Fireball XL5 (1962-3)

Gerry Anderson had made several puppet series in the late 1950s but it was his Supermarionation series, starting with Supercar in 1961, which brought him fame and success. Supercar was followed by Fireball XL5 which ran for 39 half-hour episodes from 1962 to 1963.

While the most notable thing about Gerry Anderson’s 1960s Supermarionation series was the extraordinarily rapid technical progress made in short a short period. Supercar back in 1961 was great fun but fairly crude. By 1967, with Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Anderson’s series had become technically rather sophisticated and the special effects were often quite impressive.

There was another feature of these series that is worth noting. It’s almost as if Anderson was following the same cohort of kids as they gradually grew a bit older. Supercar and Fireball XL5 which followed a year later were very much children’s series. Stingray in 1964 gave the impression of being aimed at slightly older kids. By the time we reach Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in 1967 we’re dealing with more what could be described as a young adult series rather a children’s series. The kids who watched Supercar six years earlier would now be a least approaching the young adult bracket. The much darker themes, the more realistic feel, the more life-like puppets, all these things make sense if we assume that all these series were watched by essentially the same group of kids.

The puppets in Fireball XL5 still have the exaggerated overtly puppet-like facial features that they had in Supercar. This would be toned down somewhat in Stingray and Thunderbirds. Opinions vary on the merits of the “big-headed” puppets used in all the series up to Thunderbirds compared to the naturally-proportioned puppets of the later Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. The earlier puppets do have a bit more personality.

Every Gerry Anderson series had to have a gimmick associated with the headquarters of whichever organisation was featured in the series. In Stingray Marineville can be made to disappear beneath the ground in the event of an attack, International Rescue’s headquarters in Thunderbirds is hidden on a remote island. In Fireball XL5 the main building of Space City rotates. I have no idea why it rotates but it adds the right futuristic touch.

Of course a space adventure series could have had used just an ordinary rocket ship of the type so familiar in 50s sci-fi movie. That would never satisfied Gerry Anderson - he insisted that the models used had to be clever and imaginative. The take-off of Fireball XL5 from its inclined launching track with a rocket sled to provide extra power still looks pretty cool. The little rocket scooters ridden by Steve and Venus are a fun touch as well and they were a neat way to solve one of the big problems with puppets - the difficulty of making them seem to walk convincingly.

Colonel Steve Zodiac is a typical Gerry Anderson square-jawed hero with an American accent (he was voiced by a Canadian actor). The crew of Fireball XL5 also includes the glamorous Frenchwoman Dr Venus (a doctor of space medicine, and voiced by Sylvia Anderson), Professor Matthew Matic (your basic absent-minded genius professor type) and Robert the Robot (voiced by Gerry Anderson, his only acting credit). 

One of the fun things about shows like this is spotting the outlandish scientific errors. In Fireball XL5’s case the most obvious is that the characters can leave their spaceships and zip around in the vacuum of space without space-suits (although they do take oxygen tablets). Equally amusing is the idea (illustrated in Spy in Space) that during weightlessness you rise straight up to the roof of the spaceship cabin and you can’t get down again. Of course no-one would think of putting hand-holds inside a spaceship for such eventualities.

On the other hand the idea that the nose-cone of Fireball XL5 (Fireball Junior) can be detached to make landings on other planets while the rest of the ship remains in orbit is an interesting anticipation of the Apollo program.

The tone of the series varies from moderately serious to totally light-hearted. The lighter episodes are generally OK if you keep in mind that this is after all a kids’ show. Steve Zodiac has to deal with everything from spies to pirates to gangsters to killer plants to beautiful but deadly princesses. 

In Spy in Space a bungling master spy is trying to steal FireballXL5. 

Space Pirates is an enjoyable little romp, with a couple of pirates straight out of Treasure Island, complete with eye-patches, cutlasses and classic pirate talk.

In Space Pen daring thieves make their escape from Space City with top-secret material and they have even burgled Steve Zodiac’s own quarters. Fireball XL5’s pursuit of the thieves leads them to a prison planet where Steve, Venus and Professor Matic pose as gangsters. This is a fine episode.

In Plant Man From Space the Earth is menaced by monstrous plants from another planet. Steve and his crew will have to go to that planet to find a hormone that will prevent these plants from strangling the Earth. In this episode we see Fireball XL5’s predecessor, the Fireball XL1.

In Prisoner on the Lost Planet Fireball responds to a distress signal from uncharted space. It seems that a beautiful Amazon princess, marooned alone on a distant planet, needs to be rescued. Venus soon starts to suspect that Steve Zodiac will have to be rescued from the clutches of the Amazon princess! A fun episode.

1875 is an amusing little time travel story, with Steve Zodiac finding himself sheriff of a one-horse town in the Wild West, while Venus and Commander Zero are daring bank robbers.

These are all mainly comic episodes but there are some slightly more serious stories. 

The Doomed Planet concerns a planet that is about to be destroyed by impact with another planet. Luckily both planets are uninhabited. Or are they? There’s also a hint of romance in this story. There are some interesting camera angles too, not easy to achieve in a puppet series. And the planet surface is rather atmospheric. There’s an audio commentary to this episode, by voice actor David Graham who worked on quite a few of the Gerry Anderson series.

XL5 to H20 is a particularly good episode. It has a well thought-out and fairly exciting storyline, there’s a hint of real danger and we learn something new about Fireball Junior’s capabilities - it can act as a submarine. Steve Zodiac and his crew are on a mission of mercy to rescue the last two survivors of an entire civilisation but they find themselves in danger from a rather nasty alien.

The Last of the Zanadus tells the story of the sole survivor of a civilisation, and his plans for revenge on those who destroyed his people.

In The Sun Temple a missile from Earth aimed at an asteroid belt is mistaken by two crazed priests on the planet Rejusca for an insult to their sun god. Only a human sacrifice can atone for this insult! A reasonably entertaining episode.

In Mystery of the TA2 the crew of Fireball XL5 find the wreckage of a Space Patrol ship that disappeared forty-eight years earlier. The pilot apparently tried to reach a nearby ice planet - could he have survived in such an inhospitable world? Could he have survived there for half a century?

The Triads is a promising story in which Steve Zodiac and his crew are marooned on a planet where everything is three times bigger than on Earth. Unfortunately there’s just not quite enough plot to take advantage of the setup.

Special mention should be made of the delightfully sappy but oddly charming closing theme song, sung by Don Spencer.

Gerry Anderson wanted very much for each of his series to be superior to the one that preceded it and he communicated that determination to the entire production team. The most dramatic leap forward was probably that between Fireball XL5 and Stingray. Stingray wasn’t just technically more polished it was also slightly more sophisticated in its storytelling techniques. Everyone involved intended that Stingray would be a better series than Fireball XL5 and it is. But Fireball XL5 still has a certain charm. Recommended, and if you're a serious fan of Gerry Anderson's TV work you'll certainly want to see it.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, season 2 (1965-66)

The first season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a major success in 1964 and established this series as an excellent and fairly intelligent blending of science fiction and espionage adventure. The ABC network clearly had a winning formula on its hands. So naturally studio executives decided to start making changes. They wanted a less serious tone. The result was that the second season featured more monsters and more outlandish story lines.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that the studio executives ruined the second season. It’s not quite as good as season one (but then season one had been very very good indeed). It does however have its charms. Even when it gets a little silly it’s still fun and interspersed with the monster stories are more straightforward spy stories that revert to the tone of the first season. The best season two episodes compare quite favourably with the best of the earlier episodes but the quality is just not quite as consistently high.

There were also major changes to the look of the show. It was now shot in colour. The trouble with the interior of a submarine is that it’s not very colourful but that problem is solved by giving the crew outrageous coloured uniforms.

This season also marked the debut of the Flying Sub. The Flying Sub might be a slightly dubious technological concept but it’s certainly great fun and it looks cool. It also adds a certain flexibility to the story lines, allowing Admiral Nelson to jet about all over the globe while still being able to return ton the Seaview whenever he wanted to.

Overall the visuals were spruced up in this second season and they give it a more futuristic science fictional feel.

The cast remains mostly unchanged. Richard Basehart and David Hedison play things fairly straight and it works. 

The Left-Handed Man is in some ways more like a first season episode. There are no monsters and no real science fictional elements; it’s essentially a tale of political intrigue. And a good one. The Deadliest Game is another political intrigue episode although this one does have some mild science fiction content. A power-crazed American general plots to kill the President in his new battle headquarters deep beneath the sea. Admiral Nelson musty try to avert a nuclear war as a consequence.

The Peacemaker is in more or less the same vein. An idealistic scientist wants world peace and he’s prepared to kill everyone on the planet to bring it about.

The Cyborg is fairly typical second season stuff with some fine science fictional silliness. A evil mastermind has a crazy plan to force world government on the nations of the world. This will usher in an era of world peace. He hates war and violence. Of course in order to end war and violence he will have to kill millions of people. The world government will be run by his army of invincible super-intelligent cyborgs. To make his plan work he creates a cyborg duplicate of Admiral Nelson. There’s nothing startling in the plot but it’s executed with a great deal of style. There are some rather good special effects. The cyborg costume s would have cost almost nothing but they look reasonably creepy and effective. Victor Buono is delightfully over-the-top as the insane mastermind. The real highlight though is the set design - again probably quite inexpensive but the secret cyborg headquarters in Switzerland manages to look rather cool and slightly goofy at the same time. This episode is a triumph of style over substance but luckily the style is very impressive indeed.

Leviathan is very typical indeed of season two. This is Monster of the Week television at its goofiest. A scientist working in a deep sea lab discovers a fissure in the Earth’s crust that goes all the way down to the core. Could this have something to do with the gigantic fish that the Seaview keeps encountering in the vicinity of the lab? If so, why do the monstrous fish keep disappearing? Has the whole crew gone crazy? 

Monster from Outer Space is even goofier. A space probe has returned from Saturn, with a creature of some kind attached to it. Of course the creature, a sort of inflatable plant-monster blob thing, naturally wants to take over the Seaview. And then the world! The Monster's Web is, obviously, another monster story - this time it’s a giant undersea spider. At least this episode has an interesting variation on the mad scientist theme - Captain Gantt might be a bit mad but he isn’t evil.

The Silent Saboteurs is another non-monster story, this time a spy story with science fictional elements (spacecraft, force fields and super-computers). US space probes are being destroyed on re-entry and the destruction is carried out from a base in an unnamed Asian country. Captain Crane has to make contact with an agent but there are two people both claiming to be the contact. One is obviously a traitor. The Machines Strike Back follows a similar pattern, espionage blended with science fiction elements. The US has built a fleet of missile-armed drone submarines but now they’re started to go rogue and launch their missiles at the US. These two episodes keep the science fictional content fairly plausible - in fact they deal with technologies that were already on the horizon at the time.

The X Factor is a spy story with a few touches of the fantastic. A toy company is being used as a front for a spy ring and a top scientist working on the ultimate weapon has been kidnapped. This is a fast-paced episode with plenty of action. What really makes it stand out is the inspired job done by director Leonard Horn. There are lots of interesting camera angles, some well-considered high-angle shots and even a brief use of a hand-held camera. It all contributes to the excitement. It was exactly the right approach, given that this episode has a very James Bond feel to it. One of the best episodes of the second season, in fact one of the best episodes of the entire series.

Dead Men’s Doubloons is typical of the slightly more lighthearted approach of season two but it’s thoroughly enjoyable and it’s clever even when it’s just a little silly. The Seaview is a routine mission, inspecting undersea launch sites for intercontinental missiles, when something goes terribly wrong with one of the launch sites. It could be a simple malfunction but Captain Brent, seconded to the Seaview from Allied High Command, has another theory - it’s an ancient pirate curse! 

The Death Ship opens with an exciting submarine vs submarine battle, something of a rarity (surprisingly) in this series. This occurs just before a trial of a new automation system. During the trial the Seaview will be crewed only by Admiral Nelson, Captain Crane and eight civilian scientists. This episode is actually like a country-house murder mystery in which the guests are murdered one by one and they know one of them has to be the murderer.

A wrecked World War 2 submarine and five survivors who don’t know the war is over living in a cave on a deserted island provide the subject matter for ...And Five of Us Are Left. To add some extra interest four of the survivors are Americans and one is Japanese.

At times the silliness rises to potentially dangerous levels. There are no prizes for guessing that happens in Jonah and the Whale, although this episode is still thoroughly enjoyable. The Menfish on the other hand it’s just a bit too silly and isn’t helped by unconvincing special effects. A mad scientist (played with enthusiasm by John Dehner) is creating human-fish hybrids. The idea isn’t terrible but it’s not developed in an interesting way and the execution is poor. 

While the second season is much less consistent than the superb first season (which I reviewed here) it’s still fine television entertainment. Highly recommended. 

Mogul, AKA The Troubleshooters (1965)

The Troubleshooters was one of the BBC’s more successful drama series, running from 1965 to 1972. The first season was in fact entitled Mogul. It was moderately successful but it was decided to make some drastic changes for the second season which was also given the slightly more exciting title The Troubleshooters.

The series deals with the Mogul oil company, a large concern with international interests. The oil business is not for the faint-hearted and Mogul conducts its business efficiently but rather ruthlessly. Managing director Brian Stead (Geoffrey Keen) is determined and very competent, with somewhat flexible ethics.

There is virtually no limit to the number of things that can go wrong in this business and it’s up to troubleshooters like Peter Thornton (Ray Barrett) to sort out these problems, wherever in the world they may occur.

Only five of the thirteen first season episodes survive.

The very first episode, Kelly’s Eye, does survive. Information has leaked to the press about the progress being made at one of Mogul’s exploration platforms in the North Sea. The company regards this very seriously indeed. Any information gained in the process of oil exploration has been gained at considerable expense to the company and even information of a negative nature could give Mogul an advantage over its rivals. As a result the company goes to great lengths to ensure that leaks of information from drilling crews just don’t happen. Every member of every drilling crew has to sign a confidentiality agreement before being employed. But now a leak has occurred and it’s up to the company’s top troubleshooter, Peter Thornton (Ray Barrett), to find out how this information got out.

It’s almost like a private eye story, as Thornton not only has to interview every member of the crew he has to do quite a lot of detective work as well. An excellent episode.

Young Turk takes place in a small sheikhdom in the Middle East where Mogul are seeking oil exploration rights. Things haven’t gone too well. In fact a Mogul employee has been killed. Young Bob Driscoll (Barry Foster) is sent out to take charge of the negotiating team. The negotiations will be delicate and Driscoll is not the most subtle man in the world. Have Mogul made an error of judgment here? Another fine episode.

Tosh and Nora is an odd episode, more a kitchen sink drama kind of story, about an ageing seamen on one of Mogul’s oil tankers. Tosh Brinkwater has never been much of a seaman and he’s never been much of a husband to Nora. I suppose we’re expected to regard him as a loveable rogue but he’s actually a rather unpleasant old fool, the sort of person who is too stupid and too stubborn to realise that people are trying to do him a favour. The only positive thing about his episode is that we get to see another, slightly more human, side to Brian Stead. This is really a very dull episode.

Out of Range involves a geological survey in the Sahara. This is the first time in the desert for young geologist David Izard, the son of company secretary Willy Izard (Philip Latham). The head of the survey team, Chris Darnley (Percy Herbert), goes to extraordinary lengths to explain the hazards of the desert, and the rules that have to be followed if you wish to stay alive in such an environment. Of course trying to persuade a young Oxford graduate to listen to good advice was always likely to be a futile task. Meanwhile Peter Thornton has decided the whole survey is a waste of time anyway and the party is called back. They’ll be back at the coast in a day - surely nothing can go wrong now? This is a truly excellent story.

Stoneface takes place in the icy wastes of northern Canada. Bob Driscoll has been despatched to interview Mojida, an Iroquois working for Mogulo as an oil exploration rig boss. Mogul has been considering promoting him to the ranks of their troubleshooters and Driscoll’s job is to make sure he’d be capable of handling the pressures of the job. As it happens disaster is threatening to strike the oil exploration rig and there are serious tensions between Mojida and his French-Canadian number two man Godin. They’re both very competent but Godin believes in taking risks while Mojida believes in playing it safe. It’s a good episode with a dramatic action finale.

This series doesn’t quite fit into conventional genre categories. It borrows from the action adventure genre but there are boardroom struggles, there’s international intrigue, and there’s human drama. In this first season it’s obvious that the intention was to focus not just on the glamour and excitement of the oil industry but to show the human faces of some of the ordinary Mogul employees as well. It’s years since I’ve seen any of the episodes from the later seasons so I can’t really comment on the extent of the format change after season one, although I suspect that it was probably felt that a greater focus on the glamour and excitement would be desirable.

Unusually for a BBC series Mogul isn’t overly heavy-handed in its treatment of the political aspects of the oil business. Mogul is a company competing in a cut-throat business and they play the game hard but they’re not depicted as being evil incarnate. Brian Stead’s ethics may be somewhat flexible but he’s not a crook and although he can be a hard man he’s no monster. Willy Izard is a company man who has devoted his life to Mogul but while he’s paid a price for this he’s not portrayed as being stupid or wrong. He’s made his choices and he’s prepared to live with them.

Peter Thornton’s job sometimes involves stepping on people’s toes and he accepts that but he isn’t a man to throw his weight around just for the sake of it. He can be tough but he can be conciliatory as well. At times Bob Driscoll’s job can involve deception and while he is prepared to do what is necessary he doesn’t always enjoy it (just as Peter Thornton doesn’t always enjoy having to make tough decisions). In other words all the characters have some depth and nuance to them. They’re not heroes but they’re not evil capitalist lackeys, they’re just realists who accept the world as it is.

It’s tragic that only five episodes of this first season survive - it’s not quite enough to get more than a vague impression of what the series set out to achieve. It’s to be hoped that this DVD release will be successful enough to lead to a DVD release for the fifteen surviving episodes of season two. Danann’s Region 2 release of the first season boasts transfers that are quite acceptable. Some episodes are in better shape than others but we’re lucky that any of them survive in any form.

Mogul is fine television. Highly recommended.

Sapphire and Steel Assignment 5 (1981)

I reviewed Assignments 1 to 4 of the excellent British science fiction series Sapphire and Steel here a while back.  

Assignment 5 went to air in 1981. It was written by Don Houghton and Anthony Read - this was the only one of the six Sapphire and Steel serials not written by series creator P.J. Hammond.

Sapphire and Steel, an ATV production which aired between 1979 and 1982, can be seen as a more sophisticated and more grown-up version of Doctor Who. Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum) are agents whose job it is to prevent any person, or any entity, from interfering with the smooth and regular progress of time. Sapphire and Steel are clearly not human. What exactly they are is one of the many things the series never really explains. That’s actually one of the strengths of the series - it doesn’t try to over-explain things. It’s content to leave some ambiguities. Sapphire and Steel seem to be a bit more than just very advanced aliens. They may even qualify as gods of a lesser type, albeit gods of a science fiction type.

The casting of David McCallum and Joanna Lumley was inspired. They don’t overdo things but they do manage to convey the slightly disquieting impression of non-humanness. They have absolutely nothing against humans and often try to help them but we’re always aware that they don’t actually care about humans. They have more important priorities. Interference with time could have catastrophic consequences for the entire universe, compared to which human concerns are not terribly important. Sapphire and Steel are not callous but they have an almost complete emotional detachment. They do have some concern for the fate of human civilisation, but they’re prepared to sacrifice individual humans. This makes them unusual but interesting heroes.

Assignment 5 concerns a party thrown by Lord Mullrine (Davy Kaye). The party is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his company, Mullrine International. Since the company was founded in 1930 Mullrine decides it would be fun to give the party a 1930 feel. In fact he takes this to obsessive lengths. Everything in his palatial home is authentically of the period. He insists that his guests wear the fashions of 1930. He has a 50-year-old radio set and when one of the guests switches it on to find out how the Test Match is going he hears a broadcast of the First Test at Trent Bridge in 1930.

This is all a harmless whim, or is it? It soon becomes apparent that somehow the party really is taking place in 1930. Not an re-enactment of 1930 but the actual year 1930.

Sapphire and Steel were already aware that something odd was going to happen in Lord Mullrine’s house and they managed to get themselves invitations.

This episode has the perfect setup, and the perfect setting, for a traditional English country house murder mystery. And indeed murder soon follows. Murder however is the least of the problems that Sapphire and Steel have to face. The year 1930 was not chosen randomly. Something significant happened in June 1930. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something significant is going to happen in June 1930.

While it makes use of the classic murder mystery tropes the murders are not really what the story is all about. Or then again, looked at another way, maybe murder really is the key to the mystery.

The mixing of past and present, with the same actors playing the same characters fifty years ago and in the present, and in some cases playing a character and the character’s own father, is nicely disorienting.

Compared to Doctor Who this series takes interference with time much more seriously. Any disruption of time is a potential disaster; in fact any disruption of time is almost certainly going to be an actual disaster. Playing around with time is not a game. While the scientific explanations are obviously totally invented they at least sound fairly convincing.

While Sapphire and Steel was far from being a big-budget production the period setting is done very well. It should also be added that David McCallum looks rather dashing in a 1930s suit while Joanna Lumley looks even more glamorous than usual with her 1930 hairstyle and a very fetching evening gown.

As usual in this series the special effects are of the most basic kind, which does not matter at all since the stories rely on ideas not special effects. 

Sapphire and Steel has its own very distinctive feel. It’s a science fiction series in which mood is more important than gadgetry, and ideas are much more important than action. It also has an odd tone of emotional distance since we’re seeing everything from the point of view of the very non-human title characters. We’re not encouraged to engage to any great degree to the human characters but this is a strength rather than a weakness of the series. It helps us to understand the motivations of Sapphire and Steel. They might superficially appear callous but they aren’t, they are totally lacking in malice or cruelty and what they do is vital and necessary even if it can occasionally seem harsh. They have a kind of god-like perspective.

Sapphire and Steel are among the most convincingly alien-like of alien characters in television science fiction, and Lumley and McCallum achieve this effect with commendable subtlety.

This series appears to be readily available on DVD just about everywhere.

This is slightly cerebral but still very entertaining television. Very highly recommended.

Francis Durbridge Presents - Bat Out of Hell (1966)

Francis Durbridge was a novelist but is better known as one of the great mystery writers for radio and television. He wrote eight serials broadcast between 1952 and 1959 under the umbrella title The Francis Durbridge Serial but unfortunately all are now lost. Happily all but one of the eleven serials screened between 1960 and 1980 under the title Francis Durbridge Presents do survive in their entirety. These survivors include Bat Out of Hell which first went to air in 1966.

Bat Out of Hell comprises five half-hour episodes.

Geoffrey Stewart (Noel Johnson) is a wealthy real estate agent. He has a luxurious home and an Aston Martin and a beautiful but much younger wife, Diana (Sylvia Syms). The marriage does not seem to be a great success. Geoffrey thinks his wife is foolish and extravagant; Diana thinks her husband is tight-fisted and bad-tempered. Mark Paxton (played by a 24-year-old John Thaw) works for Stewart. Given that the Stewarts’ marriage is shaky you might think there’s the potential there for a romantic triangle to develop, and you’d be right.

You might also think that such a situation could lead to murder. Again you’d be right. This is however a rather puzzling murder. No-one is quite sure who has murdered whom. Even the murderer doesn’t know!

Things get steadily more puzzling, with dead people making telephone calls and people telling obvious lies for no obvious purpose. Fortunately Inspector Clay (Dudley Foster) is an unflappable sort of fellow and he’s a more formidable policeman than you might take him for at first.

Despite his youthfulness John Thaw was already a fairly experienced television actor. He doesn’t yet have the intensity that one associates with him but he handles his role quite adeptly.

Sylvia Syms does well as the young wife who has landed herself in a nightmare of her own making. She’s certainly scheming but mostly she really just doesn’t seem to appreciate the consequences of her actions.

For my money Dudley Foster steals the show as the quietly relentless detective who patiently assembles the pieces of the puzzle.

Emrys Jones is a lot of fun as the downtrodden but cheerful husband of Diana Stewart’s friend Thelma Bowen. Walter Bowen is one of those people who has never managed to be quite a important or significant as he feels he ought to have been but he’s still sure that if he keeps trying people will take him seriously. It’s not exactly a comic relief role but it does provide a few moments of gentle humour in an otherwise rather grim tale.

Francis Durbridge’s script is what you expect from such a distinguished television writer. It has the necessary twists and turns and he provides a decent cliffhanger ending for each episode. 

Alan Bromly directed all five episodes of Bat Out of Hell and in fact he directed a very large proportion of the various Francis Durbridge television serials.

There’s just a touch of the creakiness you sometimes get in these mostly studio-bound shot-on-videotape productions. By 1966 BBC standards (which are admittedly rather low) the production values aren’t really too bad and there is at least some location shooting.

The semi-rural setting (apparently about an hour-and-a-half from London) and the lack of anything in the way of graphic violence gives this production something of the feel of a “cosy” mystery although without the cutesiness often associated with that sub-genre.

Pay attention to the music in the first episode - at one point you’ll hear the famous theme music for Callan (which began its run a year later).

An outfit called Danann in the UK have released Bat Out of Hell on an all-region DVD. It’s also available in the very good value Region 4 Francis Durbridge Presents Volume 2 boxed set from Madman in Australia. The set also includes no less than four other Francis Durbridge serials. I have the Madman set and while there are no extras the transfers are pretty good.

Bat Out of Hell is a fine old-fashioned and rather unassuming murder mystery that provides harmless enjoyment. Highly recommended.

Z Cars (1962-65)

Z Cars is one of the most famous and influential of all British television police shows. It was produced from 1962 to 1965. The BBC later revived the series in an ill-advised soap opera format and after several further format changes it finally ended in 1978. It is however the original 1962-65 series that changed the fact of British cop shows. 

Troy Kennedy-Martin came up with the original concept for the series, which was to be set in Lancashire rather than (like most police series) London. The intention was to create a more modern and more gritty police series in contrast to the cosy and comfortable world of series like Dixon of Dock Green. 

Z Cars reflected significant changes in British society, with people being moved from overcrowded slums into new housing estates (which quickly became new slums). Z Cars is set in the fictional town of Newtown.

The series also reflected the major changes in policing policies that were being enacted at the time. The premise of the series is that the Chief Constable has agreed that the old-style bobby-on-the-beat methods are antiquated and ineffective. What they need is young fit hard men in high-powered cars. While Z Cars reflects these changes the series was so influential that it could be argued that it actually influenced the spread of these new American-style policing approaches in Britain. This was a new, more aggressive policing method and for the purposes of television it made police work more exciting and more glamorous.

It’s interesting that the first episode, Four of a Kind (written by Troy Kennedy-Martin), not only illustrates the older bobby-on-the-beat policing approach - it actually demonstrates just how effective that approach was.

In this debut episode Detective Chief Inspector Barlow (Stratford Johns) and Detective Sergeant Watt (Frank Windsor) are selecting the four officers for the new car patrols for Z Division. Incidentally this is why the series is called Z Cars - it’s not because the cars used are Ford Zephyrs. The two new patrol cars are code-named ZV1 and ZV2. The four officers include PC ‘Fancy’ Smith played by the legendary Brian Blessed.

Most British TV shows of this era have that characteristic look that comes from being shot on videotape in the studio but Z Cars used an even older production method (already disappearing by 1962) - it was transmitted live. 

While Z Cars marked the beginning of the trend towards a gritty realistic approach in British TV cop shows it has to be emphasised that this means gritty and realistic by the standards of 1962. By 1970s standards it’s very tame. This is not The Sweeney. The violence is very mild and there’s a complete (and welcome) lack of the sleaze that characterised so much 70s UK TV. It does however try to depict realistic police methods, it does show the grim reality of life for the poor and it’s pretty frank about the sordid nature of the criminal underclass.

It’s perhaps surprising that any episodes at all survive, but quite a few do.

Handle with Care, a very early episode, features a guest appearance by Arthur Lowe as a seedy housebreaker. ZV2 is called to a quarry where there’s been an explosion - someone has been stealing gelignite but they haven’t stored it properly and now it’s become unstable and the whole lot could explode at any moment. Meanwhile ZV1 has found an abandoned van which may have been used in the robbery of a toy shop. Toys and gelignite may not seem to have much connection but in this case they are indeed connected.

In Contraband PCs Smith and Jock Weir deal with a girl caught shoplifting and someone tries to sell Smith a watch. It’s a very good watch, and very cheap. Too cheap to be legitimate. PC Smith sees a chance to impress Chief Inspector Barlow who happens to be investigating a case involving watches smuggled into the country.

People’s Property tackles the issue of juvenile crime. PCs Smith and Weir catch two small boys breaking into a warehouse. It seems that both boys are already well advanced on the path to a life of crime. One in particular is a very troublesome specimen indeed. The two boys embark on as miniature crime wave. Actually it’s more of a large-scale crime wave. This story does depict fairly well the utter futility of the juvenile justice system.

The fine cast is a major asset. Stratford Johns, who went on to play the same character in three subsequent TV series (Softly Softly, Softly Softly: Taskforce and Barlow at Large), is in splendidly ebullient form. Frank Windsor is excellent as the harassed but dedicated Sergeant Watt. Brian Blessed of course steals every scene he’s in.

Compared to later crime series Z Cars is fairly light on action, but then it’s intended as a realistic portrayal of police work and in 1962 British policemen didn’t spend much time having shoot-outs or car chases. The cases are mostly the sorts of everyday cases that made up a policeman’s life in a society in which crime was still mercifully relatively rare. While the officers who man the crime patrol cars are tough they’re also good-natured and patient. Even though this represents a different style of policing from the era of Dixon of Dock Green there are still touches of the halcyon days when policemen were generally friendly and easy-going. And there are plenty of light-hearted and humourous moments.

When watching Z Cars you have to take into account the limited BBC budgets and the fact that being transmitted live make it at times a little rough around the edges. This being 1962 the pacing is relatively leisurely although this turns out to be an asset rather than a liability. Without constant car chases and fist fights there’s time to develop the characters of the people the Newtown Police encounter. The writing and acting are of course vastly superior to anything you’ll see on British TV today.

Sadly it seems that none of the episodes from the original 1962-65 series are available on DVD although the later (and very much inferior) series from the 70s have been released. You can however find some episodes online.

Z Cars is quality television and it’s intelligent entertainment. And it has Brian Blessed! Highly recommended.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, season 2 (1981)

Writer-producer Glen A. Larson had achieved modest success with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978. It only lasted one season but that was mostly because in those days American network executives hated science fiction. It was horribly expensive and seemed like a crazy risk when you could just as easily make yet another western or cop show for half the cost. Battlestar Galactica was one of many sci-fi series that got the axe even though their ratings were quite respectable. A year later Larson went on to develop another science fiction TV series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. While Battlestar Galactica was ambitious and fairly serious in tone Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was to be pure lighthearted fun.

The first season worked pretty well. Gil Gerard was not the world’s most dynamic actor but he made a perfectly adequate action hero as Buck Rogers. Erin Gray was pretty good as Colonel Wilma Deering. The support cast was solid, headed by Tim O’Connor as Dr Huer of the Earth Defense Directorate. Naturally there had to be a cute robot and Twiki is about as cute as robots get. Twiki also carries around Dr Theopolis, an artificial intelligence who has the answer to just about everything. There was plenty of action, plenty of fun and lots of delightful 70s kitsch.

It was a wonderful formula and it worked. So naturally at the end of season one the network decided to change the whole format. Instead of Buck, frozen in time for 500 years, helping to defend Earth against its enemies we now have Buck, Wilma and Twiki on the giant spaceship Searcher, their mission being to find the lost tribes of Earth. It sounds terribly familiar but Glen A. Larson can’t be blamed for turning the show into a poor man’s Battlestar Galactica - by this time he was no longer associated with the series (I don’t know if he quit or was forced out). What the new format adds up to is less action, less fun and no delightful 70s kitsch. It all starts to take it itself too seriously.

The second season also saw the departure of all the most interesting supporting characters - Dr Huer and Dr Theopolis are both gone. Twiki has been made less cute. And, for no logical reason whatsoever, it was decided the series needed a second cute robot. The trouble is that the robot Crichton isn’t cute and isn’t funny - he’s painfully annoying and totally unnecessary.

Added to the cast are the rather dull Admiral Asimov (Jay Garner) and Dr Goodfellow (Wilfred Hyde-White). Now Wilfred Hyde-White is one of my favourite English character actors but he was always at his best playing characters with a slight edge to them. Here he’s trying too hard to be loveable and doddering. The other major new character is Hawk (Thom Christopher), of whom more below.

The amazing thing is that the network managed to eliminate just about everything that made season one so enjoyable, and to add elements that are totally unnecessary and  extremely irritating.

The series might still have been salvageable if the scripts had been of sufficiently high quality but sadly the quality of the writing is noticeable lower than in season one.

The second season gets off to a bad start with a two-part story, Time of the Hawk. Norman Hudis’s script might have worked as a single episode but there just isn’t enough plot, enough action or enough interest to justify a two-parter. Even worse, it’s padded out by a great deal of incredibly tedious speechifying. Hawk is a kind of part man-part bird who has a grudge against humans. Buck’s mission is to stop Hawk’s rampages through the galaxy. Most of the story consists of Hawk and Buck carrying Hawk’s injured wife across the desert whilst talking incessantly. All this is bad enough but then they reach the great healer and we get some excruciatingly embarrassing hippie-dippie new age waffle. And then it gets worse with lots of boring and very banal speeches.

Episode two, Robert and Esther Mitchell’s two-parter Journey to Oasis, starts out like a very bad Star Trek episode. Buck has to escort an alien ambassador to a peace conference. If the ambassador doesn’t arrive on time it will mean war, and naturally Buck’s spaceship crashes. Then it gets worse, and once again we have Buck and friends walking across mile after tedious mile of desert. And once again we have talk, talk, talk. As a single episode it would still have been pretty dull; as a two-parter it’s sheer torture.

The third episode, The Guardians, is a huge improvement. Being a single-episode story the pacing is much much tighter. There are also some reasonable ideas here. Buck encounters a dying old man on a planet believed to be uninhabited. The old man gives Buck a mission, to deliver a box, but to whom does the box have to be delivered? And what strange powers does this box have over space and time? The ending lets it down a bit but at least it isn’t dull.

Mark of the Saurian is a reasonably entertaining episode as well. The Saurian lizard-men have somehow been able to take on human form to penetrate Earth’s defences and only Buck, with his 20th century biochemistry, can see them in their true form.

You expect a certain amount of scientific silliness in a TV sci-fi series but the episode The Golden Man defies all reasonable expectations. We have a spaceship that runs aground on an asteroid, and the only way it can be freed is by lightening it! And it just so happens there are a couple of aliens that the Searcher has picked up and they just happen to have the ability to lighten metals! The golden-skinned aliens can in fact turn any metal into any other kind of metal, including turning iron into gold. But first Buck has to rescue them from a penal planet. Apart from the extreme scientific silliness it’s generally a pretty lame episode.

The Crystals is another story that feels too much like second-rate Star Trek. Buck, Wilma and Hawk are searching for some crystals (without which the Searcher is apparently doomed) when they discover a mummy and an attractive blonde girl who seems to have no memories. The story features one or two moderately interesting ideas but they’re not developed and the whole thing is a bit too bland and a bit too feel-good.

One of the things that the second season seemed to be attempting was to work various ancient myths into the science fiction story lines. Time of the Hawk and The Golden Man both try to do this, with mixed success. The Satyr is a much more successful attempt. An Earth colony has been all but wiped out by figures from Greek mythology, but how do satyrs come to be on the planet? And why are the survivors of the colony so unwilling to discuss the matter? This is actually a pretty decent episode.

Shgoratchx! is quite ridiculous but it’s also great fun - it’s the kind of inspired silliness that characterised the better season one episodes. A derelict spacecraft crewed by six generals and one private, none of them more than three feet tall, and all possessing rather disturbing powers. Or at least their powers would be disturbing except for the fact that these diminutive aliens, while exasperatingly mischievous, are also friendly and good-natured. The second season includes lots of stories inspired by mythology. In this case the inspiration is a fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, with Colonel Deering being less than thrilled about being Snow White. It’s genuinely amusing, good-natured and reasonably clever.

The Hand of the Goral is OK. It’s totally unoriginal but the plot, involving a planet where nothing is as it seems to be, is executed fairly well.

Testimony of a Traitor on the other hand is deadly dull. Buck is accused of starting the nuclear war that devastated Earth in the 20th century. The courtroom scenes are tedious and contrived.

The final episode, The Dorian Secret, isn’t too bad. Buck rescues a Dorian girl fleeing from the implacable justice of her people. The Dorians also wear masks, all the time, to hide a terrible secret which Buck will force them to reveal.

Hawk represents a bit of a lost opportunity. Given his history he could have been an intriguingly edgy character. After all he is an alien and he has spent his whole life hating humans and now he’s working and fighting side-by-side with them - you’d expect a bit of tension but in fact after the first episode he becomes just a generic hero character. The series didn’t need another action hero character. It already had Buck and it had Colonel Deering. If they weren’t going to do anything interesting with the Hawk character why bother including him in the regular cast?

It surprises me that so many people dislike Gil Gerard. To me he seems like a perfectly fine space opera action hero. The trouble is that in season two he’s not given enough action hero stuff to do. He doesn’t even get to fly a fighter - he’s reduced to piloting a shuttle! He does seem to be trying a bit harder in season two to do a bit more serious acting stuff but he also doesn’t seem to having quite as much fun. On the whole though I don’t have any real problems with his performance.

Erin Gray also gets less action heroine stuff to do. Mention has to be made of the uniform worn by Colonel Wilma Deering in many episodes - it’s a cute little sailor suit that makes her look adorable but I’m not really sure that colonels are supposed to look adorable!

On the whole season two is very uneven and mostly disappointing. In season one Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had established its own distinctive style - fun, breezy, action-filled, a bit silly but thoroughly entertaining. Season two by comparison is too much a generic science fiction TV series, trying too hard and modeling itself too much on Star Trek.

It was probably the two rather dreary two-part stories that kicked off the second season that doomed the series. Overall season two isn’t a complete loss. There are some good episodes and some dud episodes but then you could say the same about Star Trek. Mostly it’s just disappointing that the fun and the over-the-top ultra-70s style of the first season is lacking. The first season is definitely worth buying. The second season is worth a rental.