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.