful TV movie rather then the recent MCU adaptation– and I should go to his flat and watch them. Done deal. I had a bit of a thing for his flatmate, too, so a few hours in his company was not going to be a problem. We got food in and ate while we watched Doctor Strange. 

Then it was time for Star Wars.

The passage of time and the loss of obsessiveness served the movie well. I was able to watch it for what it was, without the yoke of expectation dragging it down. I absolutely loved it. So did my friend and his cute flatmate.

So, we watched it again.

And again.

And then a fourth time.

And then my friend said, ‘Hey, why don’t we just do a twenty-four-hour marathon!’

Eleven showings of Star Wars with toilet, food, and rewind breaks. Three people relaxed and slightly drunk on the sofa throughout. Bliss.

From then on, my tolerance for all things Star Wars increased. I never quite got into the serious fandom that could have been a real possibility had I enjoyed the first movie on its first viewing in Northallerton. I think that is a blessing, frankly… although I will admit to wearing a Stormtrooper uniform for an afternoon once.

I think my lack of excitement about the sequel trilogy stems from the almost ‘programmed-in’ disappointment of the first movie and latterly the prequels. I want it to be as good as my imagination was when I was thirteen. The recent trailers have piqued my interest, but then so did the sight of all those creatures coming out of the mist at the beginning of the trailer for The Phantom Menace. Look what happened there. 

Shortly before The Phantom Menace came out, I managed to reconnect with Liam after over twenty years, and we planned to see it in the Cinema where we would have seen the original Star Wars, back in 1977. Nice closure, yes?

Sadly, not long after we arranged the day and date, he vanished off the face of the earth. I suspect it was probably something to do with his Animal Liberation activities, but whatever the reason, it never happened. The new trilogy was again tainted by disappointment before the actual disappointment of the movies took hold. As if to compound the negativity, the cinema was unexpectedly closed a few days before it’s release date. My pre-booked tickets were worthless. It is now demolished and scheduled to be resurrected as a retirement village.

Hauntology is the loss of the hope of a remembered idyll – the exquisite pain of the ‘never were’ or the ‘never could be.’ The effect on the future that failures of the past project. It is nostalgia for a future that never happened. Living in the shadow of a failed future; mourning for something that had never occurred, a promise broken.

It is peculiar that most of my recollections about Star Wars have little to do with the actual movie and more about the events that defined my childhood and my disappointment.

Star Wars has always been there, and I doubt I would want it any other way.

IV

The ‘Star Wars Treasury Edition’ that I had was only part one of two, so I had no idea how the story ended. When part two eventually came out – and checking publication dates, it was only three months between issues, but it felt like over a year – I was practically rabid with excitement and again, once purchased, I adored every word of it.

Liam and I bought absolutely everything that had Star Wars even mentioned on it. At that point, the modern merchandising machine had not really kicked in – it did so as a response to the fervour surrounding Star Wars – which meant that ‘everything’ amounted to newspapers and magazines – sometimes, we’d even buy girls magazines like ‘Jackie’ for the posters and articles. Not what boys did in the seventies, but our obsession knew no gender barriers!

By this time, Liam and I were planning to go to the cinema, and we could believe that it was going to be another five months before we could get to see it. Back in those days, prints of movies were expensive, and there were limited numbers that ‘toured’ the country. The further you were from a large city, the longer it took to get to your local cinema. Being in Tunbridge Wells, we were going to get it relatively quickly, but then tragedy struck. After months of reading and planning and getting excited, my parents decided, quite unexpectedly, to move away from Tunbridge Wells and back to Yorkshire.

That was the opening of a barrel of mixed emotions (and metaphors). I was thrilled to be going home, but I was going to miss seeing Star Wars with my friend and co-conspirator. Not only that, but I also knew that moving back north would mean that the time between that moment and actually getting to see it would be extended. I am not sure which one I was more gutted by and begged my parents not to move house until I had seen Star Wars.

Understandably (now, not then), this did not happen, and indignity of indignities, my collection of cuttings was thrown away as ‘just some rubbish you didn’t need’. Mercifully, I was allowed to keep my Star Wars Treasury Editions and the few issues of Star Wars Weekly that had come out.

We moved to a village just outside of Thirsk, in North Yorkshire. I started a new school, and I missed having someone to obsess about Star Wars with. Despite enthusing about its ability to transport oneself to new worlds, no one in my year was really interested in science fiction.

My parents were aware that I was not really integrating very well into my new school and surroundings and bought me the Star Wars novelisation to cheer me up.

Whatever I was missing from my new school, the novel made up for. I was as obsessed with the novel as I had been with the Treasury editions. I lived that book. It became my world. I understood Luke’s loneliness and yearning for something exciting to happen.