Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with one of the strangest survival stories in geek culture.

In ‘The Wilderness Years’, Dave looks at what happened after Doctor Who disappeared from television in 1989. No big finale. No proper ending. Just a show the BBC quietly stopped making, and an audience that refused to accept that as the end of the story.

This episode follows the long years when Doctor Who survived off screen through novels, audio dramas, conventions, magazines and the sort of organised fan determination Britain tends to produce whenever an institution behaves like it has misplaced its own brain.

It is also the story of how the people keeping Doctor Who alive during those years turned out to be the people who would eventually bring it back. Writers such as Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Paul Cornell all emerge from the wider culture that kept the show going while the BBC was looking the other way.

From the BBC’s attempts to sideline the series, to the 1996 TV movie, to Big Finish giving the Doctor a life beyond the screen, this is an episode about what happens when a show stops being just a programme and becomes something its audience is not prepared to lose.

If the first two episodes of Season 2 were about collapse and near-disaster, this one is about survival through absence. About what lives on when the official version disappears.

Geekstorians is a documentary-style podcast from Dave Elliott of Geektown, exploring the hidden history of geek culture, fandom, film, television, comics and gaming.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with a story about collapse.

In ‘When Giants Fall’, Dave looks at three companies that once seemed unstoppable — Atari, Sega, and Blockbuster — and how each of them, in very different ways, lost their grip on the future.

From Atari’s collapse after the video game crash of the early 1980s, to Sega’s spectacular inability to get out of its own way during the console wars, to Blockbuster staring straight at the future and somehow deciding it probably wasn’t important, this is an episode about what happens when success turns into inertia.

It is also a story about what comes after.

Because these collapses did not just leave wreckage behind. They reshaped the industries around them. Atari’s fall cleared the way for Nintendo. Sega lost the hardware war but survived as a games company. And Blockbuster became the monument everyone points to when talking about businesses that had every chance to adapt and somehow talked themselves out of it.

If last week’s episode was about a film nearly vanishing, this one is about something bigger: the moment giants stop noticing the ground moving underneath them.

Geekstorians is a documentary-style podcast from Dave Elliott of Geektown, exploring the hidden history of geek culture, fandom, film, television, comics and gaming.

If you’d like to support Geekstorians in the Webby People’s Voice Awards, you can vote here:

https://wbby.co/57464N

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 2 of Geekstorians begins with one of the great near-disasters in modern geek history.

This episode tells the story of how Toy Story 2 nearly disappeared during production, not because of a studio fight or some dramatic Hollywood scandal, but because of a routine command, a failing backup system, and the sort of technical catastrophe that still makes creative people wince.

But this is not just a story about Pixar nearly losing a film.

It is also the perfect starting point for a season about how geek culture survives when everything goes wrong. The glitches, collapses, bad calls, money problems and moments of blind panic behind the films, games and franchises that now feel untouchable.

If Season 1 was about how fandom built itself, Season 2 is about how geek culture kept going when it should probably have fallen apart.

If you'd like to support Geekstorians in the Webby People’s Voice Awards, you can vote here:

https://wbby.co/57464N

Geekstorians is a documentary-style podcast from Dave Elliott of Geektown, exploring the hidden history of geek culture, fandom, film, television, comics and gaming.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.