A Long Time Ago... with Nick Fothergill
Hello there.
Welcome to A Long Time Ago… the fortnightly series where I ask a different guest to share with us a favourite Star Wars story and historical site. This started as a tie-in to my first piece of published writing, the article ART WARS for Star Wars Insider #226. The whole archive of my exploration of fourteen ancient art sites and every Star Wars story on my shelves can be found here.
Today, I hand over to Nick Fothergill!
Nick, a former Year 3 teacher, has been writing and adapting plays for children for years. He is currently working on his first novel called 'Viper Boy', a coming-of-age story set in Cappadocia during the early 10th century AD. Nick was also my tutor for my Year 9 school project, for which I chose to learn playwriting!
His submission today came with the added title: IN A VERY DIRTY LAND FAR, FAR AWAY…
In A Galaxy Far, Far Away…
The story of Luke Skywalker and his father Darth Vader is my favourite. Its narrative runs through three films, Episodes IV, V and VI. These were the first Star Wars films. Don’t worry, I won’t discuss all three of them! I will concentrate on the first one, Episode IV – A New Hope.
Like many other children, I watched sci-fi programmes on TV, like Doctor Who and Star Trek. The overriding feeling I got from them was that the future was going to be extraordinarily clean.
In 1977, A New Hope entered our lives. I loved the look of this film. It was different. It showed us a realistic world of muck and dust. Droids were not all shiny and new. The droids C-3PO and R2-D2 were shown battered and dirty. C-3PO talked about R2-D2’s ‘rusty innards’. Han Solo’s spacecraft, the Millennium Falcon was old and looked distinctly unreliable. Luke’s first reaction on seeing it was ‘What a load of junk!’
This ‘dirty’ look to the film was a deliberate policy by George Lucas, the creator and director of the film. He called it the ‘used future’ aesthetic.
Another thing I loved about A New Hope was that it was funny. There were the conversations between the loquacious C-3PO and the non-speaking R2-D2 who could only make noises. These dialogues should not have worked, but they did, beautifully. They were funny and endearing in equal measure, showing the droids’ close friendship.
Likewise, the cynical, dead-pan humour of Han Solo was complemented by the noises that came out of the mouth of his first mate and friend, the Wookiee, Chewbacca. Again, it shouldn’t have worked. But it did. Han also had an on-going love-hate relationship with Princess Leia which was witty and charming, rather like the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s.
I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons as a child watching old black and white British Second World War films on TV. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who heard an echo of those films in the scenes when Luke and Co. set out to destroy the Death Star in their beaten-up X-Wing fighters. There was, for instance, Cliff Robertson and his squadron of Mosquitoes trying to bomb the overhanging rock in 633 Squadron or Guy Gibson and 617 Squadron attacking the Ruhr dams in The Dam Busters.
A New Hope is an enduring film which is great fun and wonderfully mucky!
In Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey…
I could have chosen Chatham Dockyard or the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul but I think my favourite historical site is Goreme in Cappadocia, a region of Turkey. I have been reading about it since I was at university and last November, my wife and I went there. Nowadays, it is most famous for balloon trips. What you see, from on high up in your balloon, is an extraordinary sight.
Goreme is in the middle of a unique landscape of rocks, caves, ‘fairy chimneys’ and no less than thirty-six underground cities! Inhabited from the time of the Hittites (about 2000 BC), these caves and cities were often used as places of refuge because of the continuous warfare that raged over the land.
Goreme itself has an open air museum near to it which has eight tiny Byzantine cave churches and chapels with beautifully painted interiors dating from the 4th to the 13th centuries AD. It is not far from the vast underground city of Kaymakli.
Thank you so much Nick!
These posts come out every other Sunday so subscribe today to discover the next guest and their picks!
Cheers,
Harvey