The Tomorrow People - Series Three - Secret Weapon (1975)

I know I said this show was that bad that it would be ages before I got round to watching another episode.  Well I lied.  I watched the first episode of the third series primarily because I had a free 25 minutes and everything else waiting to be viewed was longer but what a treat.

Look...

There on the wall.  That looks a lot like a spacesuit but why would it be hanging up in a parapsychologist's lab?  Perhaps its something else.... although it does look sort of familiar.

And whats that over in the corner

Why it's a space helmet and not just any space helmet but the one that goes with the suit, the one that was last seen at the end of season 2's The Doomsday Men.

Yes it's one of Gerry Anderson's old UFO suits just hanging around making a room look interesting.

Random acts of illogical set dressing ?  Or a brand new game called: Spot the Spacesuit?
....No, its the first one isn't it.


Steve

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Diamonds are Forever was the 7th of the James Bond films and Sean Connery's penultimate performance as the iconic spy.  I'm not going to go into any great length about the film it self except to say that, unsurprisingly, it has diamonds at the centre of its plot.  Diamonds that are to be used in a giant laser in a scheme orchestrated by the evil Blofeld.

And somewhere in all of this there is a scene where Bond interrupts what appears to be the faking and filming of a moon exploration before eventually nicking off with a Moon Buggy for a chase around the desert outside the moon themed hanger.

 

Is there a subtext here for those lunar landing sceptics or is it just a bit of fun?  I personally think it's just an excuse for a car chase with some visually unusually vehicles.

Cool or what!

Steve

Goodies - Invasion of the Moon Creatures (1973)

The Goodies was a British comedy series that first aired on the BBC on the 8^th of November 1970 and clocked up a total of 76 episodes over 9 series, ending its run with its final series broadcast in the early 1980’s over on the ITV channel.

The Goodies were Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.  The three men co-starred and co-wrote the series where each week quite literally anything could happen and the trio could find themselves just about anywhere as long as it provided the opportunity to cram in as many gags as possible or parody current events or trends.

In the episode; Invasion of the Moon Creatures from the 4^th series and broadcast on the 8^th December 1973, we see Bill and Tim take a trip to the moon in pursuit of Graeme’s first experimental moon rocket and its lost crew of specially trained rabbits.

The two of them then don some of Gerry Anderson’s second hand UFO spacesuits as they mess about on the moon’s surface before being captured and brainwashed by the now hyper-intelligent rabbits.  They are then returned to earth, dressed as giant rabbits, vanguards of the invading rabbit forces, and just have time for a quick parody of A Clockwork Orange’s ultra-violence before the show wraps to the sounds of its rather brilliant theme tune.

I loved the Goodies as a kid and, though rarely repeated, a recent handful of episodes that were shown over the Christmas period were still just as silly and entertaining as I recall.

And Invasion of the Moon Creatures is as fine an episode as any, cool spacesuits excluded.


Steve

The Tomorrow People - Series Two - The Doomsday Men (1974)

We've already talked about The Tomorrow People series two and about how not very good it was to begin with and how it got slowly worse as each story followed the next.  And it's all true except that there is a bit of a treat lurking in among those final four episodes.

The Doomsday Men is about a military cult that intend to stop a peace treaty being signed by taking over a nuclear space platform and threatening the world with destruction unless the world's leaders do what they want.

Just prior to all that taking place, one of the crew of the Damocles is cut adrift while working spaceside and is doomed to a cold death but for the intervention of  The Tomorrow People who decide to stage their top secret rescue mission by jaunting into space....in a big old white van.

Anyway what happens next is that I suddenly get a little excited because I realise that what we're looking at here is one of the spacesuits from Gerry Anderson's UFO series.

Now I've already explained in previous posts that these suits guest-star in a number of other TV shows throughout the 70's but this appearance was a new one on me and helped me make it through to the last episode of this dreary, stupid story

It was also quite funny to hear John, leader of the T-Peeps, refer to the spacesuit as old fashioned in one episode.  Really?  Well it certainly wasn't as cutting edge and modern as that rust-bucket of an old van you were cruising the upper atmosphere in earlier!

So there you go.  Another little outing for one of the coolest spacesuits there ever was and I feel sure there must be even more yet to be covered.  Well I know there's at least one more because that's what the next post is going to be about.  We're heading to the Moon in search of rabbits!


Steve

The Tomorrow People - Series Two (1974)

The second series of The Tomorrow People ran from February to May 1974, and consisted of three stories spread over thirteen episodes.  They're all written by Roger Price and while he might come up with a good story idea he just can't do the dialogue or maintain character or plot logic.  What I'm saying here is, as somebody who's working their way through the DVD box set, that this is slow and painful going.

I've often wondered if my enjoyment of watching old Doctor Who episodes is because its comfortably nostalgic and reminds me of being a kid.  If that's the case for the BBC show then it should also be true of the ITV one but alas its just not.  The adventures of the good Doctor are timelessly entertaining because by and large they are well written and populated by actors who can.  The Tomorrow People by and large is the polar oposit and even the story I remember the most fondly; The Blue and the Green, just falls apart over its five episodes.  The rest of series two then get worse.  And what I'm really saying here is that it might be quite a long time before I build up the courages to sit through series three.

And so to the new revamped AE suits which feature in this series.  I quite like them as it goes.

Despite the motorbike'ness of the helmets they have a style about them that is their own.  Gone is the shiny silver of the first series to be replaced with a less showy blue/grey fabric. I also like the tubing and the backpacks and even though they're probably made on the cheap like eveything else about this series, the consistancy between the elements even makes the helmet seem a part of the whole.  Well done who ever that costume designer was but for their contribution, there would be nothing positive to say.

And that's about it really...... except  for.... well... just wait for the next post and see.

Steve

Look-In #31 (1973)

I've mentioned Look-In before so I won't repeat myself  by explaining what it was - Click the label below for details - but here we have another fine cover and this time it's painted artwork, which is how I remember them always being even if that wasn't actually the case.

Pictured above is the series 1 cast of The Tomorrow People resplendent in their AE suits to celebrate the launch of the show's comicstrip within its pages.  If I've got my maths right this came out about the same time as the final episode aired and must have filled the void between that and series 2.

Look-In had been a good friend to the children's show by running a preview feature in issue 18, the week before the series began its first TV transmission.  They've also been a good friend here by visually stretching the show's budget to suggest that there was actually a spacesuit for every member of the team.  To the best of my knowledge, inhibited by his questionable acting abilities, the little chap that played Kenny, rarely got out of the underground base let alone all the way into outer space.

 Steve

The Tomorrow People - Series 1 (1973)

The Tomorrow People was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network.  This children’s sci-fi show was broadcast in its original form from 1973 to 1979.  Its basic premise concerns the “break out” of the next stage of human evolution; Homo Superior, AKA, the titular; Tomorrow People.

Being a children’s series, the main cast of the show were themselves children or young adults.  This served the story logic well as it is revealed in the very first episode that it’s during adolescence that the Tomorrow People’s psionic powers come to fruition.

Telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation and a nifty underground base are just a few of the perks of joining humanity’s elite but far more important than that is, of course, access to some shiny silver space suits!

Well now that I’ve named them such I should probably point out that in the show’s vernacular they’re better known as AE Suits which basically means that they are inclusively rather than exclusively spacesuits.  You see; AE stands for Adaptable for any Environment but in reality this translates as; this show has almost zero budget and these things are going to have to serve all elements of the plot from Arctic to volcanic wear.

The ones pictured here are only seen in the first series and were perhaps a little too tight-fitting to be practical or just too hot to wear beneath the studio lights but by series two they had been replaced by an updated design and a far more forgiving fabric.

And yes, those are modified motor bike helmets there but If I really wanted illustrate how cheap this show was, I would be posting pictures of the monsters and explaining how thinly the plot could be spread over multiple episodes.

And not that it has any real relevance to this blog but I feel compelled to add that, despite its many failings, the central premise of the Tomorrow People is a solid gold idea and that its theme tune and opening credits must rank as one of the all time classics of British children’s television.  Go You Tube it.  In actualization, it remains the best bit of the whole show.

Steve