Lambeth Fantastical - October 2023

 

Lambeth Fantastical – October 2023

 

Daleks, Doppelgangers, and the Gawry

 

Welcome to October’s Lambeth Fantastical. I have Doctor Who, James Bond and strange flying people on a mysterious far off island lined up for you this month.

 

First off, Remembrance of the Daleks, which was broadcast on the BBC 1 between the 5^th and 26^th of October 1988 and was part of the 25^th Anniversary of the show. It starred Sylvester McCoy as the seventh regeneration of the Doctor and Greenwich born Sophie Aldred as his companion, Ace. It was written by Rivers of London Author, Ben Aaranovich, who was only 23 at the time. The story took the Doctor back to where the series had started. London 1963, where he has to battle two rival factions of his arch enemies, the Daleks, out to retrieve a time travel device which he had left there. Theed Street and Windmill Walk, part of the much filmed Roupell Street conservation area of Waterloo, provided many of the locations, recreating the look and feel of early 60s London, but with the added menace of Daleks trundling along the narrow streets, threatening to exterminate anyone who stood in their way. In one scene a Dalek was blown up near the railway arch on Windmill Walk, setting off shop alarms and resulting in a number of calls to the police reporting a suspected IRA bomb.

 

 

The 14^th of October 1927 marked the birth date of James Bond actor, Roger Moore, who grew up in Stockwell’s Albert Square. As well as playing the role of 007 from 1973 to 1985 he starred in a huge number of popular TV series, including Ivanhoe and The Saint, as James Garner’s English cousin Beau in the western series Maverick, and alongside Tony Curtis in the 70s crime series The Persuaders. He rarely ventured into out and out scifi or horror, but he was very fond of his role in the 1970 film ‘The Man Who Haunted Himself’, in which he plays a businessman plagued by his evil doppelganger, split from him during a serious road traffic accident and leading a double life. Moore said of this role - "It was a film I actually got to act in, rather than just being all white teeth and flippant and heroic."

 

The 16^th of October 1697 was the birth date of scifi and fantasy pioneer Robert Paltock who resided in Back Lane (now known better as Lambeth High Street) in the mid18^th Century, long before the arrival of the Dalton Pottery. His novel The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is considered an early example of science fantasy and was extremely popular with romantic novelists and poets such as Sir Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was one of the first stories to be adapted as a pantomime for the London stage. The plot concerns Peter Wilkins, a Cornishman, who goes off to sea, is kidnapped pirates, and then shipwrecked. He is then washed ashore on a mysterious island with strange creatures such a cloven hooved rabbits, giant crustaceans, and a race of winged flying people known as the Gawry. Wilkins falls in love and marries a princess of the Gawry, before inventing a flying machine which takes him back to Cornwall to relay his fantastic tale. Today the novel is far less know than its contemporaries, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, but in the early 20^th Century, Tarzan author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, cited it as a major influence on his epic, eleven novel, John Carter of Mars series.

Upcoming - Waterloo Halloween Horror Guided Walk - Daylight Walk - 29th October or Darkness Walk 31st October. Book now if you dare!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/halloween-horror-walk-tickets-713596364937?aff=oddtdtcreator