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!

Telly Visions: Eliza Dushku

Hello, Dolly! Eliza Dushku first aroused the interest of the viewing public playing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s young daughter, straddled across the nose cone of a Harrier Jump Jet, in James Cameron’s James Bond-esque “True Lies”. That’s a pretty titanic start to anyone’s career! However, the actress has really made her name working in American television. It’s probably fair to say that Miss Dushku became more of a household name when she became a recurring character, a semi-regular as they’re known in the television industry, in Joss Whedon’s “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off series “Angel”, playing a violently-wayward member of the Scooby-gang.

From a supporting role in “Buffy”, Eliza has gone on to play the lead in not one but two US series. First up was “Tru Calling” in which she inherits her mother’s gift for saving lives through reliving days at a deceased’s request. “Groundhog Day” with a pretty girl at its centre. Sounds an unlikely concept for an ongoing show and sometimes it works brilliantly, others not so. Tru works at a morgue, whilst studying to become a doctor, and each episode a dead body will suddenly turn to her from the slab and cry “help me”! The show ran for two seasons but the second was cut short. People lose interest very easily these days!! Anyone curious in seeing what it’s all about, for themselves, can find repeats on Sky Three (Freeview 11).

Reunited with Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku is currently starring, as programmable agent Echo, in the unusual Sci-fi adventure series “Dollhouse”. Already broadcast in the States, the show returned to British television, again on ITV4 (Freeview 24), for its second season, on Wednesday, 28th April, 2010. In the first episode, “Vows” (as in wedding), after her encounter with Alpha, Echo has seemingly recovered. But, as she embarks on a long-term engagement, she begins to behave strangely. And, in the next episode, “Instinct” (as in maternal), Topher’s extraordinary abilities backfire when Echo takes too strongly to her new role as mother to a newborn baby and runs away with the child.

If you’re familiar with “Joe 90”, Whedon’s new show plays like a sexed-up version of Gerry Anderson’s Sixties’ Supermarionation series, with the added attraction of supermodels rather than models! But, the characterisations in “Dollhouse” are even less-well developed than those of either their earlier wooden counterparts or the figures of the actresses inhabiting the American show!! Still, over the course of the next thirteen weeks, I’m looking forward to uncovering any evolution of Echo and her gloriously well-endowed bunny girls!!!

Telly Visions: Gabrielle Drake

Just for a change, I thought I’d better write about an actress who hasn’t appeared in “Doctor Who”! She has, however, appeared in a major science fiction series and this is probably her main claim to fame, despite being a classically trained Shakespearean actress. Her popularity also hails from, approximately, the same time period as my first two choices in this new feature and she is, facially at least, very similar in appearance to my previous “Telly Visions” selection, Wendy Padbury. I’m talking about Gabrielle Drake, one of the best-remembered stars of the 1970 television series “UFO”. Yet, she played Lieutenant Gay Ellis in only ten of the twenty-six episodes produced. Lt. Ellis worked on Moonbase, which was Earth’s first line of defence against invading flying saucers. Part of the reason for her not appearing in the remaining episodes was a gap in production, of about six months, due to relocation of the studio, during which time she needed to look for alternative employment. This also affected other major players in the Gerry Anderson show such as George Sewell. He played Colonel Alec Freeman in the first seventeen episodes then vanishes without a trace, despite still appearing, like Gabrielle, in the opening title sequence! Don’t let that put you off watching the series, though, if you’ve never seen it… Many of the later episodes have stronger scripts, despite a shifting of emphasis as to the reasons for the aliens coming to Earth! The costumes worn by Drake, and her female co-stars, included grey catsuits and mauve or purple-coloured wigs, the practical reason for which was never explained in the series. Trust me, ambiguity is good!

If you don’t remember Gabrielle from “UFO”, you may recall her appearance with John Cleese in an oft-repeated commercial for Yellow Pages, where, if I recollect correctly, the couple attempt to retrieve a goldfish bowl from their flooded home! But, really, she should be most familiar to a wider television viewing audience for her starring role in “The Brothers”, in which she played Jill Hammond for forty-two episodes between 1972 and 1974. If you’re unfamiliar with this series, “The Brothers” could be seen as producer Gerard Glaister’s forerunner to “Howards’ Way”, both being, essentially, Sunday early-evening soaps centred around a family business. It certainly brought Colin Baker into the public eye, as the villainous Paul Merroney, well over a decade before he took on the mantle of Britain’s most famous time traveller. In hindsight, the character of Paul Merroney can be viewed as a prototype for the new Thatcher-inspired generation of corporate go-getters. Anyway, it wasn’t Gabrielle’s only brush with the world of soap! Also like Wendy Padbury before her, she has appeared in the long-running motel saga “Crossroads”, though Drake’s stint was over several years during the mid-to-late Eighties as Nicola Freeman. No relation to Alec, in “UFO”, I trust! On the big screen, she played posh tottie Julia Halforde-Smythe opposite Peter Sellers in the Boulting Brothers’ romantic comedy “There’s a Girl in My Soup”. Peter’s catchphrase in the film is “My god, but you’re lovely” and this is certainly true of his co-star, Gabrielle Drake. Just take a look at the short clip of Lt. Ellis changing into her mini-skirt in the Moonbase equivalent of a locker room, from the “UFO” pilot-episode “Identified”, and I think you’ll agree!

More of ITV4

As of today, ITV4 will broadcast 24 Hours a day. Up to now, the channel has only been broadcasting between 6pm and 6am but viewers will immediately be able to watch its output anytime of the day. ITV4 began broadcasting on 1 November, 2005 and the mix of shows has, pretty much, remained constant ever since. I noticed a slight decline in the number of showings of old ITC series, of late, but the station will need to fill the schedules with something and I don’t suppose it will include any new programming just more screenings of what has already been bought in!

Shows on offer have included many British drama series originally aired in the Sixties, a handful from the Seventies and the odd one or two from the Eighties. These are interspersed with imports from the States including “The X-Files” spin-off “Millennium”, “Homicide: Life on the Street” and long-running sitcom “Married… with Children” co-starring the lovely Christina Applegate!

As you might expect, I favour the Brit shows! I’m still waiting to catch Harriet Philpin in one of the Douglas Camfield-directed episodes of “The Sweeney” entitled “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. She’s better known to “Doctor Who” fans as Bettan, appearing in the latter half of “Genesis of the Daleks”. More generally, if you’re a fan of “The New Avengers” you might like to try “The Professionals”, created by the same team of Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. Dennis Waterman can be seen in “Minder”, as well as “The Sweeney”, on ITV4 but my main reason for tuning in, being a Gerry Anderson and SF fan, is both “Space: 1999” and, especially, its forerunner “UFO”.

I recently had the pleasure of watching one of my favourite episodes of “Space: 1999” on the channel, “War Games” co-starring Anthony Valentine and Isla Blair. When I first watched the episode, in my mid-teens, I remember being totally shocked by the death of series regular Doctor Bob Mathias, sucked out into space near the beginning of the story! I had yet to fully take on board the Gerry Anderson plot algorithm of the reset button now so beloved, but not nearly as well utilised, by Russell T. Davies!

I’ve also recently rewatched the “UFO” episodes “Reflections in the Water” and “The Long Sleep”. Both excellent. The latter features Tessa Wyatt as Catherine Frazer waking from a ten year coma with news of a possibly devastating hidden bomb on a farmyard that could rip England in half. She’s the former wife of ex-Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn but don’t hold that against her! Give the channel a go and root out some buried treasure… you might be lucky enough to ogle Erotica from “Up Pompeii”, gorgeous Georgina Moon, in her other famous role as Skydiver Operative Lt. Sylvia Howell in one of her eight episodes of “UFO”!

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!

“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!

In Remembrance

I’m saddened to report the death of actor George Sewell, who passed away on Sunday, 1st April, aged 82. To most science fiction fans, he’ll be best remembered as Colonel Alec Freeman in Gerry Anderson’s “UFO”. It’s less than two years since the world lost his acting colleagues on that series, Ed Bishop who played Commander Ed Straker and Michael Billington who appeared as Colonel Paul Foster, so now all three leads of the classic show are no longer with us. George appeared in the first seventeen of the twenty-six episodes that comprise “UFO”. The reason he didn’t complete the series was the closure of MGM’s British Studios. This caused a hiatus in production during which he naturally moved on to other projects.

George first came to Gerry Anderson’s notice when he appeared as the tough EUROSEC security chief Mark Neuman in Anderson’s late-Sixties’ live-action science fiction feature “Doppelgänger”, aka “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun”. But, in the movie world, he will undoubtedly be best remembered for his notable part as Con McCarty, opposite Michael Caine, in Mike Hodges’ cult thriller “Get Carter”.

“Doctor Who” fans will remember George for his terrific portrayal of the misguided Ratcliffe in the 1988 Sylvester McCoy serial “Remembrance of the Daleks”. Those of you with ITV3 may well have caught Mr Sewell’s episode of “Rising Damp”, “The Prowler”, with dear old Leonard Rossiter, during one of its many repeats! George also appeared in the superior 1985 version of “Bleak House”, as Rouncewell, alongside Denholm Elliott and Diana Rigg. The general public will perhaps best remember him, though, for his starring role as Detective Chief Inspector Alan Craven in Euston Films’ “Special Branch” series. A fine actor.