ITV in the
early 70s had a problem. They would dearly have loved to have had a successful
and popular mainstream sci fi series of their own. The options before them were
to either a) import one, or b) make one.
Let’s examine
what they did with option A first. The problem was that the best, and certainly
most popular import was already showing on BBC, and it was called “Star Trek”.
“Star Trek” was never popular enough when its three original series were shown
on NBC in the USA, but quickly went on to become probably the most successful
TV show in syndication history. “Star Trek” was a phenomenon, and it would have
been asking a lot to expect any other show to have the same appeal. ITV bought
up the rights to the 4 Irwin Allen shows – “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”,
“Lost in Space”, “The Time Tunnel” and “Land of the Giants”. While at least the
first two of these were popular, they weren’t really popular enough, or
arguably sophisticated enough to sustain a prime time slot in the schedules,
and throughout the late 60s and early 70s were relegated to children’s TV time
slots.
Which
highlights the ITV attitude towards home grown sci fi product as well. It’s
difficult to argue that the most successful ever British sci fi TV series is
“Doctor Who”. If we think about the original 1963-89 series, some people make
the mistake of thinking that it was a children’s TV show. Yet it never was.
Doctor Who was always specifically made as a family TV show, and there’s a
difference. There was always an understanding that there had to be a level at
which it must be enjoyable to adults as well. If we compare this with ITV, the
attitude with ITV is that sci fi shows were children’s television. While this
approach had notable successes – one thinks particular of the work of Gerry
Anderson – it also had notable drawbacks. For one thing, budgets are much
smaller for children’s TV shows. Bearing in mind that sci fi as a genre tends
to demand more special effects than any other this is a serious problem. Also
it tends to encourage, not exactly laziness in terms of writing, but it
discourages any real depth or complexity.
All of which
militated against ITV producing any decent homegrown sci fi shows, and yet
during the early and mid 70s they did produce some genuinely interesting and original
shows – one thinks of “The Tomorrow People”, “Ace of Wands”, and this show,
“Timeslip”.
I was only
about 7 when “Timeslip” first showed on ITV. Yet even over 40 years later I can
clearly remember watching it regularly, and I could remember episodes taking
place in what seemed to be an arctic setting, then a jungle setting, and a
futuristic setting where they kept talking about clones.
Timeslip,
although a series of 26 episodes, is actually divided into 4 distinct stories,
each of which links in as part of the overall narrative. They are: -
The Wrong
End of Time
The Time of
the Ice Box
The Year of
the Burn-Up
The Day of
the Clone
I’ve watched
all 6 episodes of “The Wrong End of Time” again and this is basically what
happens in it. The first episode of the first story began with a rather
po-faced introduction from ITV’s tame Science ‘expert’ of the time, Peter Fairey.
This is fiction, but it’s very close to Science Fact, being the gist of what he
said. In fact, the introduction is probably the most dated thing about the
whole episode. Then we get the theme
music, which actually sounds like it should belong to a 1950s Hollywood Roman
epic like Ben Hur.
The first
episode starts with a girl disappearing without a trace. Then it establishes that
Frank Skinner (no, honestly, that’s his name), his wife and daughter Liz, and
the nerdy son of his best friend, Simon Randall, are all just about to leave
the village of St. Oswald in a gypsy caravan for a touring holiday. He tells
the kids to go off for a walk in the hills. Hmm. A parent telling two teens of
that age to go off into the hills 30 years later would be asking for grandkids,
if you know what I mean. They walk over to a disused Ministry of Defence
outpost. They find a strange invisible barrier, with a small, kid sized hole,
and they crawl through. Although it’s broad daylight when they go through, they
emerge in pitch darkness. They find out that they have in fact gone back in
time to the second world war, when it was a navy base. Meanwhile, Frank has
been talking with Mr. Traynor from the nearby hotel. The two have reminisced
over their time in the naval base during the war, where we learn something
happened to Frank which he just can’t remember. In the base, back in time, Liz
and Simon meet the young Mr. Traynor, and swotty knowall Simon suggests that
the hole in the fence through which they came was probably made by the people
he heard speaking German. They also meet the young Frank Skinner.
In an
unintentionally funny piece of dialogue, young Frank calls Liz and Simon
village people! Back in the 1970s, Mrs. Skinner has a wee psychic incident and starts
speaking in German. Liz and Simon establish that young Frank Skinner is
definitely the same man who will later become her Dad. They meet Sarah, the
girl who disappeared before they did. Old Traynor tells old Skinner that he was
his commanding officer during the time he can’t remember, and that the naval
base was taken over by Germans for a while during world war II. Back in the
past, the Germans, under Helmut Gottfried, seize the base. Gottfried has a very
70s hairstyle and sideburns. Young Traynor gives Young Skinner a job to do
under the pretence of making coffee. He is amazed when Simon suggests that the
base is working on radar – which it obviously is. The oint is that back in 1940
a teenage boy, even a nerdy one, shouldn’t ever have even heard of the word. Young
Frank, under the subterfuge of making coffee, activates some secret equipment,
which renders him unconscious. In 1970, Old Traynor, who it seems was
dispatched to the area after Sarah disappeared, persuades old Frank not to call
the police, but to come and look at the base. When they do, Liz and Simon can
see the pair of them, but nobody else can, and they can’t see Liz and Simon.
Further
developments are that modern day Traynor and Skinner work out what has
happened, that the kids have slipped back in time. Mrs. S. has another psychic
episode, in a nightmare in which she sees Liz with young Frank. Modern day Mr.
T. says that he believes that Liz and Simon can’t be hurt in 1940. Meanwhile,
Simon and Liz come up with a strategy to escape, by saying that poor stupid
Sarah saw the men from the base burying machinery by the fence. They manage to
get Sarah away, but Liz gets herself stuck on the wire.
Liz
extricates herself, and sees Sarah home to her folks. By the morning, Traynor
is insisting that Liz goes back through the barrier to find out whether the
Germans discovered the plans which he had hidden. Once she gets back home,
Traynor basically takes control, insisting that Liz goes back through the
barrier. He needs to know, you see, whether Gottfried ever got a look at the
special papers that he had hidden. He reiterates that he cannot be heard, and
also says that nothing can possibly go wrong because of the psychic link
between Liz and her mum. So she goes back, determined to help her dad get his
memory back of what has happened on the base in time to get involved in some
argy bargy in the base, and at the end of episode 5 it seems that she has been
shot and killed by one of the heavily bearded Germans.
Liz
turns out not to be injured by the gunshot from Herman the German , so modern
day Traynor’s theory turns out to be right. Old Traynor realises that the
traitor who helped the Germans into the base back in the day was Mr. Bradley,
who now owns the hotel. When he hints as much to Bradley, the moustachioed git
makes sure his revolver is loaded. Simon manages to get a gun to young Traynor,
who uses it to stop Gottfried from taking him back to the Fatherland, although
he can’t stop Gottfried from going. Frank remembers that he himself kept the papers
away from prying eyes, which is excellent news for modern day Traynor when he
is told by Liz’s mum. Time for the kids to leave, and they do. Unfortunately
when they emerge from the barrier it is into an arctic wasteland, not home where
they were expecting to be.
So, here’s
the question. If you trawl the internet, and search for lists of fondly
remembered kids shows of the 70s, or fondly remembered sci fi shows of the 70s,
“Timeslip” often features on them. Is this popularity and reputation deserved?
Several
things struck me just from watching the first episode. Firstly, this is very
leisurely paced storytelling. This is not automatically a bad thing, but it’s
certainly a approach to storytelling that has gone out of fashion. Episode One
opens with a sequence in which a character of the species commonly known as
bumpkin ne’erdowell watches a girl walk slowly up to the entrance to the base,
then disappear as she enters. That’s honestly all there is to it, but it takes
over 6 minutes of the less than 25 minute running time of the entire episode.
What this scene does, though, is to establish atmosphere. In fact I would say
that the creation of atmosphere is probably the best thing about this first
story. For it is continually hinting that there are important revelations which
will come, but so far, very little actually has. Back in 1940 the Germans
invade a secret naval base. They work out that there is something interesting
going on with experiments there. It is hinted that this may involve lasers, but
this is never stated explicitly. They don’t get what they want, they try to take
Traynor home to Germany, but they don’t. As regards Simon and Liz, well, they
slip through a time portal. There is a half hearted attempt to explain it, but
there is no real conviction to it. The man who seems to have all of the answers
is Traynor, but he’s giving them out in very small doses.
Now, that
may sound like a lot going on when you write it all down in one paragraph.
However, it doesn’t seem like anything like as much when you spread it out over
6 episodes of 25 minutes. I will concede it’s quite possible that the tempo
speeds up in the stories and episodes yet to come, in fact I’d say that it has
to. But for these first 6 episodes the pace is almost funereal.
I’d say that
the show gets away with it in this first story for a number of reasons.
Firstly, even though the story is ostensibly about the two teenagers, Simon and
Liz, a lot of the dialogue passes between Dennis Quilley’s Traynor and Sandor
Eles’ Gottfried. And this is all to the good, because they are both good,
experienced actors who know to play it as naturally as possible and not overegg
the pudding. We can compare this with Cheryl Burchill’s contributions as Liz.
She’s trying, by crikey, she’s trying, and I’m not saying that she’s any worse
than any typical TV child actor of the same era. It’s very difficult for a
child actor to be convincingly natural. As for Spencer Banks, well, my memory
is that Simon becomes more important in the stories I can remember at all, but
as for this first outing through the barrier, well, for all that the character
contributes to this story he needn’t be here in the first place.
So does “Timeslip”
not deserve its good rep then? Well, no, I’m not saying that. Considering that
it was probably made on a shoestring budget, the production values aren’t that
bad. There is only ever the one special effect, when Liz and Simon pass through
the barrier, but you wouldn’t say that the effect is noticeably worse than late
60s/ early 70s Doctor Who. Where it gets interesting is in what it says about
Time itself. For Traynor tells us that even when Liz and Simon are in 1940,
they still belong to 1970, and therefore cannot be hurt in the past. This
proves to be true when Liz is shot at pint blank range. Yet if this is the
case, how can they affect the past? They clearly do, when Simon gives Traynor
the gun which enables him to say nein when offered a one way trip to
Deutschland. Which in a way seems to be arguing for pre-destination. I also
find it remarkable that a series made in 1970 would have such a sympathetic
German ‘villain’ as Gottfried – the show is actually decades before its time on
this score.
I’m
interested enough to want to watch “The Time of the Ice Box”, although. I think
having a fictional future setting should mean there’s less obvious padding,
since the show is going to have to work harder to make it convincing to an
audience, compared with the very familiar world war II setting of this story.
