Visit the official Doctor Who website

Visit the official Doctor Who website
Look to the future

Asylum seekers...

Asylum seekers...
Refuge of the Daleks

Doctor Who picture resource

Doctor Who picture resource
Roam the space lanes!

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website
Step back in time

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood
Armed and extremely dangerous

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures
Fearless in the face of adversity

Call on Dani’s House

Call on Dani’s House
Harmer’s a charmer

Intercept the UFO fabsite

Intercept the UFO fabsite
Defending the Earth against alien invaders!

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse
Programmable agent Echo exposed!

Hell’s belles

Hell’s belles
Naughty but nice

Love Exposure

Love Exposure
Flash photography!

Primeval portal

Primeval portal
Dressed to kill or damsels in distress?

Charmed, to be sure!

Charmed, to be sure!
The witches of San Francisco

Take on t.A.T.u.

Take on t.A.T.u.
All the way from Moscow

Proceed to the Luther website

Proceed to the Luther website
John and Jenny discuss their next move

DCI Banks is on the case

DCI Banks is on the case
You can bet on it!

On The Grid with Spooks

On The Grid with Spooks
Secret agents of Section D

Bridge to Hustle

Bridge to Hustle
Shady characters

Life on Ashes To Ashes

Life on Ashes To Ashes
Coppers with a chequered past

Claire’s no Exile

Claire’s no Exile
Goose steps

Vexed is back on the beat!

Vexed is back on the beat!
Mismatched DI Armstrong and bright fast-tracker Georgina Dixon

Medium, both super and natural

Medium, both super and natural
Open the door to your dreams

Who’s that girl? (350-picture Slideshow)

Sunday 6 January 2008

All Our Yesterdays


For fantasy fans, BBC FOUR has been the channel to watch over the first couple of nights or so of the New Year. On January 2, the TV station hosted a “Thunderbirds Are Go!” night devoted to the work of Gerry Anderson. The most interesting part of the evening (for me) was, of course, the documentary “All About Thunderbirds” which charted the evolution of Supermarionation from “Supercar” through to the demise of “Space: 1999”. They didn’t touch on the earlier series, “The Adventures of Twizzle”, Series One of “Torchy, the Battery Boy” and western “Four Feather Falls” or the later ones such as “Terrahawks”, “Dick Spanner P.I.”, “Space Precinct”, “Lavender Castle” and, most recently, the revamped computer-generated “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet”. The programme focused mainly on “Thunderbirds”, discussing the commercial failure of the first feature, “Thunderbirds Are Go!”, whilst surprisingly ignoring its sequel, “Thunderbird 6”, and the live-action production “Doppelgänger”, aka “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun”. It was good to see the pilot episode of the original “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” again, though the “new” episode of “Stingray”, “The Reunion Party”, proved to be a disappointment being merely a compilation episode with some, hitherto unseen, brief links.


The following evening, January 3, viewers were treated to Irwin Allen night. He’s probably best remembered today for blockbuster disaster adventures “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno” but, in the Sixties, produced four American Television cult favourites beginning with “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” in 1964, following the successful feature of the same name filmed three years earlier. Next up was perhaps the most popular of the quartet, “Lost in Space”, initially made in black and white while successive seasons were filmed in colour. A year later came “The Time Tunnel”, the opening episode of which began the evening. “Rendezvous with Yesterday” is set on the Titanic and includes Michael Rennie and Susan Hampshire among its guest cast. Mix this with “The Poseidon Adventure” and you probably end up with something closely approximating the “Doctor Who” Christmas Special, “Voyage of the Damned”! Concluding the foursome was my personal favourite “Land of the Giants”. I suspect my fondness for this series has something to do with the fact that “Planet of Giants” is one of my earliest memories of “Doctor Who” and the outsized sets of Allen’s series, together with camera angles denoting view points, remind one of this particular BBC serial! Irwin’s story itself was well told, save for the cheesy links from “Lost in Space” stars June Lockhart and Bill Mumy, through the 1995 hour-and-a-half biography “The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen” which provided the centrepiece of the evening. All in all, a fun couple of nights’ viewing!

4 comments:

Steve said...

Didn't Dick Spanner feature on Network 7 - some early youth programme on Channel 4? I have vague memories of the mysterious Magenta Divine (?) cooing her chocolately vowels over "very important and earnest" news items...

TimeWarden said...

Yes. "Dick Spanner P.I." was commissioned as a five-minute cartoon insert into the magazine-style programme. It's definitely not one of Gerry Anderson's best and only for those diehard fans who feel they have to have seen everything he's ever made!

Moonwatcher said...

Dick Spanner used to be great fun.

TimeWarden said...

Hi Moonwatcher. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.

I believe "Dick Spanner P.I." has recently been released on DVD.