The Tomorrow People: Season 1: Slaves of Jedekiah

Sorry - it's been a week since I last posted. I have actually been working, watching various things including the start of Blake's Seven - but we'll come to that in time. Firstly, though, let's start with the very first story of "The Tomorrow People"

I posted last week a general post about “The Tomorrow People”. One of the points that I made was that I only came to this show at the start of the second season, and had never watched the first season. So I decided to put that partly to rights, and over the last couple of evenings I watched the first five part serial – “Slaves of Jedekiah”.

There’ some things that I think Roger Price and the others involved got right about this show. For one thing we’re right into the story. The first episode is all about the three existing Tomorrow People – John, Carol and Kenny – zeroing in on the fourth whom they know is about to ‘break out’ – that is, come to a crisis whereby he will realise his powers, or he will die. Which brings me to my first observation. Carol and Kenny I remember hearing mentioned in later stories, but I never saw them in the show. I was lucky. The two characters together, or rather the actors playing them, demonstrate the opposing poles of the acting problems that a predominantly juvenile cast can bring you. On the one hand we have Sammie Winmill, who plays Carol. I struggle to think of any actress who has quite set my teeth on edge so much with her amateur dramatic society style overacting since Bonnie Langford’s stint as Doctor Who companion Mel Bush. Yes, love, you do have to emote – but not every other word, sweetheart. As a counterpart we have Stephen Salmon’s Kenny, who certainly couldn’t be accused of overacting. The trouble is that he’s hardly acting at all, and for most of the time seems supremely disinterested whenever he’s not actually speaking his own lines (badly).

OK, soft targets, I know. Let’s get to the story. I’ve already praised it for getting straight down to business rather than giving us a long set-up to the series, and we do learn what we need to know about the TPs as Stephen gets info dumped on several times during the story. The story itself, such as it is, though, does suffer from some padding. Stephen faints when he is breaking out. He is taken to hospital. The TPs find him, and Carol gets him through the breaking out crisis. He is abducted from hospital by Jedekiah’s henchmen, Ginge and Lefty – more about them afterwards, The TPs rescue him, and bring him back to the Lab, their base. Stupidly they leave him alone that night, and he is taken over by a post-hypnotic command, and switches TIM the computer off, enabling Jedekiah’s henches to break him into the lab. They set traps, which send John and Carol into hyperspace. In the morning Kenny comes and saves the day, he and Stephen switch TIM back on and it rescues the other 2. Kenny gets abducted by Jedekiah – look, that’s enough, you get the point I’m sure. Back ad forward, back and forward. Capture, rescue, escape. Sophisticated this is not.

But then, it doesn’t necessarily need to be. The jobs that this story absolutely has to do are to introduce the main characters – check – who and what they are – check – and their powers and abilities – check. It certainly establishes where the TPS stand in relation to the rest of humanity, what they can do, and what they can’t do – kill. We know where they’re based – a disused Underground station – we know their self imposed mission – to help other TPs break out safely and eventually shepherd humanity along to this next stage of its evolution. We know where the money for all of this stuff comes from – John, it turns out, is an incredibly successful inventor. That was handy.

If we consider it on its own merits, there is a kind of twist in the ending. We did find out earlier in the story that Jedekiah is not actually the top of the chain of baddies. The Cyclops is. He’s a green, vaguely reptilian, vaguely humanoid alien with one eye in the middle of his forehead sitting in a spaceship in orbit around the earth. Jedekiah, it turns out, is a shape changing robot. Well – all I want to say about that for the moment is that he wasn’t when he came back in one of the later seasons. One of the good things the script does is to cast ambiguity over the Cyclops’ actions and motives. The Cyclops needs telepaths as crew to get him home, only telepaths can fly his ship. The TPs claim that his past crew must have been galley slaves – he contradicts this and says they would have been well rewarded, as would the TPs, and returned to their homes. We never find out if this is all lies or not. The fact is thouth that when his ship is fatally damaged by the crazed Jedekiah, the TPs arrange to get him home safely, which they do.

Coming back to Jedekiah, I was delighted to see that, in his human guise he was played by Francis De Wolf.A very big man in many ways, he’s one of those actors who, while never being a household name, you’d recognise if you’d been around in the 60s and 70s from countless TV and film appearances. He’d twice appeared in William Hartnell Doctor Who stories. As I said, a large and impressive man, who always looked as if he’d eaten a badger and left half its arse hanging out.

As for the two henches, who are converted to friends of the TPs by the end and went on to become semi regular characters for a while, Michael Standing’s Ginge may be a bear of very little brain – well there’s no may be about it, he is – but he’s at least a bit of light relief. As for Derek Crewe’s Lefty, though, it’s very difficult to see what the character brings to the party. He hardly ever speaks, and the late Mr. Crewe’s demeanour is unthreatening to say the least.

History tells us that the ITV network, and Thames television in particular, really wanted their own home grown Sci Fi fantasy series in the early 70s, to tap into a similar audience to that attracted by Doctor Who on the BBC. I’ve recently been watching Timeslip, which was the first attempt. I’m just over halfway through watching the whole of “Timeslip” and I’m enjoying it, but it was rather leisurely, and rather serious and po-faced – and it lacked some action. So I can see why Ruth Boswell, who was heavily involved with both shows would settle on this one rather than the earlier. Of course, in between came “Ace of Wands”, which was more strictly fantasy, but we’ll come to that in the fullness of time.

The Six Million Dollar Man

From this distance it’s difficult to appreciate just how popular “The Six Million Dollar Man” actually was in the mid-1970s when we first saw it in the UK. It established the name of Harve Bennett as a producer, and made a star out of Lee Majors. A popular range of toys based on the show was launched. For Christmas one year I had a model kit with Steve Austin – the eponymous $6 million man – beating up on a bully on a bike. My younger brother, however, had not only the action figure, but also his enemy, in this case a sort of robot man figure who could change his face to look like Steve Austin.

Coming back to the programme itself, the show was based on the 1972 novel “Cyborg” by Martin Caidin”. This had no relation as far as I know, to the 1966 film “Cyborg 2087”- good job too, in my opinion. The opening sequence of the show must be one of the most parodied that there is – actually, though, it’s a brilliant piece of condensed storytelling. First of all we see what must have been genuine footage of a futuristic looking air vehicle crashing. It’s actually an experimental Northrop aircraft, but it looks like a space vehicle and that’s what matters. Then we see a heavily bandaged figure on a hospital bed, and hear the voiceover “Steve Austin – a man barely alive.” Then we cut to Oscar Goldman, who will be his boss, saying, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man.” By this point we are seeing what looks like computer schematics of his new parts, and then the parts themselves, while Oscar goes on, “We can make him better than he was. Better – stronger – faster.” And then we cut to Steve himself in a red tracksuit, running at 60 mph in a piece of speeded up film. Then we see him head on, and the action freezes, with just his face in the middle of what appears to be a gunsight, and the title of the show. Brilliant. Seriously, when you’ve watched this short sequence you already know pretty much all you’re going to need to know to access an episode. Essentially it’s an hour long origin show in about half a minute.

So, Colonel Steve’s new bits are a bionic eye, one bionic arm and two bionic legs. The eye has telescopic vision, we’ve already seen that the legs enable him to reach speeds of 60 mph, and the arm is super-strong.

So what do they do with Steve Austin then, once they’ve made him into a virtual superhuman? Well, Oscar Goldman works for the OSI – which I always presumed was the CIA by any other name. Steve Austin then became a sort of special agent, trouble shooting and sorting out mundane (mostly) problems for them, while making quips at the same time – how did you jump like that? Austin – I ate a lot of jumping beans. Well, maybe it’s not exactly Oscar Wilde, but when you’re 10 years old it’s still pretty good. This is not to say that there weren’t any memorable episodes. An obvious one was always going to be having Steve fight against another bionic human, and this happened when he encountered one Barney Hiller. It turned out that Barney was a secret backup that Oscar had his tame scientists make up – a former racing driver who’d been rescued from a crash. Barney, so it turned out, had cost $7 million, and had more bionics than Steve. Which didn’t matter, since Steve still beat him, and enabled Oscar’s boys to turn down Barney’s bionics so that he was just a normal human again.

One interesting thing about “The Six Million Dollar Man” was that it spawned a spin off which was every bit as successful. Steve’s girlfriend, Jaime Sommers, was a successful tennis player. One day, out parachuting with Steve, she has a terrible accident. Steve has Oscar and the boys make her into a bionic woman – same bionics as Steve except that she has a bionic ear as opposed to a bionic eye. The trouble is though, that her body rejects the bionics, and in the end, she dies. Awww…

Except that she doesn’t. As the spin off series begins, Steve finds out that he’s been lied to. Jaime has survived. Naughty, sneaky old Oscar kept it from him since he had some missions he wanted Jaime to fulfil. Steve is not best pleased. Still, it becomes fairly clear that their relationship is going to be a difficult one to continue, and he and Jaime drift apart. Apparently the two characters did eventually marry in a made for TV movie, but this was long after both series finished.

When you look at “The Six Million Dollar Man” now, it does seem pretty formulaic. Oscar tells Steve there’s something he needs to investigate, but he must be careful. Steve investigates. Steve finds out the truth, but is discovered, and placed into a situation that a normal human being could never escape from. Steve uses his bionics though to escape and save the day – along with much slowed down film and accompanying sound effects. Formulaic and samey, yes, and we liked it like that. For a while. The problem which bedevilled it, though was that there was limited scope for originality. Essentially, once you’ve got over marvelling at Steve Austin’s incredible bionic abilities, where do you go with it? Steve Austin inhabits a world which is essentially contemporary America of the mid 70s, or a Hollywood version thereof. In this world, there is little or nothing that his bionics cannot defeat, and as it is anyway nobody knows that he IS bionic, and the level of threat they pose to him is the level of threat they would pose to a normal human being, and not a superhuman. Essentially it is the problem that DC comics came up against with Superman – how can you come up with something to pose a realistic level of threat? The answer DC came up with was kryptonite. Yet in the world Bennett and others wanted to create  in “The Six Million Dollar Man” there is no kryptonite.

This was probably one of the reasons for the show’s ultimate demise. It’s noticeable that some of the plots of “The Bionic Woman” were considerably less mundane. There were episodes I can remember in which she defeated a killer computer which had the capacity to set off a nuclear bomb, and another in which she defeated alien invaders. Also, “The Bionic Woman” maybe benefitted from the fact that in the USA, the mid to late 70s was the era of the ‘jiggle’ shows. Jiggle shows were TV shows which , while being ‘clean’ enough for a prime-time family audience also traded on the sex appeal of their female stars. “Charlie’s Angels” and slightly later, “Wonder Woman” were prime examples of popular jiggle shows par excellence – ironically one of the original stars of “Charlie’s Angels” was Lee Majors’ then wife, Farrah Fawcett. In the original series of “The Bionic Woman” Jaime Sommers was played by Lindsay Wagner, a former Miss America, and her appeal certainly can’t have hurt the show’s popularity.

After the shows were over, producer Harve Bennett would later go on to rescue the Star Trek film franchise, being the producer of the smash hit “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan”. Lee Majors himself would find he had another international TV hit a couple of years later in “The Fall Guy” in which he played movie stuntman/bounty hunter Colt Seivers. Incidentally that show was created and produced by Glen A. Larson, who also produced the contemporary “Battlestar Galactica” and “Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century” shows. As for Lindsay Wagner, she continued to pop up in guest slots in various shows, but never had a continuing leading role with anything like the popularity of Jaime Sommers.

A new version of “The Bionic Woman” starring former Eastenders actress Michelle Ryan was made in 2008, but it was brought to a halt by a screen writers strike when only  8 or 9 episodes had been filmed, and cancelled almost immediately after.

The Tomorrow People

The Tomorrow People

Shall I let you into a secret? Go on then. In 1974, I wanted to be a Tomorrow person. Try as hard as I might, I could never telepathically communicate with anyone else, nor could I teleport myself – or ‘jaunt’ as it was called in the series. Mind you, I never quite went as far as pretending that I was one, unlike Andre P. in my class at school, who swore blind he was one, but never managed to demonstrate his powers to anyone’s but his own satisfaction. He also claimed he was bionic like the Six Million Dollar Man, but that’s another story for another day.

I first came to “The Tomorrow People” at the start of the second season when it had already run successfully the previous year, and some members of the original cast had left and been replaced. “The Tomorrow People” was an ITV series which began in 1973. It was created by a man called Roger Price, and the title referred to a group of young people who represented the next evolutionary development of the human race – hence tomorrow people as in people of tomorrow as opposed to people from tomorrow. This development manifested itself as psi powers, in particular telepathy with each other and the power to ‘jaunt’ – although to do so safely and accurately they needed the help of their super-computer, TIM.

When the BBC launched the Doctor Who spin off “Torchwood”, as soon as we saw inside their base, the Hub, there was something about it that seemed awfully reminiscent. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I realised that the Hub, the base of the Cardiff Torchwood was similar in concept to the Lab, the Tomorrow People’s Base, which was built in a disused Underground station.

To me, “The Tomorrow People” sat comfortably between the seemingly hard Science approach of “Timeslip” and the fantasy of “Ace of Wands”. Roger Price took his idea to several ITV stations, before finding a home for it at Thames, who were looking for a replacement for “Ace of Wands”. This brought Ruth Boswell, who had previously worked on “Timeslip” on board. Thinking back, it was probably the clearest attempt by ITV to create a children’s TV series to rival the popularity and appeal of “Doctor Who” on the BBC. Both shows used a ‘serial within an anthology’ format, that is, each series consisted of several stories, each of which would take several episodes to tell. Both made fairly extensive use of CSO (colour separation overlay) for their special effects. Both had spooky and effective opening sequences. Actually Dudley Simpson, who wrote the theme music was the same Dudley Simpson who wrote composed incidental music for a huge number of Doctor Who stories during the 1970s. Both had the heroes effectively defending the Earth from a variety of technological, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial threats. Thankfully, Thames Television, which made the series, operated the London week day franchise, and so there was no way that the show was ever going to be put on Saturday Evening in competition with the BBC show.

Of course, this is not to suggest that “The Tomorrow People” was in any way ripping Doctor Who off. For the early seasons at the very least, the group were all about finding other potential Tomorrow People, and helping them to ‘break out’ that is, come to a realisation that they had powers, and learn how to use them.

I was a viewer until the show ended in 1979, although I was by no means so die-hard a fan as I had been. Part of the problem was the changing cast list. The only two characters who stayed throughout the time I watched it were John, the leader, and Liz, both of whom were the oldest characters. I didn’t like John at all – he was the authority figure and frankly, a bit of a knob in my humble opinion. I liked Stephen, the teenager, who was there from the first series, but came to be phased out within a year or two. New tomorrow people joined, most of them younger, some of whom were played by good actors, but quite a few of whom weren’t. Then in the last few series it focussed more and more on Mike Bell, played by Mike Holloway. Don’t get me wrong, Mike Holloway could, and still can act, but this teen character just got up my nose, and I felt that we as an audience were continually having him shoved down our collective throat as it were. Maybe I was just pining for Steven. I was also sorry when they junked the chunky ‘jaunting belts’ for wristbands. I have a recollection, possibly mistaken, that the show became more and more concerned with getting out into space, and less concerned with what was going on here on Earth, but then again this may just be because those stories proved to be more memorable than others.

Thinking about my own reaction to the series when it first broadcast, I find it interesting that I always identified with the Tomorrow People, rather than the ordinary humans in the series. By the time I was watching it they called themselves Homo Superior, and clearly were meant to be a new species of human. They called ordinary people ‘saps’ – short for homo sapiens sapiens. Now, I’m not surprised that I didn’t at the time think that there was anything sinister about this at all, although now I’m not so sure.

How can we sum up The Tomorrow People? Well, in my opinion, it usually made a little go a long way. Reliable sources tell me that each 25 minute episode had a budget approximately half that of a contemporary episode of Doctor Who. I think it was significant in that it was one of the first British shows I can remember where a black actress played one of the lead parts – Tomorrow People lore has it that actress Elizabeth Adare became disenchanted with the character, and the use made of her in the show, but stayed because she was aware how rare such a positive role model was on British TV at the time. On the subject of the lead actors, none of them really went on to become household names. I remember Nicholas Young who played John popping up in the early 80s drama Kessler, about Nazi war criminals in South America – a follow up to BBCs popular world war II drama Secret Army. Mike Holloway has had a good career in musical theatre since as well. Aside from that, though, when you think of actors from “The Tomorrow People” who went on to be very successful, you’re probably talking about Peter Davison. Davison, who went on to play the 5^th Doctor in “Doctor Who”, was an unknown who played a sort of space-going hillbilly in one story, and very much played second fiddle to the guest star, his future wife Sandra Dickinson. He wore shorts and a bubbly perm, and the clip of his first appearance has been used to embarrass him on TV many times.

As for the show itself, well, “The Tomorrow People” always had good ratings, and sold well overseas too. The official story behind its demise in 1979 was that Roger Price had moved to America to work, and that Thames TV thought he had been such an integral part of the show that they didn’t want to continue without him. To be honest, in my opinion the show was past its best by the end of the 70s and probably ended at about the right time. Not for good though. Roger Price produced a 1990s revival series. This pretty much paid little or no attention to the original series, and none of the original cast featured. This lasted for three seasons. Then in the early Noughties Big Finish started a series of Tomorrow People audio plays featuring original characters and cast members. These continued until 2007.

Essential Doctor Who: First Doctor: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Yes, I knew that I invited criticism by not including "The Daleks" as essential Doctor Who. Of course it is, but only in terms of the history of the series. I personally didn't rate it and didn't enjoy it much. This second dalek story, though, is a different kettle of fish altogether.

Produced on MS Paint using Bamboo graphics tablet

This is one of the Hartnell stories where I could honestly say that I knew the storyline pretty well before watching it. This is partly through having several times seen the Peter Cushing film, “Daleks : Invasion Earth 2050” based on the serial, and partly through the Target novelization. While the film to a greater extent, and the novels to a lesser extent may take a couple of liberties with some of the plot details, by and large they’re pretty faithful enough to give you a good idea.

After Watching

While not wishing to gloss over any of this show’s flaws, I really enjoyed it. I wrote about the DWM Mighty 200 poll in my round up of season 1 – and this story is ranked 44^th on the DWM Mighty 200 poll, and I think that’s pretty fair.

Actually the start of the serial, the first episode, was really on the whole rather good. I mean, I’d already in the past watched “An Unearthly Child”, and “The Daleks”, and read the Target novelisation of “The Keys of Marinus”, but when you see the opening of this, their last adventure together, you come to realize how they have developed as a group together. You can’t help wondering what the impact of this episode would have been had they kept daleks out of the title, and pre publicity for the show, and you hadn’t realized they were involved until that iconic final shot of the dalek coming up out of the Thames.

Really and truly, this should be quite disorienting. I am watching this in 2015, pretending to be London some time after 2164, while all the time making no effort to look like anything other than 1964. Although the show is set around 2164, the visuals make no concession to this, and as a result you kind of just get on with it. If anything it gives the story a nostalgic feel.

Actually, the rather gentle pace of the first couple of episodes, and the atmosphere reminded me of films such as ‘Day of the Triffids’, and if anything its maybe a foreshadowing of Terry Nation’s own “Survivors”, his 1970s drama series about life for a group of survivors of a devastating pandemic which kills a huge percentage of the human population of Earth.

 I don’t know that you can get the point of the Hartnell shows from just reading the Target books. The stories I’ve actually seen, and this one in particular give me the strong feeling that you have to watch them to understand.  I loved the third and fourth Doctors, but there was always a feeling that they were going to eventually take charge and be more than equal to whatever situation they might find themselves in. The dynamic is completely different in the Hartnell era. In “An Unearthly Child” the Doctor has taken Barbara and Ian off on a joyride to prove to them that he can do what he says he can. This is an extremely irresponsible, if not reprehensible act, since he knows that there is no guarantee that he is ever going to be able to bring them back to his own time and space. In the first episode  they do actually believe that they’re home after all this time, and it’s the dawning realization that this is not actually the case which adds greatly to the atmosphere and poignancy. I find that the way that the action and the driving of the plot is shared out between the Doctor , Ian and Barbara, and to a much lesser extent Susan, to be really different to what I’m used to as well. It shouldn’t work, and yet it actually does. For example – the extended sequences of Barbara and Richard Briers’ wife running through the streets of London pushing Dortmun should really be laughable. But they aren’t.

Partly this is because of some great acting. Look at Jacqueline Hill’s face during these sequence. I tell you the woman looks terrified out of her skin. I cheered when she drove into the Daleks.

OK – the plot, essentially, is rubbish. The Daleks are excavating the Earth’s core in order to bung a motor in it and fly it around the Universe? Yeah, right. Nonsense. The special effects shots of the Daleks’ flying saucer actually flying are rather embarrassing. They must have looked pretty crappy even back in 1964, which is why you see so little of them. I can’t help wondering why they needed these shots anyway. If you’re going to do it that badly, then why do it at all? Then there’s the Robotmen. Their headsets are awful, and some of their acting doesn’t seem a lot better. Yet harping on about these things is all missing the point. I concede all of these drawbacks, and yet I loved it.

This story is all about the triumphant resurrection of the Daleks. They had a massive part to play in the success of the first season, and as a reward they get a story which allows us the iconic shots of the lone Dalek rising out of the Thames, and Daleks trundling across Westminster Bridge and around Trafalgar Square. The shots of the robotmen overseeing the enslaved humans dragging wagons into the mine are really good too.  There’s some lovely performances too. Bernard Kay – again, a name you might not know, but a face you surely do – is always good value for money. It was nice to see Nicholas Smith – Mr. Rumboldt from ‘Are You Being Served’ popping up in the mine scenes too. If you twist my arm and force me to tell the truth I’d admit that it’s probably at least an episode too long, and yet I would still far rather watch this than the film version any day of the week. I would also far rather watch this than ‘The Daleks’ .The original Dalek serial is too long at 7 episodes, and I’m afraid that the Thals get on my wick after a while, being, in my considered opinion, a bunch of big girls’ blouses. And if that wasn’t enough, we have Susan’s leaving scene. This is neatly prepared for with a couple of the Doctor’s comments as he notices the burgeoning romance between Susan and David Campbell. Actually, I say burgeoning, but this was 1964 family viewing, so subtle hints are all we get. The Doctor has been criticised for his indecent haste in packing Susan off at the first opportunity, but I think that this is in character, as a protracted leaving scene would not be something he could handle yet. This was the first ever leaving scene in Doctor Who, and in my view Hartnell pulls it off brilliantly. These little emotional moments, where he is called on to put out real tenderness, really show off what a good actor he was.

Judging by the fact that she was willing to appear in 1983’s ‘The Five Doctors’, and other appearances on various shows and DVDs about the show, Carole Ann Ford has come to terms with her time on the show. You can’t help sympathising with her, since by all accounts she was sold on the ‘unearthly child’ concept of her role, yet found that the unearthly aspects of her character were largely ignored, and she became the first in a long line of screamers. For a lot of her time she was just used as a functional character whose purpose was there to move the plot forward. She wouldn’t be the last. I am sorry to see her go, but I think the show will cope without her far more easily than it would do without Ian or Barbara at this stage.

 What Have We Learned

Everything is cyclical. Or, put it another way, London in 2164 will be a dead ringer for London 1964

William Hartnell is capable of scenes of genuine emotional intensity

Daleks keep pets

My Favourite Star Trek Original Series Episodes: Season 1 Balance of Terror

What’s it all about?

Ahhhhh. What’s not to like here? The Enterprise receives distress calls from outposts bordering the neutral zone between the Federation and Romulan space. Yes, folks, the Romulans, who would become the dominant enemy in the Star Trek Universe for a while after the Klingons had made peace with the Federation, did actually make their appearance before the Klingons.

The Romulans and the Federation were at war 100 years earlier. Amazingly, nobody has ever seen a Romulan, which does make me wonder hwo the Federation carried out peace negotiations in the first place. Still, it turns out that a Romulan bird of prey ship has been sent across the neutral zone to attack the outposts in order to gauge the relative strength of the Federation. If they are found to be weak, then the Romulans wil start war again. Kirk and the Enterprise track the Romulan ship, and decide that they must destroy it before it can enter the neutral zone. If they follow it into the neutral zone, then this would give the Romulans a pretext for declaring war. If the Romulan ship gets home with a favourable report, then war will happen anyway.

The Romulan ship only has impulse power, it does not possess a warp drive. However it has two advantages over the Enterprise. The weapon it carries is incredibly destructive. One good hit from that and the Enterprise would be destroyed Also, it has a cloaking device, that renders the ship invisible. Although strictly speaking this seems a bit pointless since the Enterprise seems to manage to track it even when it is invisible a lot of the time.

Complicating matters is the fact that, gawd knows how, but the Enterprise is able to get visual on the Romulan ship, and we see what appears to be nothing so much like a ship full of Vulcans. This enables a sub plot since helmsman of the week, Mr. Hansen, had family killed in the Romulan War, and he suspects Mr. Spock, and is frankly insubordinate, so much so that for my money it’s shocking that Kirk didn’t have him flogged amidships for his pains.

So what we get is a game of cat and mouse between two commanders – Kirk and the Romulan, who seem to be able to anticipate each other’s every move. And if that sounds a bit of a bore, well, it really, really isn’t. In fact, I don’t know if this was an influence on Gene Roddenberry and writer Paul Schneider at all, but it reminds me of a submarine movie starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster called “Run Silent, Run Deep”, because essentially that’s what the Romulan ship and the Enterprise are for this episode – the firing debris out to make it look like the Romulan ship has been destroyed is straight from that movie for example.

In the end one of the Romulan subordinates, who is close to the Romulan Praetor, presumably the ruler or a very high status official, threatens the captain to go in for the kill on the Enterprise, or he will be having words in high places when they get home. Thus he falls into the trap, and zap zap zap with the phasers, and the Romulan ship is disabled.

There’s a terrific climax, where, having offered to take aboard the Commander and his crew, Kirk has to watch as the commander refuses, telling him that this is not the Romulan way, and he adds, “You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.” Now, ok, this is the sort of thing that a couple of decades later Red Dwarf would decry as ‘all that Star Trek crap’ but I don’t care, I like that.

You Probably Already Know That: -

·       Mark Lenard, who played the Romulan Commander, would return in Season Two to play Spock’s father, Sarek. He also played General Urko, leader of the Gorillas, in the short-lived TV series version of “Planet of the Apes”.

·       In the UK during the 70s you could Aurora sold plastic self assembly model kits of the Enterprise, a Klingon Starship, and the Romulan War Bird. I bought and made the Enterprise. Today a second hand original kit, if you can find one, could cost you as much as a couple of hundred pounds.
·       The ‘cloaking device’ as it becomes called is one of those ideas which proved too good to just use in a one off episode. Later in the original series not only do the Klingons get the device from the Romulans, so does the Enterprise as well.
·       This is not the only example of “Star Trek” seemingly being influenced by the movie “Run Silent, Run Deep”. In “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, the first movie, the relationship between Admiral Kirk, and the young Decker, whose command the Enterprise would have been  is extremely similar to the relationship between the Gable and Lancaster roles in the film.

The Verdict

You must have already gathered that my feelings about this particular story are almost completely positive. Almost? Well, yes, we can always criticize. The frame of the story is that right at the start in the pre titles sequence, Kirk, as Captain, is presiding at an on board wedding, between crew members Angela Martine and Robert Tmlinson. Before we get to the do you – I do – she does business, the attack starts, so they are not yet actually married. During the fight with the Romulans, sadly Tomlinson gets killed. At the end Kirk, quite rightly, has to go to talk to Martine, and comments that some times none of it makes any sense. I want to yell at the telly – fine! Stop it there! That’s enough! Sadly it goes on to have Angela Martine looking up bravely at Kirk, smiling through her tears, and telling him she is alright, and it’ alright. Arrgggghhhh! Still, it could be worse. Kirk might have invited her back to his quarters for a wee dram.

That aside, I my opinion it really doesn’t get a lot better than “Balance of Terror”. Watch it and you’ll understand why they wanted to find a way to bring Mark Lenard back in as similar a role as possible – he’s great.

Timeslip 2: The Time of the Ice Box

Peter Fairley is back, explaining to us about Time Bubbles – not very well if truth be told, and a minute and a half of this tosh is more than enough. Mrs. Skinner, still telepathically linked with Liz, seems to be freezing to death, for the kids have landed up in a future ice age. Ah, the two of them are rescued by someone in a very late 60s sci fi survival suit! This is what I wanted to see. He takes them back to base, where everyone is dressed in a very late 60s idea of what future clothes would be like – all miniskirts and bacofoil for the ladies, and flares and bacofoil for the gents. Simon and liz are placed on inflatable ribbed bubble couches, and put into what appear to be Perspex coffins to be resuscitated. Oooh, I’m already far more excited than by anything I saw in the first six epsodes, and we haven’t even reached the ad break yet. Deveraux, an old geezer, who is the director of the base,  is seemingly connected up to a computer by electrodes in his head. When he extracts himself it turns out he is played by John Barron – who played Reggie Perrin’s boss CJ in the classic sitcom “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin”. I shouted , “I didn’t get where I am today by having electrodes stuck to my forehead!” I shouted. (Ask your parents – or if they’re young, your grandparent.) He climbs down from his pod, and gives the lead singer of Mungo Jerry (well it looked like him) a telling off for human error , “the last thing we can accept in a ‘technicalogical’ world”. Yes, I’ve watched it twice and he definitely says this instead of technological. We learn that the base is the International Institute for Biological Research, which is nicknamed the Ice Box, and the year is 1990. Which begs the question why they’re still sing a massive computer with reel to reel magnetic tapes – the rest of us were on Commodore amigas with floppy discs round about the same time. In a rather long scene with an ancient battleaxe called Doctor Joynton the kids learn where they are – quite close to the South Pole as it turns out. She thinks that the two of them are volunteers for an experiment of some kind. The first episode gives us no hint what this might involve until at the end we’re told it involves HA57, a longevity drug. When they learn that it’s 1990 they sneak off to take a couple of survival suits to get back to the barrier. However Liz catches sight of her own mother just as they’re about to leave.

In episode 2 the kids actually complete their escape and find themselves back in 1970. There’s a touching scene where Liz thanks Simon for always being so kind to her, and he totally rejects her. They are debriefed by Traynor, who starts angling for them to go back through the barrier, but Frank puts his foot down to reject the idea. Traynor, though, doesn’t give up easily. Even after they’ve left St. Oswald he turns up at the house, and even though Mrs. S. isn’t listening, he buttonholes Simon. For Simon has told him the name of the director of the Ice Box – Morgan C. Deveraux – a personal friend of Traynor’s. Who has apparently already died by 1970 – Traynor attended his funeral. That’s enough to persuade Simon to accompany him back to the barrier. Traynor, it turns out, has a nice line in 1970s misogyny. In fact this episode is more about Traynor than anyone else as he starts to reveal himself more and more as a ruthless man who would probably sacrifice both kids to gain information. Dennis Quilley is rather good in this. Simon going changes the equation, and even Frank agrees to sending Liz back in after him. Back in the Ice Box Simon is being told off by Deveraux, and when Simon mentions Traynor, firstly he gets very evasive, and then angry. Liz, at the same time, finds her Mum’s room, where there is a photograph of the two if them. When mum comes back into her room she is shocked to see Liz, and then we get the best moment of the series so far. Beth, who we met in the previous episode, is a younger member of the base personnel who has conceived a dislike for Liz and Simon. She comes into mummy’s room, and Mummy explains that Beth and Liz are one and the same person. Great.

In episode 3, with the reprise of the ending of episode 2, I was struck by the oddness of Beth calling what turns out to be her own mother ‘Jean’. Also it begs the question why she is surprised at Liz appearing. Surely she should have remembered doing it? Actually the episode does use this as a plot point. Beth, it turns out, had something traumatic happen in 1980 which decided her to change her name and reject her life up to that point. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, a first class bitch. Jean, her mother seems more sympathetic, but even she cocks a deaf ‘un to Liz’s questions about what has happened to her father. When she meets up with Simon and tells him that she will become Beth this upsets him, meanwhile Beth questions Deveraux whether Simon and Liz really are the volunteers that the computer has promised them. This becomes rather a filling in time episode, with various bits of information fed to us via Bukov the scientist talking to Simon. The two kids are given the longevity drug HA57, although we don’t see them take it. Simon goes snooping in the Director’s office to find his ‘testament’ – the notes on the AB experiment which he has so far refused to share with anyone else on the base. Caught just as he is about to enter the Director’s secret room, the Director starts to strangle him, then seemingly seizes up completely, then, when Bukov enters, he seems normal for a moment, before going tonto again. Outside, Bukov drops his bombshell – Deveraux is not a normal human being, he is, quote, “A man of the future”.

The 4th episode of the story (episode 10 overall) sees Bukov continue his revelation, that Deveraux is actually a clone. Beth tells Liz she is going to lock her up for her own good, to which Liz observes that she is a ‘rotten old cow’ – believe me for children’s TV in 1970 that is pretty shocking. Jean, her Mum, comes into the room, and finally she starts answering some of Liz’s questions. Apparently Liz undertook to have her intelligence enhanced, I much the way that Bukov had talked about with Simon in the previous episode. This seemingly caused the change in her personality. Jean baulks at saying what happened to Liz’ father, though. All she will say is that he’s not dead. In what starts off as quite an innocuous scene, Beth reveals what the purpose of the AB experiment is – to remove Simon and Liz’ organs and replace them with machine parts. Later on Liz reveals to her mum what is going to happen to them, and still her mum won’t speak out against what is going on. The Director gives Simon another telling off, but again seizes up when he does so. Finally another great cliffhanger ending. Dr. Joynton is plugged into the computer, being fed images of her home in New Zealand, when she collapses in agony, pushing the panic button as she does so. When the others come running they find that she has aged suddenly and drastically and died.  

In episode 5/11 the increasingly unstable Deveraux decides that Joynton’s death is down to human error, and is therefore a case of murder, and it is Mungo Jerry he blames. Beth reveals that Liz and Simon have been in Deveraux’s office again, and Liz reveals that he keeps a second computer hidden in his secret room. He orders the two kids to be locked up in an electronic shield. The computer reveals that Larry did nothing wrong, and Deveraux’s behaviour becomes even more erratic – he starts talking about the computer almost as a person that sets tricks to catch him out. He tells Beth that she does not know what the inner computer is for, but he may well reveal it to her if she can show herself loyal enough. He says it has something to do with the way that Liz and Simon were selected as the volunteers. Back in the electronic shield, Simon expounds his theory that they are not going to have their limbs replaced, because by 1990 Liz will be Beth, who doesn’t have any. This actually introduces an important question about whether the future they have come to is unchangeable or not. Jean arrives, and even though she does not know how to lower the shield she says that the kids have to go back through the time barrier. Simon works out that none of this actually has to happen if they can just get back. After the break Bukov tells Larry that both he and Joynton were responsible for keeping an eye on the Director. Beth’s depth check reveals that there was an error and that the subjects for the experiment were never sent, therefore Liz and Simon are not the volunteers. She goes into the secret room to tell Deveraux, who is hooked up to the second computer and in a hell of a state – not quite the full cluck cluck gibber, but getting n that way. He loses his rag completely, and she runs out. When he emerges, he tells Beth that the brain link with the computer has told him that Liz and Simon committed Joynton’s murder. Larry goes to see the two kids, and Liz seems to persuade him to blow a fuse which will set them free. Beth is trying to reconcile the fact that the Director has said that the error message is a forgery, while she knows for certain that it wasn’t. Simon and Liz go to get the suits on to go back into the cold and find the barrier. Yet it’s only the 5^th episode – there’s another to go. What will happen? Well, Simon decides he still wants to find out more about the longevity drug. He sends Liz to go to the barrier. On the way she finds a couple of ice encased bodies. Guess who the first one is? Daddy!

12 episodes into the series, and finally we’re in living colour! Originally the whole series was recorded and broadcast in colour, with the exception of episodes 23 and 24, which were affected by industrial action. Only black and white recordings of the first 11 episodes exist. Back to the story, Bukov tells Larry and Beth his concerns over Deveraux, but Beth will have none of it. Liz tries to wake Frank up, but it doesn’t work. Liz obviously goes back to the base for help, and the two bodies are brought in. It turns out Frank has been in hibernation. The only way that Jean would be allowed to come to the Ice Box with Beth, so it transpires, was by Frank, for whom there was no use in the Ice Box, agreeing to take part in the hibernation experiment. He was supposed to stay under the ice for at least 10 years. Spunky Liz at last seems to start to get through to Beth about the Director. We end part one with Bukov about to show the Director the report he is about to send to their bosses. The temperature begins dropping, while Simon goes back snooping into Deveraux’s secret room again. As Beth and Liz join him he explains about Deveraux being a clone. The testament with the secret of the longevity drug is, he has worked out, that it exists in Deveraux’s head, and thus passes from clone to clone. Bukv relieves Deveraux of command. The scene switches back to Liz and Simon, and it’s rather lovely since the both of them are standing still, and then start ‘acting’ being cold a second or two later. Lovely. Bukov and Larry appear on the scene, restraining the Director then putting him into an electronic shield. He is then forced to confront the fact that his blackouts caused Joynton’s death and all the other problems with the Ice Box. Temperature keeps dropping, and they tell him to fix his mistakes. He refuses, and runs out onto the ice. Nothing will save the Ice Box, so Simon suggests that the others take the anti freeze hibernation drug that Bukov showed him a few episodes ago, and then wait for rescue. Liz gives her parents the anti freeze, and promises Jean that she will prevent all of this from happening. As they leave for the barrier, Liz and Simon walk past the frozen Deveraux.

Verdict

Comparing this story with the previous, for me this is much of an improvement, and I tend to think that the show owes its good reputation far more to this story than that one. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first, though. It’s still a little slow moving. There’s a lot of info dumping talk. Not only that, but if we take episode 12, then in the last 5 minutes we spend 30 odd seconds pulling in to a close up of an emergency light . . . which never comes on anyway. I don’t think that the pace is quite as leisurely as the first story, but there are times when it does seem to be consciously dragging its feet.

On the positive side, though, this does move forward to a conclusion, the confrontation with Deveraux. I find John Barron to be a very interesting actor – not necessarily a great actor, for example, there’s quite a bit of what we will come to see as CJ from “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” here. But he is fairly compelling. We never really got a proper ending to the first story, but this one does wrap everything up with the demise of Deveraux and the Ice Box in general. Not only that, but there’s the sub-plot of Liz/Beth and what will happen to her family, and the question of just how much she will be able to change this potential future. The way that the overarching narrative is being linked in with the fates of Liz and her family is a definite strength of the developing series.

In many ways this had a harder job to do in visual terms than the first story, and for me it does it rather well. The story has to look like it is the future. Note I say ‘the future’ and not ‘1990’. For this does not look one little bit like I remember 1990. However, it DOES very much look like what we imagined the future would look like in 1970. This is something recognisable as the future according to 1970 – and looking at the colour episode, it does it pretty much as well as contemporary Doctor Who did. Where the budget does show is in the lack of personnel on the base – we only ever see a handful.

People have made the observation in the past that “Timeslip” was like a children’s TV “Doomwatch”. For the benefit of the uninitiated, “Doomwatch” was an adult BBC sci fi drama show running from 1970 - 72 in which a present day team investigated and fought against technological and ecological threats to the Earth. I can see what they mean. Mind you, you can also draw a comparison with contemporary Doctor Who – during this period the Doctor had been exiled to Earth, and with a very few exceptions the stories between 1970-73 concerned threats to contemporary Earth. Coming back to “Timeslip”, one of the great strengths of this story is the number of hard sci fi concepts which feature in it – climate change – over-reliance on computers and technology – cloning – increased life span – even virtual reality all feature to a greater or lesser extent in this narrative.

Gerry Anderson 1: Supercar

Gerry Anderson’s first marionette TV series certainly wasn’t “Supercar”, but you could be forgiven for thinking that it was, for “Supercar” was the first of the classic Anderson shows which would span the 60s. Supercar was the first series he made with a recognisably sci fi slant to it, and it would be followed during the 70s by Fireball XL5, Stingray, the immortal Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, the short lived Secret Service, and Joe 90. It could be argued that Anderson lost his way as the 60s becam the 70s and he switched over to live action with firstly UFO, then Space 1999. Well, we’ll get to those when we come to them. For now, let’s take a closer look at “Supercar”

“Supercar” was Anderson’s most ambitious series to date. It was his first with a half hour format. The original idea was Anderson and Reg Hill’s, and fanderson lore has it that the idea was that using the vehicle would cut down the amount of walking that the marionettes would be needed to do, which had been a drawback with Anderson’s previous series, the wild west based Four Feather Falls.

Basically the idea was that the show was about Supercar, a vehicle that can fly, go undersea, and act like a hovercraft on land, and the adventures of its pilot, Mike Mercury. When Granada TV decided that they’d had enough of “Four Feather Falls”, Anderson approached Lew grade of ATV, the ITV company running the Midlands franchise. Grade apparently liked the idea, but wanted the budget halved. Anderson worked to reduce it by a third, and Grade commissioned the series. In the end 2 series, or 39 episodes in total were made, and the series was sold for syndication in the USA, the first Anderson show to be shown there, in 1962.

“Supercar” has the distinction of being the only Anderson series from the 60s of which I had never watched so much as a single episode. Even “Fireball XL5”, the series’ successor, which was also made before I was born, was repeated in mornings in the 80s, and also in evenings the wake of the great Thunderbirds revival of the 90s. I will admit that, for the purposes of this post, I only watched the first episode, “Rescue”. Hmm. I think that in order to be fair to the show, when you watch it you should keep reminding yourself that this was early days for Anderson. He had to go through this before he would be ready for Stingray and Thunderbirds. Bearing that in mind then, here are a few random observations: -

·       The theme song is the worst I’ve ever heard in an Anderson series. The lyrics – where it seems every other word is ‘Supercar’ – means that listening to it is rather like being beaten over the head with a blunt instrument: -

“SUPERCAR! SUPERCAR! It can go anywhere SUPERCAR! Etc. ad nauseam.” It’s a long way from the naïve charm of “Fireball” from Fireball XL5, and “Aqua Marina” from Stingray.

·       The puppets are cruder and less realistic than in the succeeding series.

·       The plot was frankly extremely rudimentary and slow moving. The rescue idea may just be a foreshadowing of Thunderbirds, but virtually nothing happens for the first 20 minutes or so of the show. A pilot, taking his kid brother and their monkey friend (!) for a spin has to ditch in the sea. It’s too foggy for the rescue plane to find them. Supercar could do it, but its inventors, Popkiss and Beaker don’t want it go until it has been tested. So only when they are actually in danger of dying can they be rescued. Kid and monkey are allowed to join the team.

·       Even in an early series such as this, certain hallmarks of the Anderson formula are in place – namely, a focus on the hardware of the show (the car) – brilliant but eccentric inventors – unusual, non-human sidekicks – success against nearly impossible odds.

Still, as I did say, we have to remember that this is where Gerry Anderson began the 60s, not where he finished it. So, having watched one, would I consider watching others? Only in the cause of the blog, certainly not for enjoyment.