The coordinates are set and the TIME TUNNEL is ready to take you back to the year when Khan unleashed his wrath, Philip K. Dick died and Matt Smith was born!

Film Focus

It was the film that secured the future of the Star Trek franchise in cinemas. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, creatively driven by director Nicholas Meyer, laid the foundation of everything that came afterwards, right up to last year’s J.J. Abrams re-boot. First run takings of over $78 million guaranteed a third movie, while the shocking death of Spock offered a new creative direction for the spin-off film series. It has lasted the test of time, and is still the best Trek movie.

Variety called the movie “satisfying”, acclaiming it as “closer in spirit and format to the popular TV series than to its big-budget predecessor,” dubbing the final reel a “classic of emotional manipulation.”

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert noted “the Star Trek stories have always been best when they centered around their characters.” Commenting on Ricardo Montalban’s Khan, “each film is only as good as its villain… Montalban doesn’t overact. He plays the character as a man of deeply wounded pride, whose bond of hatred with Admiral Kirk is stronger even than his traditional villain’s desire to rule the universe.”


Other Movies

1982 was a banner year for fantasy cinema. The range on offer covered blockbuster hits like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and noble commercial failures like Blade Runner and The Dark Crystal (both of which had more significant longer term impacts on the genre as a whole). There’s a follow-up coming this year, but when Tron debuted in 1982 it was a graphical revelation: no one knew movies could look like this.

B-level movies were alive and thriving too, with VHS only starting to have an impact on Hollywood: 1982 releases included The Thing, Conan the Barbarian, Poltergeist, Creepshow, the arty Cat People, the hilarious Q: The Winged Serpent and the thoughtful Android.

Oddball Flick

Liquid Sky is little seen these days, but it’s a curio worth watching at least once. Written and directed by Russian TV documentary maker Slava Tsukerman, it’s an alien invasion movie filtered through the early 1980s new wave club scene. The aliens are initially after heroin, but decide orgasmic sex hormones are more to their liking.

Anne Carlise (Desperately Seeking Susan), who played two roles in the movie, also contributed to the script. The film was a cult hit, playing in cinemas in New York, Boston and Washington for several years.


Television

1982 saw the launch of Channel 4, the channel that brought a host of archive telefantasy shows to a new audience, including The Avengers and The Prisoner.

The US saw the launch of the oddly similar Tales of the Gold Monkey and Bring ‘Em Back Alive, both short-lived cash-ins on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also new to US TV this year was Knight Rider, launching both the Hoff and his talking car on lucrative careers. Various attempts to revive the series have repeatedly come to naught.

Doctor Who soldiered on in 1982, with new Doctor Peter Davison the youngest actor to take the role (until recently). January saw his debut in Castrovalva (with the series now running twice-weekly), and the Cybermen made a shocking companion-killing return in March in Earthshock.

An actor named Paul McGann made his TV debut this year in a Play for Today episode called Wishing Wall. Another Doctor Who star, Billie Piper, was born in 1982 (22 September), as was Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith (28 October).

Coming to an end this year was the long-running The Incredible Hulk, which had started in 1977. The final season consisted of only seven episodes and ended in May 1982 with something of a whimper, having begun far more strongly five years before.

Games

Videogames were just really taking off in the early 1980s, and film tie-ins were front and centre: there was a great game for Tron, while the tie-in with E.T. was one of the most notable flops in the early history of gaming.

More importantly, Parker Brothers released Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (on Atari 2600 and Intellivision), the first Star Wars video game. Bigger even than that was the launch of the ZX Spectrum, responsible for so many kids discovering programming and going on to become the creators of today’s biggest videogame titles.


Books

Arthur C. Clarke launched a sequel to his 2001: A Space Odyssey, under the imaginative title 2010: Odyssey Two. Cult US SF author Philip K. Dick died of a heart attack: he’d seen and approved early footage from Blade Runner, based on his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? His stock has never stopped rising since and he’s been a major influence on the genre in books, film and TV. The Hugo Award for Best Novel went to C. J. Cherryh for Downbelow Station.

Comics

This period in comics history saw the rise of creators asserting their rights over their material, with publishers now forced to offer royalties to writers and artists to prevent an exodus of talent to the growing independent sector. More creator-owned comics begin to appear, and the rise of graphic novel was underway.

1982 saw the debut of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' V for Vendetta. One of several attempts to relaunch the Eagle took place this year, while another educational title, Look and Learn, was cancelled with issue #1042.

Notable 1982 Births

Born in 1982, aside from Matt Smith and Billie Piper, were Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man), Anna Paquin (True Blood), Jessica Biel (Blade: Trinity), Jared Padalecki (Supernatural), Elisha Cuthbert (24), Kristen Kreuk (Smallville), Yvonne Starhovski (Chuck), Jewel Staite (Firefly), Allison Mack (Smallville), and David Blue (Stargate Universe).


Notable 1982 Deaths

Those who died in 1982 included Hitchcock star Grace Kelly, actor John Belushi, British SF writer Edmund Cooper, The Outer Limits’ Warren Oates, and Dad’s Army’s Arthur Lowe.

The Real World

Meanwhile, in the real world Mark Thatcher (son of UK Prime Minister Margaret) went walk-about in the Sahara, The DeLorean Motor Company went bankrupt (Back to the Future used a DeLorean as its time machine), the Falklands war broke out, Michael Fagan visited the Queen uninvited, Vic Morrow was killed on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, and ‘emoticons’ were invented.

By Brian J. Robb