Gareth Preston's Blog, page 2

Bright Eyes – Play for Tomorrow – Very British Futures

Out now on your favourite podcast platform, the latest episode of Very British Futures, covering Bright Eyes, the second Play for Tomorrow from the makers of Play for Today. Broadcast in 1982. Written by Peter Prince and directed by Peter Duffell.

New Year’s Eve 1999. Great Britain is part of the European State. The Euro army is in the midst of a controversial war in the Middle East. Wealthy businessman Sam Howard has come to a French prison to see his daughter Cathy, who has been arres...

Crimes – Play for Tomorrow – Very British Futures

To coin a phrase “Good news everybody!” There’s been a hiatus with the Very British Futures podcast for a few months, although I have been recording several conversations. The reason was that I am presenting a mini-series about 1982 BBC anthology Play for Tomorrow and I wanted it to be hitting your ears on a weekly basis. So I couldn’t release the first one until they were all ready to go.

But today is the day and you can hear what Rod Brown (host of Nostalgia Tours podcast) and myself made o...

Farewell, Great Macedon + The Queen of Time

I’m pleased to share with you that I am the guest on the latest episode of the podcast Doctor Who – Too Hot for TV, hosted by Dylan Rees. Together we are looking back at two unmade stories from the 1960’s – Farewell, Great Macedon and The Queen of Time. Both have been recreated as dramatised audiobooks by Big Finish. I’m particularly happy with the way this one has turned out. In fact I think it’s the best of my three guest spot so far because I sound more confident and fluid and there’s a lot o...

Busy times for friends

Hope you are well. Apologies for it being a bit quiet around the blog this year, but I’ve been working on a few projects so that I can have a bit of a podcast event in the not too distant future. It’s a mini-season of Play for Tomorrow and I want all six episodes in the can, to guarantee I can release them weekly. In addition, I’ve recorded two further installments on Codename: Icarus and The Tomorrow People, which hopefully follow soon after. Meanwhile at work I’ve been working on my first auth...

Out of this World – Very British Futures

When I started the Very British Futures podcast I wanted to shine a light on programmes that didn’t have much of a following, that didn’t get talked about much online. Since then I’ve learnt that its good to mix up such programmes with well known titles because listeners like to hear discussions of shows they’ve seen as well as discover old series.

Listen to the Out of this World episode on Spotify

Out of this World is exactly the kind of series I designed this podcast for, and researching...

Cruise of the Gods – Very British Futures

SF conventions have been making appearances in comedy films for decades. It’s not hard to understand why, as the exotic fantasy worlds of science fiction meeting the mundanity and compromises of the present day and its fallible inhabitants creates a gap that is ripe for observation and storytelling. Then there’s the glamour of celebrity and the shared contract of delusion that exists between artists and their fans. Fandom is a place that build marvellous communities, but also be tawdry and hurtf...

VR Documentaries for Mental Health Awareness and Empathy

A large part of my role as a Technical Officer in Higher Education is developing and investigating Virtual Reality headsets. One of the main challenges for integrating virtual reality technology into degree education is making it relevant. Finding apps which demonstrate the strength of immersive tech in providing something which flat screens and videos cannot. So as part of my job I am always on the lookout for new VR apps which achieve this, and in the last few months I have come across three e...

Doctor Who – Dark Contract

After the success of his first BBC Audiobook, Will Hadcroft is back with a new Doctor Who short story, this time featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, and read by Matthew Waterhouse. He’s delivered an entertaining little SF adventure with a subtext about human exploitation by both other humans and extraterrestrials.

Cover artwork

Still trying to return Tegan to Heathrow airport, the Doctor instead lands the TARDIS in 1830s London. Happily the air hostess turns out to be somet...

Doctor Who in VR – The Edge of Time on the Quest 3

Ever since computer games were invented, Doctor Who fans like myself have wanted to see our favourite show to be part of that world. From Doctor Who – The First Adventure on the venerable BBC B Micro, through Dalek Attack on the PC and Spectrum, to more recent attempts such as Lego Dimensions. Then in 2019 a fully fledged VR game arrived The Edge of Time, courtesy of Maze Theory, but never seemed to make the impact such major project should had. After all, this game lets the player travel in the...

Exploring A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough | Very British Futures Podcast

I am delighted to announce a new episode of my podcast Very British Futures. The first hopefully of a revived run of the show, after several months of concentrating my time on Bolton Little Theatre and my job at the university.

A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough are fairly obscure today, compared to programmes like Quatermass or Doctor Who, but during 1961-62 they were popular successes for the BBC. It seems appropriate to talk about them now, at a time when Netflix has had a ...