Language doesn’t just describe culture.

Sometimes, it creates it.

In the Season One finale of Geekstorians, Dave explores the hidden history of geek language — how fans invented their own slang, references, in-jokes, and shorthand, and how that language quietly shaped modern geek culture and the internet itself.

From handwritten letters in the back pages of early science-fiction magazines, to fanzines, conventions, badges, and costumes… from Monty Python quotes and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to arcade slang, tabletop role-playing games, online gaming, text-message shorthand, memes, and chat rooms. This episode traces how fandom learned to communicate long before social media existed.

Along the way, we explore how shared language helped fandom survive moral panics, cancelled shows, shifting technology, and changing formats, not through manifestos or rules, but through jokes, references, and community shorthand.

Geek culture didn’t just grow around stories.

It grew around conversations.

This episode marks the end of Season One of Geekstorians. All ten episodes, plus the Christmas special, are now available.

If you’ve enjoyed the series, please consider rating, reviewing, or subscribing. It really helps the show find new listeners. You can also share your thoughts on Season One over at Geektown.co.uk or on social media.

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Toys were never just toys.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave traces the rise of the Plastic Empire — the moment when action figures, model kits, bricks, and collectibles stopped being side products and started becoming entire universes.

From the Star Wars Early Bird box that accidentally rewrote the rules of merchandising, to the 1980s cartoon-toy industrial complex, moral panics, and the birth of gender-segmented aisles, this is the story of how plastic shaped imagination, identity, and fandom itself.

Along the way, we explore LEGO’s uneasy relationship with licensed worlds, Gunpla’s transformation of fandom into craftsmanship, Warhammer’s hobbyist ecosystems, the rise of collector culture and shrine shelves, the collapse of toy superstores like Toys “R” Us, and how blind bags, loot-box logic, and digital skins quietly gamified collecting.

Finally, we look at the strangest evolution yet — a future where fans no longer wait for companies to make their toys at all, but design and print their own.

Because the Plastic Empire didn’t disappear.

It decentralised.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you’re subscribed or following Geekstorians wherever you listen, so you don’t miss future deep dives into the hidden history of geek culture.

You can find every episode at https://www.geektown.co.uk, along with Geektown Radio, our weekly show covering the latest TV, film, and gaming news.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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