Breakfast club with space heroes

Barbara Bain, right, as Dr Helena Russell in Space:1999. Ms Bain was
a celebrity guest at Autographica, in March 2014

As strange moments in life go it's one that is vivid and does not fade. And that is not by lucky coincidence. 

For there are day-to-day memories, and then there are vivid snapshots - moments in time etched forever in your mind, ready to be replayed whenever you choose.

An example of this "vivid snapshot" technique was the morning I enjoyed breakfast in the company of some of my childhood heroes from the world of science fiction.

Walking into the breakfast room at the conference hotel I saw Kenny Baker, the actor who played R2-D2 in the Star Wars movie. He was seated at a table with actress Valerie Gale, who accompanied him.

He waved and called out "Bermuda" as Heather and I chose a table and sat down. We'd spoken to him the previous day at the reception gathering at the beginning of the March 2014 Autographica event, and that is how he had found out that I'd travelled from Bermuda.

A few moments after I'd entered the breakfast room, Space:1999 actress Barbara Bain also walked in. Like Mr Baker and Ms Gale, she was a celebrity guest for the weekend. She'd attended the reception drinks event held in the atrium at the top level of the Radisson Heathrow hotel on the outskirts of London. Others there included moonwalking Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Alan Bean.

Star Wars and Space:1999 were touchstone entertainment favourites of mine as I grew up in the 1970s. Now, to be sitting down for breakfast in the same room as two of the well-known names from those sci-fi adventures felt unique and almost unreal.

Shortly afterwards, in the main hotel lobby I encountered Dave Prowse, the man who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy.  

Barbara Bain answers audience questions
during the Autograhica weekend, 2014

The conference was filled with other encounters and moments, including opportunities to speak briefly with Ms Bain, Mr Aldrin, Mr Baker, Mr Prowse and others. I wrote about the event in a contemporaneous blog post eight years ago.

That moment at breakfast has remained vivid in my mind, more so than if I'd taken a photograph, and far more than the most other recollections.

 

The reason for such clarity is a technique I deliberately used. It is akin to taking a detailed, mental snapshot. For I was acutely aware how impossible that moment would have seemed to my 11-year-old self; not only seeing a hero from Star Wars and a heroine from Space:1999, but simultaneously in the same hotel dining room for breakfast.

When extraordinary special moments come along in life, use this technique.  Recognise those moments for what they are - gifts in life - and intimately preserve the sights, sounds and feelings by consciously taking in as much as you can to create a snapshot memory.

New Star Wars - a train wreck or last hurrah?

What lies ahead? a scene from the trailer for
the final Star Wars story in the Skywalker saga

A second trailer has been released for what will be the final movie of the Star Wars saga that began 42 years ago.  So will the film be a last crunching pile-up moment of the train wreck delivered by 2017's The Last Jedi, or will it be an uplifting hurrah?

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is episode nine and the conclusion of the Skywalker story, which started in 1977 with the original Star Wars (later renamed Episode 4: A New Hope). That first movie set in motion one of the 20th century's major cultural and cinematic phenomenon.

Sadly, two years ago the franchise suffered the shockingly divisive episode eight, The Last Jedi. In December we shall see what can be salvaged from the wreckage, and whether what should be a cinematic climax like no other will manage to at least be a fitting finale.

The Star Wars story has spiraled downward dramatically in the past few years. Depending on your point of view that nosedive may have started with the opening segment of the current sequel trilogy, The Force Awakens, in 2015, or been nailed by the calamitous storytelling and legacy mishandling of The Last Jedi.

How bad are things for Star Wars? Consider this: there is a real chance The Rise of Skywalker will not reach $1 billion at the box office, a mere four years after episode seven, The Force Awakens, became the third film in history to take more than $2 billion. For popularity to wane that suddenly and dramatically takes a lot of doing. Disney must be fretting.

For context, The Last Jedi did not attract multiple repeat viewings the way most of its predecessors did, and topped out with a worldwide box office total of $1.3 billion, while Star Wars spin-off Solo, released five months later, was a relative flop taking only $393 million.

A final hurrah: rebel spaceships, many recognisable from their
appaerance in the original Star Wars movie in 1977

It's true that financial success alone is no indicator of artistic merit and integrity, there are plenty of outstanding creative works that have made pitiful financial returns. But the Star Wars franchise was a seemingly indestructible cash-cow when, earlier this decade, Disney splashed $4 billion to buy Lucasfilm and the rights to create these new films.

The first half of the new trailer shows clips from each of the previous eight movies in the saga. Interestingly they are shown in order of their original release date rather than chronologically by the events they portray. What stands out is the clean, clear, and bright crispness of the original trilogy - a harking back to a more innocent escapist era and a magnificent story arc that stretched across those three movies.

We then see clips from the hit-and-miss prequel trilogy, before we pass into today's convoluted and muddled sequel trilogy, and finally a few short snippets of the upcoming movie. Very little is revealed, although there is another lightsabre duel between Rey and Adam Driver - sorry Kylo.

That slip, where I could remember the actor's name but not the name of the chief villain he portrays, is instructive of the major problem this trilogy has - and that is a crippling lack of character "buy in". This new movie might as well start with a blank slate, because The Last Jedi failed to develop any of the characters in meaningful ways and followed a preposterous storyline. It also managed to end with no compelling reason for audiences to return to see what happens next.

With no character or story arc to bind things together, this new trilogy is broken. The Rise of Skywalker for all intents and purposes is a standalone movie. And while it is too early to write off the new film, it is hard not to feel a sense of forboding.

Director and writer JJ Abrams has to find a resolution to a 42-year saga in a single film that was left high and dry by its immediate predecessor. There is some hope, because Abrams has shown flashes of skill, from Super 8 to his fairly steady handling of The Force Awakens. But what is required now is a tall order.

Only a genuine redemption of Luke Skywalker, one of cinema's most cherished heroes, is likely to save the day in the wake of this greatest legacy character's treatment in The Last Jedi. In this trailer and the first released earlier in the year, we get to hear his voice. This time we also hear the voice of Emperor Palpatine and the sinister breathing of Darth Vader, both of whom were thought destroyed in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

So to return to the question, what lies ahead? Will it be a final pile-up train wreck moment, or will it be an uplifting hurrah for Star Wars? Let's hope for the latter. Over to you JJ.

• The new trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker