Geekstorians

Anime is everywhere now. Streaming platforms, cinema screens, fashion, music, TikTok, gaming. But it didn’t arrive in the West through studios, marketing campaigns, or corporate strategy.It arrived through fans.In this bumper-length episode of Geekstorians, Dave uncovers the real, messy, rebellious story of how anime travelled from post-war Japan to British living rooms and American college basements. It’s a journey that begins with lone animators and wartime propaganda films, explodes into giant-robot fever, and eventually spreads across the globe through mail networks, tape-trading rings, fan-subtitling groups, Channel 4’s late-night experiments, the chaos of SMTV: Live… and one film that hit like a cinematic meteor: Akira.This is the tale of the people who carried anime by hand, copying tapes at 3am, mailing fanzines in brown envelopes, hosting screenings in overheated hotel rooms, building early websites on dial-up, and refusing to let shows like Gundam, Yamato and Macross slip into obscurity.It’s the hidden history of how a scattered, passionate, wildly inventive fandom reshaped global pop culture, long before the industry realised the world was watching.If you enjoy the episode, don’t forget to follow, rate, and share Geekstorians. It genuinely helps the series grow and reach more listeners. And for more geek culture deep-dives, visit Geektown.co.uk. lBpEafq5XiZIpS64QLST

In the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons became the focus of one of the most unusual moral panics in modern history.A tabletop role-playing game built around imagination, storytelling, and collaboration was suddenly accused of promoting occultism, psychological harm, and even violence. Dice were framed as sinister objects. Rulebooks were treated like dangerous texts. And ordinary teenagers playing fantasy games found themselves caught in a storm of fear and misinformation.In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown unpacks how D&D was pulled into the wider Satanic Panic, and why it became such a powerful symbol of adult anxiety about youth culture, imagination, and control.The story begins with a missing student and a media myth that refused to go away, then follows the rise of anti-D&D campaigners, sensationalist talk shows, and made-for-TV dramas that blurred fiction and fact. Along the way, we explore how moral crusades spread, how “experts” were created for television, and how a game about fantasy became a real-world scapegoat.But this is also the story of what actually happened around the gaming table, and why Dungeons & Dragons endured attempts to ban it, blame it, or brand it dangerous. Long after the panic faded, the game went on to influence video games, television, film, and modern fandom itself.A deep dive into the Satanic Panic, moral hysteria, and the unlikely survival of one of the most influential games ever made.I’m Dave from Geektown.And this is Geekstorians. lBpEafq5XiZIpS64QLST

Gaming didn’t just grow up... it took over.In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave dives into the chaotic, brilliant rise of gaming fandom: from the arcades of the late ’70s and the night Space Invaders caused Tokyo to mint extra coins, to the Atari 2600 bringing pixelated magic into the living room, to the bedroom coders who unknowingly kick-started a creative revolution across the UK and US.We trace the console culture wars - Nintendo vs Sega, Mario vs Sonic, identity vs identity - and how gaming magazines, tip lines and school-yard myths became the pre-internet backbone of fan knowledge. Then it’s onto LAN parties, MMOs that became entire eras of people’s lives, the WoW meteor strike that reshaped the genre overnight, and the moment consoles finally connected the world through Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Halo 2’s multiplayer explosion.Finally, we reach the age of Twitch, YouTube, esports arenas, indie devs, Discord servers and sprawling online communities. A culture that is messy, generous, chaotic, creative, and very much alive.This is the story of how gamers built one of the most influential fandoms on the planet... one joystick, one cartridge, one guild, one livestream at a time.

n this episode of Geekstorians, Dave dives into one of the most heated and strangely human conflicts in modern fandom: the battle for canon.From the moment Star Wars quietly shifted a blaster bolt in 1997, the ground beneath our favourite universes began to move. Suddenly, creators weren’t the only ones shaping continuity. Fans were scrutinising every frame, showrunners were building puzzles inside their storylines, and entire franchises were juggling multiple timelines at once.We explore the rise of forensic fandom, the chaos of competing continuities, the fury of finales that don’t land, the strange elegance of narrative retcons that do, and why video games blew the old idea of a single canon to pieces. Along the way we revisit Lost, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Witcher, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate 3, and more — all to uncover how canon became an ecosystem rather than a single authoritative truth.And ultimately, we ask: Why do we care so deeply about what “really happened” in worlds that only exist because we love them?For more episodes and everything else we do, visit Geektown.co.uk. For weekly TV news, reviews and release dates, check out Geektown Radio, wherever you get your podcasts.

Television didn’t always remember. For decades, episodes reset like clockwork, characters lived in cheerful time loops, and anything resembling continuity was considered a liability. Then came a wave of rebellious creators, strange experiments, and a generation of fans armed with VCRs — and everything changed.In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave rewinds to the era when TV grew up. From Hill Street Blues quietly teaching networks how to tell long-form stories, to Star Trek: The Next Generation bending the rules, to Twin Peaks turning mystery into obsession, and The X-Files training audiences to become detectives, this was the decade television learned to think in arcs.We dive into J. Michael Straczynski’s audacious five-year blueprint for Babylon 5, and how it helped invent the modern showrunner/fandom feedback loop. Then it’s on to Buffy the Vampire Slayer — the series that rewrote the emotional architecture of genre TV and launched a writer’s room that would shape the next twenty years of storytelling.After that comes the rise of cable: Angel, Stargate SG-1, Carnivàle, and the 2005 Doctor Who revival becoming proof that genre could be ambitious, sincere, and mainstream. And finally, the 2000s network scramble — the adrenaline of 24, the puzzle-box frenzy of Lost, the heartbreak of Firefly, the ambition of Battlestar Galactica, and the improbable triumph of Fringe.All of it leads to the blueprint that streaming would later inherit — and occasionally break — as binge culture transformed how we watched, talked, and obsessed.This is the story of how geek TV conquered the schedule, reshaped fandom, and taught the world that continuity isn’t a burden… it’s a promise.Geekstorians is written and hosted by Dave from Geektown. For more TV, film and gaming news, visit Geektown.co.uk, or listen to our sister show Geektown Radio.

On 17th November 1978, CBS aired the first ever Star Wars spin-off — a chaotic, disco-tinged Christmas variety show featuring Wookiee domestic life, baffling guest stars, and the on-screen debut of Boba Fett. It aired once… and then disappeared.But Star Wars has fans.And fans do not let things disappear.In this Geekstorians Christmas Special, we unwrap the unbelievable true story of the Star Wars Holiday Special: its overnight vanishing act, the bootleg trail that kept it alive, the obsessive hunt for surviving recordings, the rise of fan archivists determined to clean up every frame, and the moment this forgotten piece of TV slowly drifted back into the galaxy — in ways no one in 1978 could ever have predicted.Featuring Wookiees, VHS tapes, Boba Fett’s origins, questionable musical numbers, and the fandom that refused to let the strangest artefact in Star Wars history fade away.

In the 1980s, a strange new box arrived in our living rooms — the VHS player. It was noisy, chunky, and occasionally tried to eat your favourite film… but it changed everything.In this episode, Dave rewinds through the story of how home video broke the monopoly of the movie studios, terrified censors, and accidentally created the first generation of fan-filmmakers. From Mary Whitehouse’s “Video Nasties” crusade to Kevin Smith maxing out his credit cards to make Clerks, this is the tale of how VHS gave ordinary people the power to choose what they watched — and in doing so, redefined geek culture itself.Listen for:• The forgotten role of a door-to-door video rental van• The panic that birthed Britain’s “Video Nasty” blacklist• How a New Jersey shop clerk became a cult-film icon• Why imperfection made VHS feel alive🎙️ Written & Presented by Dave Elliott🔗 More at Geektown.co.uk

In Episode 2 of Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown explores how comic books made the leap from pulp entertainment to serious storytelling. The episode traces the long road from the restrictions of the Comics Code and the rise of underground comix to the British invasion of the 1980s and the landmark releases that changed everything.Along the way, it looks at the forces that shaped the medium, from political satire and counterculture to literary ambition and creative risk. The story leads up to the arrival of books like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and Maus, and the legacy that followed in film, television and modern graphic fiction.A thoughtful, accessible deep dive into the moment comics truly grew up, told with the usual mix of research, atmosphere and Geektown warmth.

In the first episode of Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown travels back to the early days of science fiction to explore how fandom really began. Long before Comic-Con and long before the internet, readers were already finding each other through magazine letter pages, homemade zines and the earliest fan clubs and meet-ups. These small creative communities laid the foundations for the fandoms we know today.The episode looks at how those early fans connected, how ideas spread around the world and how the first generation of sci-fi readers helped shape everything that came after. From the rise of pulp magazines to the birth of fan culture in the 1930s, it shows how passion, curiosity and a love of stories built the roots of modern geek culture.Geekstorians blends storytelling, research and sound design to uncover the often forgotten history behind the worlds we love. This is where the story of fandom begins.