Ever been at a party where someone's
said "Do you remember
The Man from Planet G37 ? I wish they'd repeat
that", or similar? Like many people my age, I was introduced to SF and
Fantasy through several TV science fiction programmes that have long since
disappeared into the black hole of some programme director's memory. The
Champions, Catweazle, Survivors, Land of the Giants... they're all
in there somewhere, waiting to get out again. In my case, being brought
up in Britain, many of my memories are of programmes that may never have
appeared outside the UK. Ace of Wands? The Changes? Adam
Adamant Lives? Whatever, it's time we examined some of the great (and
not so great) series there have been, with some reviews of programmes that
lurk as a vague memory in my mind.
| Timeslip | Time Tunnel |
| The Champions | The Man from Atlantis |
| The Flipside of Dominick Hide | The Tomorrow People |
| Alternative Three |
|
| Land of the Giants | Survivors |
| back to writing index page | |
Timeslip was centred on the activities of two children, Simon and Liz (played by Spencer Banks and Cheryl Burfield), who find a hole in time near the site of a disused military base, while helping in the search for a missing girl. They find themselves in 1940, and end up helping Liz's father in his wartime project. Attempting to return through the barrier, they find themselves in 1990s Antarctica... Four complete stories were presented over a total of 26 episodes. At first glance, their plot summaries seem like something you'd expect from Quantum Leap, but this series was something different from your average time-leap series. The four stories (The Wrong End of Time; The Time of the Ice Box; The Year of The Burn-Up; The Day of the Clone) were interconnected - two apparently alternate 1990s were projected, one freezing, one boiling. Simon and Liz were able to interact with their own (older) selves. Importantly, there was the mysterious Commander Traynor (Denis Quilley), who seemed to know more than he let on about what was happening.
The series was challenging and exciting, and although the special effects would probably seem pretty cheap and nasty by today's standards, that's never stopped a good SF series. The series was devised by Ruth Boswell, who later went on to more success in children's TVSF with The Tomorrow People.
One such series was The Champions: three agents of the organization Nemesis - an international troubleshooting agency set up to preserve the balance of power and stop criminals, terrorists, power-mad leaders and loony scientists from upsetting that balance. However, they could hardly be considered ordinary agents, since (to quote the voice-over at the beginning of each show) they were "endowed with the qualities and gifts of superhumans — qualities and skills both mental and physical. Gifts given to them by the unknown race from a lost city in Tibet..." Sounds pretty dodgy, huh? Well, I did warn you. In the pilot episode "The Beginning", we discover how, when their plane crashes in the Himalayas, the Champions are rescued by an old man and taken to a Shangri-La. Here, their injuries are healed and they are given phenomenal mental and physical abilities, and also are linked to each other by telepathy.
The series starred Stuart Damon (as Craig Sterling), Alexandra Bastedo (Sharon MacCready) and William Gaunt (Richard Barrett), with Anthony Nicholls as their boss Tremayne. It ran for 30 episodes during 1968 and 1969. Created by Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner, The Champions was produced by ITC for Britain's ATV, and featured several notable writers, notably Spooner (4 episodes), Brian Clemens (2 episodes), and Terry Nation (2 episodes).
Almost from the word go it was clear that the main actors weren't taking things too seriously, but faced with the sort of scripts and props that were common at the time, this probably wasn't too surprising. What was surprising was that the handling of the "superhuman abilities" was at times very intelligently done, more than just the gimmick which was probably the original intention. The plots though - secret missile bases in Antarctica, an apparent death of an agent by voodoo, a plan to nuke Sydney... The guest list for the episodes reads like a who's who of the "Spooner" British TV of the period: Peter Wyngarde, Anton Rodgers, Allan Cuthbertson, Basil Dignam, Nicholas Courtenay, Michael Gough, Julian Glover, Mike Pratt, Colin Blakeley, Terence Alexander, Frank Thornton, Roger Delgado, Alan MacNaughton, William Franklyn, and Paul Eddington.
I saw the pilot episode again recently. I was appalled by the plot, incredulous at the acting, and laughed at the props. So why did I find the show so enjoyable??? Ah, now that's the real mystery of Spoonerized television!
The plays dealt largely with Dominick's futile attempts to remain inconspicuous - after which he ends up looking very eccentric. In the first play, much of the plot revolves around Dominick's attempt to find out about his great-great-great grandfather, about whom no record remain. By the end of the play we discover that no record remains simply because Dominick is his own g-g-g-grandfather. The second play sees Dominick again travelling to the 1980s, this time in an attempt to find a 22nd century researcher who has gone missing.
The two plays were fairly straightforward time travel (and in the first case, time paradox) stories, but stylishly carried out, and with a good "bewildered puppy" performance by Peter Firth as Dominick. The BBC received a lot of positive audience feedback - the shows' optimistic view and nostalgic look at our own time seem to have struck the right chord. There were even suggestions of a possible series, but writers Jeremy Paul and Alan Gibson (who also directed) turned the idea down. Flipside screened on BBC1 in December 1980, Another Flip exactly two years later. The plays also featured Pippa Guard as Dominick's 22nd century wife, Caroline Langrishe as his 20th century girlfriend, and Patrick Magee as his boss Caleb Line.
Take a simple, true message: Mankind is ruining the Earth, and if we carry on much longer we can kiss it goodbye. Add in a "leaked document" showing that top world governments had been secretly meeting together and had come up with three alternative courses of action, and you've got the start of a highly believable tale. Presented by former newscaster Tom Brinton, even more authority was given to what was already a credible story. It was so convincing that thousands of anxious viewers rang up the ITV to find out whether the programme was true.
Put simply, the three alternatives were: 1) depopulation; 2) drastic cuts to consumption; 3) the elite leaving to colonise another planet, leaving the rest of us to stew. Videos smuggled from NASA (showing what the Mariner probes really found on Mars), an interview with an ex-Astronaut who thought people should "know the truth", investigations into the disappearances of top scientists, and plausible expert views on global catastrophe all drew on to the inescapable conclusion: scientists had manned a secret test base on the Moon's far side, and had begun work on a permanent colony on the fertile fields of Mars, which would house 400 Earth scientists to carry on the race.
Alternative Threewas written by David Ambrose and directed by Christopher Miles. Ambrose was later quoted as saying that he was constantly amazed at the gullibility of people always hunting for the next conspiracy theory, but was glad that the show had made a few more people think about what we're doing to the Earth.
The storyline of LOTG was hardly new. Sections of a certain book written by Jonathan Swift several centuries ago were similar in many ways, but of course TV hadn't been invented then. Allen updated Gulliver's adventure in the realm of Brobdingnag by bringing it into the far-flung future of 1983. When sub-orbital commuter rocket Spindrift, travelling from the US to London, mysteriously travels through some fold of reality it arrives at a land where people are, by our standards, seventy feet tall. Here, society is similar to Earth, although government is more authoritarian. One other major difference is that the giants are aware of Earth and its inhabitants (how is never explained), and are for the most part either hostile towards or fearful of the "little people". As you'd expect in this sort of series, a mix of gargantuan enemies and friends are encountered by the crew and passengers during their adventures.
In all, there were seven "little people" on board the Spindrift - three crew and four passengers. Gary Conway played ostensibly the lead role, as Steve Burton, captain of the ship. Dan Erickson (played by Don Marshall) and Betty Hamilton (Heather Young) completed the crew, and the passengers included Mark Wilson (Don Matheson), Alexander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kaznar), Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) and Barry Lockridge (Stefan Arngrim). As you might expect from TV's idea of a random cross section of the human race, these seven included a scientist, a suspicious foreigner, a woman who did nothing but stand and scream, and the perennial American cute kid, complete with dog. Of the characters, few were more than stereotypes, although the enigmatic, shady and often hammily-played character of Fitzhugh did bear some depth (did we ever find out whether he was a criminal, a spy or what?) Notable amongst the giant enemies faced by these seven was the only other regular character, Inspector Kobick, a giant detective (played by Kevin Hagen).
The series ran for two seasons - a total of 51 60-minute episodes. Created and produced by Allen for Twentieth-Century Fox Television, the show had numerous writers, most often Bob & Esther Mitchell (12 episodes), and William Welch (10 episodes). All but seven of the episodes were directed by either Sobey Martin or Harry Harris, with Allen himself directing the pilot episode.
At the time of its creation, LOTG was one of America's most expensive series, weighing in at some $250,000 per episode. This was mainly soaked up in the cost of creating the giant props (how much does an eight foot tall telephone cost, anyway?). That, combined with the increasing banality of the plot lines, probably saw the demise of the series, for although the plots were at times interesting or even thought provoking, at its worst the series became a space-aged Gilligan's Island.
Understandably, it was a good series for the scriptwriters. There were virtually no boudaries to the possible plots of the episodes - the whole of history was there for the raiding. During its run, the scientists toured many of the major trouble-spots of history, from the Trojan Wars to the eruption of Krakatoa. On occasions, the travellers found themselves in the future, but most of the episodes dealt with travel into the past.
The basic story concerned the development of a machine capable of transporting people through time. Fearing the loss of funding for the project, scientist Tony Newman (James Darren) steps into the "tunnel" and finds himself on the Titanic. The remaining project scientists can track Newman (he took a radioactive bath which - through a ludicrous bit of pseudo-science - enables them to receive his voice and image through the Time Tunnel's equipment), but can only contact him by sending another scientist back to him. Dr Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) is sent back to the Titanic while their colleagues try to work out how to get both men back. When a rescue is achieved - at the last minute, of course - Newman and Phillips find themselves not in the expected present of 1968, but on a Mars-bound spaceship in the near future.
Other regular cast members of the series included Lee Meriwether (Dr. Ann MacGregor), John Zaremba (Dr. Raymond Swain) and Whit Bissell (Lt. Gen. Heywood Kirk). Guest stars included Susan Hampshire, Carroll O'Connor and Robert Duvall. The series was created and produced by Irwin Allen, who also directed the pilot episode. Several different directors worked on the series, notably Sobey Martin (13 episodes) and William Hale (5 episodes). Several writers were also employed on the series, notably William Welch (8 episodes) and Bob and Wanda Duncan (9 episodes).
Soon, however, the TV movie format was abandoned in favour of hour-long "action adventure" episodes, each travelling down the tired paths that had been trod by earlier series and earlier still pulp stories: sea monsters, forgotten undersea races, time travel and even mermaids. Towards the end of the series, the plots were best described as laughable: The Man from Atlantis travels back in time to help Romeo and Juliet; Mr Schubert plans to extort money by sabotaging an international swimming event with the world's largest jellyfish... you get the idea?
The basic plot of the pilot was simple, if tenuous, enough. The last descendant of the survivors of sunken Atlantis, mutated into an amphibious human, is washed up on a Californian beach and rushed to a naval hospital. Here, Dr. Elizabeth Merrill saves his life by returning him to water after tests show that he has gills rather than lungs. The Atlantean, named Mark Harris by Merrill, is recruited to the Foundation for Oceanic Research, and is assigned with Merrill to the submarine Cetacean.
The series, not surprisingly, only survived for seventeen episodes. The first three of these were 100 minutes long, the fourth seventy-five minutes long, and the remainder one hour long. Patrick Duffy played Harris, and Belinda Montgomery played Merrill. Foundation Director Crawford was played by Alan Fudge, and the scene-stealing Mr. Schubert was played by Victor Buono (who had previously appeared as the villainous King Tut in Batman. He played Schubert with similar over-the-top relish). The series was produced by Herman Miller of Solow Productions for NBC. Many actors got early breaks by appearing as guests in the series, among them James B. Sikking, Pat Morita and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Credit has to go to Tom Fisher, whose special effects and "costuming" (notably Duffy's almost fluorescently green contact lenses) added some life to the series. Unbelievably, fifteen different directors were used in the seventeen episode run of the series; fourteen writers were used, as well, with Luther Murdoch and Larry Alexander being the only ones to be involved in the writing of more than two episodes. Of the other writers, only Jerry Sohl is of any real note. The series sank without trace late in 1977.
The Tomorrow People was, at least in its first couple of seasons, an intelligent attempt by Thames TV to produce a children's SF programme to rival Doctor Who. The basic premise was simple. The human race has reached the stage where the next stage of evolution is about to occur - homo superior. Some ordinary humans start to "break out" from their everyday existence, showing the ability to use telepathic, telekinetic, and teleporting skills. This last was - with a nod towards Alfred Bester's The stars my destination - called "jaunting". Similar to the specially-powered Champions (see above), these youngsters use their secret powers for good, saving the world from various threats. They also keep an eye out for further individuals "breaking out" as tomorrow people, all from their secret base in a disused access tunnel of the London underground railway. In these tasks, they are aided by TIM (a 'biotronic' computer) and at times by members of an intergalactic council called the Galactic Trig (notably Timus).
The series in its early seasons was intelligent, with well written stories and tangled intriguing plots. One which sticks in my memory (after the best part of 30 years...) involved temporal paradoxes and alternative universes - parallel with our own time path is a 20th century interplanetary empire run by the Romans. Their empire never fell, and the dark ages never came, due to the "development" of the steam engine in the last few years BC. This development was in reality a working steam engine taken back in time from the 20th century Roman Empire... In this story, A rift in time, the tomorrow people attempt to return Earth to the "correct" time line.
After the first few seasons, sadly, two factors common to British TVSF kicked in. The "cardboard prop" syndrome - usually accompanied by visits to the acme® gravel pit - indicated the way the series was heading. This was soon followed by a typical malaise as Thames's waning interest in the series began to be reflected in the lack of importance that was being placed on such minor details as scripts, editing and acting. The length of the seasons correspondingly reduced further and further, until the last season had just one four-part story.
So why the lack of interest from Thames? This was, after all, a valiant attempt to be ITV's answer to the good Doctor. It may be that Thames just didn't back themselves to have got a series as good. They never gave the series the same high profile time-slot that Time Lords are privileged to, instead putting it on in an after-school weekday slot when adult viewing numbers would not have been high. This doomed the series to never making the transition to "kidult" viewing. Despite this, it still has a good fan following, and its length of run ensures its place as one of British TV's more important SF series.
Cast and characters rotated at a bewildering rate, several tomorrow people appearing for only one or two seasons. The only cast members to be in all eight seasons were Nicholas Young (John) and Philip Gilbert (the voice of TIM, and also Timus from the Galactic Trig). Other tomorrow people included Elizabeth (Elizabeth Adare), Mike (Mike Holoway), Stephen (Peter Vaughan-Clarke), Hsui Tai (Misako Koba), Tyso (Dean Lawrence), Andrew (Nigel Rhodes), Carol (Sammie Winmill), and Kenny (Stephen Salmon). Guest stars included, among many others, David Prowse, Peter Davison and Geoffrey Bayldon, as well as marking the TV debut of Nicholas Lyndhurst. The series was created by Roger Price, who also wrote or co-wrote all but one of the stories. Price also directed five of the stories. Other directors frequently involved with the series included Vic Hughes and Stan Woodward. The Tomorrow People ran for 68 30-minute episodes in 22 stories over eight seasons from 1973 to 1979.
In the first (1970) series of 13 30-minute episodes, Catweazle and his familiar (a toad named Touchstone) are befriended by a 20th century boy called Carrot, who has to spend most of his time hiding the wizard from his family and the public in general. This was highly unsuccessful (of course), and Catweazle spent his time confusing everyone from a local vicar (whom Catweazle had mistaken for another wizard) to a sound recording archivist. He also managed to remove a curse from the farm, uncover a fortune-telling scam and give someone the measles. Finally, he returns to his own time through the same pond which he fell in to travel to the 20th century.
The second series, screened in 1971, was the same length, but was considerably more focused. Catweazle was given a task to complete which led to a coherent story rather than a series of 13 unrelated events. He travels through time again, this time travelling via the moat of Farthing Castle, which by the 20th century was a stately home open to the public. Cedric, the son of castle's owners, befriends Catweazle, and translates a mystic rhyme that is found in the castle. Catweazle, thinking it is a spell for flying (in fact, it is instructions to discovering the castle's hidden treasure trove), goes on a quest for a representation of each of the zodiacal signs. During the remainder of the series, he acquires one sign per episode, often in bizarre ways. And then, he needs find the "thirteenth sign" referred to in the rhyme, and in doing so he also discovers the means to fly.
The part of Catweazle was played beautifully by veteran character actor Geoffrey Bayldon. In series one, he was joined by Robin Davies (Carrot) and Charles Tingwell (as Carrot's father), and in series two by Gary Warren (as Cedric), Moray Wilson and Elspet Gray (Cedric's parents, Lord and Lady Collingford) and Peter Butterworth (Mr. Groome). The two series were created and written by Richard Carpenter (later also to create Robin of Sherwood), directed by Quentin Lawrence, David Reed, and David Lane, and produced by Quentin Lawrence and Carl Manning for London Weekend Television. Novelisations of the stories were published in two books by Penguin Books: Catweazle and Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac.
In the very near future, the plot tells us, a laboratory-created virus is accidentally released into the atmosphere, killing off all but a small percentage of the world's population. The remaining percentage - the immune, the recovered, and those who simply never contacted the disease - must come to terms with an empty world and adapt to the overnight collapse of the technology of the world that they knew. The series posed the very serious question of how well we would be able to survive if divorced from our increasingly all encompassing technology. In line with the zeitgeist of the late 1970s, when the series was created, it was as much a call for a return to the "simpler" ways of the past in general, and specifically to the alternative lifestyle movement which was gathering momentum at the time.
However, whereas other series hitting on these themes ranged from comedy (The Good Life) to middle-ground drama (Telford's Change), Survivors was unmitigatingly grim. Even the simplest things in life became an uphill struggle. Imagine a world without mass produced matches, paper, soap, processed food, medicine, reliable unpolluted water sources... How would we cope? A major criticism of the series was that, although it was bleak, it was just too "comfortable". The characters were predominately middle-class and the whole series had a very "suburban" feel to it. Despite this, it was still a distinctly grim view of a new dark ages.
Survivors ran for three seasons from 1975 to 1977, with a total of 38 50-minute episodes. No character appeared in every episode, and turnover of actors being very high between the three series. Only Jenny Richards (played by Lucy Fleming) appeared in over 30 episodes, although Greg Preston (Ian McCulloch) and John (Stephen Dudley) appeared in all three series. Each of the three seasons had a different focus. Season one was the aftermath and the search for the missing and for new friends. Season two was the settlement in small rural groups and the challenge of acquiring new skills. Season three saw attempts to contact other groups of survivors. Through the three series, the mood became gradually less gloomy as the human race picked itself up off the ground and began the long climb back up to civilisation. Survivors was created by Terry Nation. Directors included Pennant Roberts (10 episodes) and Terence Williams (9 episodes). The series were produced by Terence Dudley.