Adventures of a lifetime

And so the final episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures was transmitted on Tuesday afternoon at 5.15pm on the CBBC channel. Part Two of The Man Who Never Was completed the curtailed run of the Fifth Season. There was talk that the series might continue without its leading lady. It’s happened before. Blake’s 7 survived, after the departure of Gareth Thomas, as did Taggart, on the death of Mark McManus. But the BBC finally took the opportunity to pull the plug. Credit to Russell T Davies, who fought hard to keep the show on air when it was threatened with cancellation earlier in its life. I believe the BBC took some persuading to make the show in the first place. Bringing back a character, popular in the Seventies, to front a programme aimed primarily at twelve to fourteen-year-olds doesn’t seem like an obvious choice! But it seemed to work, though, in real life, one would no doubt question the motives of a sixty-year-old woman hanging out with a bunch of school children, even if some of the children in question did look as though they were in their early twenties themselves! Yasmin Paige, as Maria Jackson, and then Anjli Mohindra, as Rani Chandra, certainly gave the adventures in which they appeared that additional bounce! But The Sarah Jane Adventures belonged to the late Elisabeth Sladen and, in the present economic climate, it is unlikely we shall see its kind again in the foreseeable future.

It’s a shame really. Programmes such as The Sarah Jane Adventures were commonplace once upon a time. Everyone took them for granted. ITV were always trying to create a winning formula with which they could rival Doctor Who in the mid-to-late Sixties and throughout the Seventies. For the most part, they were as successful. The obvious examples are the string, no pun intended, of hugely popular-to-this-day Gerry Anderson puppet series. They began in the Fifties, of course, but took off when Gerry and then-wife Sylvia turned their hands to science fiction. Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons, Joe 90 and The Secret Service were all hugely exciting. Live action series were equally as popular. Sexton Blake, Freewheelers, Timeslip, Ace Of Wands and The Tomorrow People all left their mark, as did UFO and Space: 1999 when the Andersons put Supermarionation behind them. Peter Davison’s first acting role was in The Tomorrow People, up against the very series he would eventually helm! We’ve seen their like since. The Demon Headmaster and Moondial were two such. Ironically, other than Sarah Jane, the last were Dark Season and Century Falls in the early Nineties, both excellently written by Russell T Davies. Children are being sold short without such fantasy stimulation, and televisual creativity will suffer further because of the demise of this genre!

Who Survives(?)

“Doctor Who” celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary today and there’s not a single programme on television to mark the occasion!

“The Bill” recently celebrated its twenty-fifth year, ITV slipping in a couple of special episodes just in the nick of time, before giving over most of its precious airspace to jungle idiocy. So, why can’t the BBC manage something similar, between dancing bouts, for its flagship science fiction series, especially now they claim it’s so popular once again? Too busy trying not to hurt the feelings of Jonathan Ross no doubt!

Ironically, the BBC are resurrecting Terry (Dalek creator) Nation’s post-apocalyptic “Survivors” tonight, based on his highly original novel and television series from the mid-Seventies. I don’t know whether I should be excited or give up the notion of ever seeing anything as remotely creative as television once was.

“Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)”, “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”, “Doctor Who” and now “Survivors”… what are the chances of the latter being as good, second time around, considering the quality of those other revivals when compared to their originals? The changes to the structure of the programme don’t bode well…

Two of the three lead characters of the original first season of “Survivors” are now a politically-correct shade of black while the endearingly brilliant Talfryn Thomas, as Tom Price, has morphed into Mr. chunky-hunky Max Beesley.

The new “Survivors” is brought to the Beeb by the same team who sold ITV “Primeval”. Fun as that was, the present undertaking needs to be grim.

It’ll be interesting to see how “Survivors” fares in the ratings up against the aforementioned, oh-so-popular, celebrity lunacy. I won’t hold my breath. Or, perhaps I should, given the nature of the epidemic! People want fun and what better way to have it than see people humiliated down under, credit crunching on bugs. Hopefully, “Survivors” will be intelligent, at the very least…

“Survivors” is the closest we’re going to get to “Doctor Who” (1963-89) tonight, to which I wish a very Happy Birthday!

“Remember me to Destiny”

It may surprise regular readers of this blog to learn my initial posts, two-and-a-half years ago, weren’t on the subject of “Doctor Who”! The first two pieces I wrote were on “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet”, to give it its full title, and so think it high time I revisit the Hypermarionation series. It’s currently being simultaneously rerun on ITV2 and CITV, early weekday mornings, with a repeat an hour later on ITV2+1. The series consists of 26 half-hour episodes which were originally aired from 2005 as two seasons of thirteen episodes each. This computer-animated show is based on the 1967 puppet series “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” also created by Gerry Anderson with his then-wife Sylvia. The opening two-part story of the revamped “Captain Scarlet”, “Instrument of Destruction”, went out a month or so before new “Doctor Who” first appeared on our screens and was therefore considered something of a rival. But new “Captain Scarlet” didn’t receive the same amount of publicity as the BBC ONE series and was buried in ITV’s schedules on Saturday mornings as part of the children’s strand “Ministry of Mayhem”. I think that’s a shame because “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet” is everything I’d like new “Doctor Who” to be… “This is the voice of the Mysterons! We know that you can hear us, Earthmen…”

Tough and no-nonsense, “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet” is populated with numerous characters, the Spectrum agents each with a colour coding. Captain Scarlet, aka Paul Metcalfe, becomes indestructible after a misunderstanding on a mission to Mars. His friend and co-astronaut Captain Black, Conrad Lefkon, misinterprets an alien scanning device as an act of hostility and destroys the Mysteron complex only for it to reconstruct itself through the power of retro-metabolism. The Mysterons vow they will be avenged and, in failing to make Scarlet their agent, take over the body of Black. Conrad leaves behind grieving girlfriend Destiny Angel, Simone Giraudoux, who, as the series progresses, begins to fall for Scarlet. This ménage à trois never gets in the way of the action, unlike the current crop of over-domesticated “Doctor Who” companions, but underpins it with an urgency-of-purpose highlighting what makes humanity something worth fighting for. Spectrum operates out of Skybase, formerly Cloudbase in the original Supermarionation series, and have a range of vehicles at their disposal. Destiny, for example, heads a squad of five Angel pilots using Falcon Interceptors as one line of defence. Scarlet is usually teamed with Captain Blue, Adam Svenson, under the command of Colonel White, Sir Charles Grey, and he, in turn, is assisted by Lieutenant Green, Serena Lewis, who has a soft spot for Blue. The series isn’t perfect, by any means, but it is tight and well executed. It’s the last episode today but, fear not, the series begins all over again from tomorrow!

More thoughts on "Scarlet"...

Just finished watching "Swarm", the third episode of "New Captain Scarlet" to be transmitted. When Destiny and her squad of Angels shoot down an enemy aircraft on a collision course with Skybase, a swarm of metal-eating wasp-like insects are unleashed and attack her interceptor. Scarlet rescues her but she unwittingly returns to Spectrum HQ with one of the little critters in her clothing!

The creatures cocoon Lt. Green when she goes off-duty, in a scene reminiscent of the one missing from the original "Alien" movie. They tap into her brain to discover the logistics of Skybase and avoid the possibility of detection that would arise through connection to the computer system. Scarlet and Destiny become trapped together in a lift for over an hour as the swarm begin to take over. After escaping their confinement, they discover, when Destiny accidently knocks over a jug, that water is the Achilles heel of the insects.

The episode is excellently realised despite the absense of Captain Black so early in the run when it would’ve been better, after the opening two-part story, to firmly establish him as Scarlet’s nemesis. That error is undoubtedly down to the carelessness of the broadcasters and not the producers. ITV have a long history of not broadcasting episodes of Gerry Anderson series in the order in which they were intended!

Everyone is impossibly beautiful with an emphasis on the curves of the female characters very noticeable especially when Destiny is either in her cockpit or climbing down ladders which, no doubt, makes it sexist but is in the nature of these things in a financially competitive market.

All five Angels now launch upon danger, instead of only three of the five in the original series, which suggests they are all on duty all of the time which isn’t logical! Lt. Green is seen going off-duty and sleeping in this episode, and we meet her stand-in, so when do the Angels get any time-out or sleep? If they do, who replaces them?!! That would mean too many characters and is obviously a concept contrivance. Great fun though and I’m looking forward to the next episode, whichever one they show!?!

Return of the (virtually) indestructible hero in Hypermarionation!

Gerry Anderson's "New Captain Scarlet" began its 26 episode run on the morning of Saturday 12 February 2005 on CITV although, to be honest, I wish it wasn't part of "Ministry of Mayhem"! Why are ITV afraid to try for a bigger audience late afternoon/early evening? Also, in "MOM", the gap between the two halves of the first episode was much longer than a regular commercial break would be!

I'd like to know the thinking behind changing Lt. Green from male to female especially as there are already five female characters in the shape of the Angels although, of the five, we only meet Destiny in the first episode. The suggestion is that, like Councillor Troi when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" began, she is the character through which the emotional content of an episode will be channelled.

I'm also curious about the change of name from Cloudbase to Skybase? That aside, it moved at a furious pace and, in so-doing, lost the luxuriously sedate menace of the 1967 original. The Supermarionation version was much aided by Barry Gray's music whereas the score for the new CGI series meanders rather nondescriptly, instantly forgotten. I wonder what the closing credits are like? We weren't given the chance to see or even hear them on CITV!

There was much to recommend the new show. Particularly impressive were the Angel Interceptor flight sequences and Captain Black's resurrection, fist through the coffin lid! Coming across as a vampire-like figure with his great coat swirling behind him reminded me of "Blade Runner" although audiences with shorter memories are more likely to associate it with Spike from "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer"!

What would be nice is for younger viewers to want to discover the beauty of the original puppet series which, for all its woodenness, still felt three dimensional; something you just don't seem to get from computer generated material. Even so, I enjoyed it and will stay with the series both now and when it returns later in the year...