The Tribble with Blackpool...
To boldly go where no one has gone before. That was the motto of Star Trek, the enduring sci-fi franchise in which the crew of a starship travel through the universe encountering new places, new species, and new experiences. However, when a £1million Star Trek exhibition opened in Blackpool two years ago we had a strong sense that this was somewhere we HAD been before.
The original curator of the exhibit was one Carol Stenburg - a New York born entrepreneur who already had a history of failed exhibitions. She was the director of a Lego exhibition called "Art of the Brick Ltd" which was dissolved after 2 years, and a tour company "Exhibitours Ltd" which went into liquidation owing £17,811. That may not sound a lot of money, unless of course it is owed to you.
Cleveleys News reported this detail on 12th July 2016 before the doors even opened:
This is just one of many similar debts totaling more than £300,000 revealed to have been written off by Blackpool Council for last year - quite a blow for Blackpool Council, and something that ultimately has to affect Blackpool residents. If they don't end up paying for losses like this via their council tax then they will pay for it in a loss of services.
The directors of this particular company Paul Gregg and David Rogers already had twenty liquidated or dissolved companies between them prior to opening up Kuma Exhibitions Ltd (formerly Apollo Resorts Blackpool Ltd). Carol Stenburg wasn't on the board of directors this time but you can see she was in good company. Liquidating this company leaving Blackpool Council and others owed hundreds of thousands was not boldly going where these guys had never been before. It was going exactly where they had been dozens of times before.
With credentials like that it begs the question why were these people allowed to open up and run another limited company into the ground in Blackpool? Did nobody bother to check their history of companies, or were Blackpool Council so desperate to fill the empty unit left by the truly awful Dinosaur World that they just didn't care?
The concept of the attraction wasn't exactly an undiscovered country for Blackpool either. A Doctor Who exhibition ran successfully from 1974 until 1985 and was accompanied by some impressive and highly memorable illuminations. Its demise coincided with that of the show's original run, which lasted on screens until 1989 but is generally accepted to have gone downhill after the brilliant Peter Davison left in 1984. Much like the show and its titular character Blackpool's exhibition "regenerated" in 2004 but only lasted a few years before reluctantly closing. Unprecedented interest in the rebooted show meant that a bigger and better exhibition soon opened in Cardiff and many of the props on loan to Blackpool were recalled for that.
The lesson learned from the Doctor Who exhibition should have been clear - a sci-fi exhibit can survive in Blackpool while the show is low-budget, but as soon as it gains any serious popularity Blackpool simply can't afford it. The Star Trek franchise had just been given a new lease of life in a cinematic incarnation as well as in a new TV series in development at the time of the exhibitions opening. The exhibition clearly tried to cash in on this but just couldn't live up to the hype. Cleveleys News correspondents visited the exhibit during its first year and our opinion was that it was very much for "fans only". A collection of replica props from the original 1960s series would not be of much interest to the current generation of Pine Nuts (that's fans of cinematic Trek's Chris Pine for you non-geeks). One exhibit was actually just a list of the films written on the wall! Something you could learn by looking on IMDB, and not exactly worth the then £15 ticket price.
But despite the failed company, the exhibition has not closed! It was rescued by German businessman and lifelong Star Trek fan Martin Netter for the sum of £150,000. Netter reportedly owns the largest collection of Star Trek memorabilia in the world, which has to be good news for Blackpool, right? Surely he can get rid of the pointless and boring replicas and the list of Star Trek films and bring in some real Tribbles? Well, we haven't visited since, but from the recent reviews on Trip Advisor it seems that even 5 months after this deal took place the exhibition is still running on promises of great things to come. One reviewer described it as "a work in progress which is still working through some copyright issues".
To be clear, there are new items in the exhibition since the new tenure including many actual props from the Star Trek show and movies, such as Spock's headband and tricorders. It sounds like the list of films is still up on the wall though. The reduced entry price of £10 (correct at time of going to press) also seems more reasonable. If you're a Trekkie or a Trekker (they are accommodating to both), please do come and visit Blackpool and support the exhibition. We would like to see it live long and prosper because, despite what some may say, we at Cleveleys News love Blackpool and believe it really does have a lot to offer visitors. In fact stuff like this makes us feel angry, not smug. We don't enjoy being right about Carol and her cronies 2 years ago (well okay we do enjoy being right a little bit). What we really want is for Blackpool Council to realise that presiding over the entertainment capital of the UK is a massive, weighty responsibility that needs people who understand what entertainment actually is. A room full of replica props from a 1960s TV show is not exactly going to compete with Alton Towers, is it? It doesn't even compete with everything else on Blackpool's promenade! We'd also like them to consider checking people's credentials before handing them the keys to a prominent promenade unit.
Blackpool Council - find whoever thought it was a good idea to give a prime space on the prom to people with a history of failed companies so they can run a vanity project into the ground, dress them in a red shirt, and beam them down to a planet surface.
Let's hope that the new owners of the Star Trek exhibition turn the place around and make it profitable before the liquidators have to come in and start wrecking the place. See what we did there?
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| Carol Stenburg |
Cleveleys News reported this detail on 12th July 2016 before the doors even opened:
So it wasn't really much of a surprise to us or our readers when the company running the Star Trek exhibition also went into liquidation owing a whopping £615,117, including £32,000 owed to Blackpool Council for unpaid business rates and rent. Maybe the future will be a bit like Star Trek where money no longer exists and everybody just works to better themselves and the rest of humanity, but right now in present-day Blackpool money does still exist and these things have to be paid.Curator of new Blackpool #StarTrek exhibition Carol Stenberg previously ran a Lego exhibit (dissolved) and a tour company (in liquidation).— Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) July 12, 2016
This is just one of many similar debts totaling more than £300,000 revealed to have been written off by Blackpool Council for last year - quite a blow for Blackpool Council, and something that ultimately has to affect Blackpool residents. If they don't end up paying for losses like this via their council tax then they will pay for it in a loss of services.
The directors of this particular company Paul Gregg and David Rogers already had twenty liquidated or dissolved companies between them prior to opening up Kuma Exhibitions Ltd (formerly Apollo Resorts Blackpool Ltd). Carol Stenburg wasn't on the board of directors this time but you can see she was in good company. Liquidating this company leaving Blackpool Council and others owed hundreds of thousands was not boldly going where these guys had never been before. It was going exactly where they had been dozens of times before.
With credentials like that it begs the question why were these people allowed to open up and run another limited company into the ground in Blackpool? Did nobody bother to check their history of companies, or were Blackpool Council so desperate to fill the empty unit left by the truly awful Dinosaur World that they just didn't care?
The concept of the attraction wasn't exactly an undiscovered country for Blackpool either. A Doctor Who exhibition ran successfully from 1974 until 1985 and was accompanied by some impressive and highly memorable illuminations. Its demise coincided with that of the show's original run, which lasted on screens until 1989 but is generally accepted to have gone downhill after the brilliant Peter Davison left in 1984. Much like the show and its titular character Blackpool's exhibition "regenerated" in 2004 but only lasted a few years before reluctantly closing. Unprecedented interest in the rebooted show meant that a bigger and better exhibition soon opened in Cardiff and many of the props on loan to Blackpool were recalled for that.
 |
| The popular 1980s Dr Who exhibition in Blackpool |
But despite the failed company, the exhibition has not closed! It was rescued by German businessman and lifelong Star Trek fan Martin Netter for the sum of £150,000. Netter reportedly owns the largest collection of Star Trek memorabilia in the world, which has to be good news for Blackpool, right? Surely he can get rid of the pointless and boring replicas and the list of Star Trek films and bring in some real Tribbles? Well, we haven't visited since, but from the recent reviews on Trip Advisor it seems that even 5 months after this deal took place the exhibition is still running on promises of great things to come. One reviewer described it as "a work in progress which is still working through some copyright issues".
To be clear, there are new items in the exhibition since the new tenure including many actual props from the Star Trek show and movies, such as Spock's headband and tricorders. It sounds like the list of films is still up on the wall though. The reduced entry price of £10 (correct at time of going to press) also seems more reasonable. If you're a Trekkie or a Trekker (they are accommodating to both), please do come and visit Blackpool and support the exhibition. We would like to see it live long and prosper because, despite what some may say, we at Cleveleys News love Blackpool and believe it really does have a lot to offer visitors. In fact stuff like this makes us feel angry, not smug. We don't enjoy being right about Carol and her cronies 2 years ago (well okay we do enjoy being right a little bit). What we really want is for Blackpool Council to realise that presiding over the entertainment capital of the UK is a massive, weighty responsibility that needs people who understand what entertainment actually is. A room full of replica props from a 1960s TV show is not exactly going to compete with Alton Towers, is it? It doesn't even compete with everything else on Blackpool's promenade! We'd also like them to consider checking people's credentials before handing them the keys to a prominent promenade unit.
Blackpool Council - find whoever thought it was a good idea to give a prime space on the prom to people with a history of failed companies so they can run a vanity project into the ground, dress them in a red shirt, and beam them down to a planet surface.
Let's hope that the new owners of the Star Trek exhibition turn the place around and make it profitable before the liquidators have to come in and start wrecking the place. See what we did there?
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