Serial offender - The Girl From Tomorrow/Tomorrows End (1990 & 1993)

Another delve into the mysterious and murky world of childrens TV serials finds me once again washed up on the shores of Australia for another sci-fi outing, this time with hints of time travel and environmentalism....

Produced by Film Australia (one of the writers went on to create "Spellbinder"), "The Girl From Tomorrow" was one of the numerous TV series created by Australian TV networks in the 1990s, most of which ended up being shown on CBBC (as in the case of this one) or less frequently CITV and Channel 4. An odd thing I found out about this series is that the premise is actually based on a Soviet TV series called "Guest from the future" (Гостья из будущего) which aired on Russian television in 1984.

The show begins in the year 3000, most of the Earth is uninhabited due to a disaster which occurred in the year 2500, which led to the entire northern hemisphere being rendered an uninhabitable wasteland.
Alana is a 15 year old girl who was born on Titan (by the year 3000, the moon, Mars and some of Jupiters moons have been colonised, with Venus in the process of being terraformed), but whose parents sent her to Earth to get an education. While on Earth, which is now a veritable ecological paradise, she becomes close to Tulista, one of her teachers who instructs her in the use of the "transducer", a device which resembles a headband and acts as a brain amplifer, allowing the user to manipulate objects by thought alone. Alana hopes to become a healer (I love how when trying to be exotic, programs like to replace the word "doctor" with "healer" to make it sound less scientific and more cuddly) and the transducer can be used as a healing device, however, as Alana finds out in the opening sequence of the first episode, if someone uses a transducer isn't able to concentrate or control their emotions, the transducer can be a pretty destructive weapon.
One of the leading scientists in the year 3000, Bruno, has invented a time machine, and Tulista, being a historian amongst other things, has been chosen to travel back in time to the year 2500 in order to try and find out the exact nature of "The Great Disaster", which they hope will enable them to make better progress in rebuilding the northern hemisphere, this causes much concern for Alana who believes that time travel is dangerous, and Tulista will be killed, so, she smuggles herself into the "Science Dome" just in time to see the time machine vanish into the past.
The machine returns almost as soon as it left, although 28 days have passed from Tulistas point of view (relativity is awesome innit?), but Tulista has an unwelcome guest with her in the shape of Silverthorn, an all round ne'er do well from the year 2500, who immediately proceeds to threaten everyone in the science lab with his laser pistol, but soon goes off the idea of being their overlord when one of the scientists demonstrates the incorrect use of a transducer. Silverthorn, realising he isn't going to be welcome in the future, decides instead to try the past, and, grabbing Alana as a replacement hostage, he sets the time machine going again and transports himself and Alana back to the year 1990.


Once there, Alana experiences culture shock as she escapes the time capsule (which materialises in a rubbish dump) and wanders dazed and confused through the local town, before she eventually meets up with Jenny Kelly, a typical 90s teenager with strange coloured hair and a penchant for being rebellious.


The remainder of the series sees Alana try to find the time capsule and return home before the 28 day time limit causes it to go without her, all whilst trying to avoid the machinations of Silverthorn, who is doing surprisingly well for himself due to his abuse of the Time capsules databanks which allow him to make money by knowing about things before they happen.

(This series was filmed in 1991, however it didn't air until 1993)


Following on from the end of the first series, "Tomorrows End" sees Alana return to her home time, however Jenny has to go with her, as does Silverthorn, both of whom sustained injuries which only the advanced science of the future can heal. After a month living in the future, it is decided that both Jenny and Silverthorn must be returned home, as their presence in the future has somehow altered the past. While Jenny has fully recovered from her injuries, Silverthorn claims to be suffering from total amnesia, however this is just a ploy to gain peoples trust, which allows him to steal Bruno's plans for an upgraded version of the time capsule, a time portal.
Jenny is returned to 1990 without incident, however when Silverthorn is returned to 2500 (which is shown to be an over populated, polluted post industrial wasteland), he tries to steal the time capsule again, but Alana and Brunos new assistant Lorien escape and travel back to 3000, however when they exit the time capsule, they find the future Earth has been totally destroyed. Quickly deducing that Silverthorn must have done something to alter the future, they return to the past, only for things to go horribly wrong as Lorien is captured and turned into a mindless slave for "Globecorp" (a megacorporation that owns everything on Earth) and it turns out Silverthorn has been using the time portal to bring items from the past into the future, including some nuclear weapons (all weapons, short of personal weapons, have been banned by Globecorp, being as countries blowing each other up is bad for business) which are then used by Globecorps director of operations on Earth, a megalomaniac called Draco, in an evil scheme to take control of Earth away from the board of directors who live in opulent luxury on the moon, while everyone planetside is left to slowly starve or be poisoned to death.




A third series was planned, but was never filmed as funding was not made available, being as the series' special effects budget was quite high, plus the two main actresses were getting too old to convincingly play teenaged children.
There is a strong environmental theme running through the show, although this was common in the early 90s, what with the hole in the ozone layer being discovered and concern mounting over depletion of natural resources etc.
The series does make attempts to be funny on occasion, most of which are successful, albeit cringeworthy in places, such as Alana becoming all giggly after consuming a chocolate eclair, having never been exposed to processed sugars before, which leads to Jenny being embarrassed whilst trying to ask a boy out, and then later leads to Alana spewing up in class as he stomach finally rejects our 20th century processed food.
The remainder of the shows humour usually comes courtesy of two "stock" characters, Petey, Jennys younger brother (standard annoying pre teen boy type) and Eddie (standard clueless goon type), both of whom go through a series of bungles and misadventures over the course of both series' .

The series now looks really dated, but, thanks to its time travel theme, this is perfectly ok, as all the scenes in 1990s Australia are authentic, although the visions of the future do have that distinctive "wobbly set" feel to them, and are properly representitive of what people in the early 90s thought the future would be like.

Another odd thing is that although Silverthorn is made out to be a big badass villain, some lines of dialogue in the 5th episode of the series illustrate that although he wants to exploit his knowledge of the future for his own personal benefit, his intention is on the whole, good, as he wants to stop the world from becoming the radioactive hell hole that it became by his time, this is probably the first time I saw a villain on TV that had this kind of noble purpose hidden behind ruthless ambiguity.

I have fond memories of this series, as it approaches the subject matter in an intelligent and entertaining way, without being condescending in some manner as shows like this intended for children end up being these days, although that said some of the episode "cliffhangers" were a bit daft

ExoSquad (1993)

ExoSquad was a 1993 to 1994 animated series, produced by Universal cartoon studios as a response to the growing popularity of redubbed Japanese anime.

The series was notable as being one of the few "western amine" type shows to be successful, as the problem with western attitudes towards animated media tend to pigeonhole it firmly into the "kids stuff" category, thus meaning that plots tend to be uncoordinated and somewhat farcical, with the characters lacking any depth.

ExoSquad completely bucked this trend and, combined with its use of a "realistic" animation style, it is essentially a science fiction space opera.

Two series were made, with a third planned to debut in 1995, however, due to networks treating the series as a disposable "Saturday morning cartoon" and not airing the series in the correct order etc, viewing figures for series 2 plummeted and thus the ok was not given to proceed to the third, and possibly more ambitious, series.

Unusually for a western cartoon, the series explored some very adult topics, such as racism, love, honour, betrayal, military tactics and the consequences of infighting which have disastrous outcomes, which, being as the series was aimed at the teen/young adult demographic, was unsurprising.

The series has received limited releases on both VHS and DVD, but has mostly been released via streaming media in recent years, which has allowed the full series to be seen properly for the first time by people who weren't around for its original airing.

Series 1 begins in the year 2119 with series 2 concluding in the year 2121. Mankind has begun exploring the solar system, and has managed to colonise the Moon, Mars and Venus, with tentative exploratory missions making headway to colonising the outer planets.
Extensive terraforming work has been done, but not fully completed, on both Mars and Venus, making their atmospheres more hospitable to human life, but still somewhat dangerous.
In order to complete the extensive mining work required to access the rich mineral deposits on other planets, in the mid 21st century, Human scientists perfected the art of genetic recombination, and thus created a worker race named the "Neo-Sapiens".
Originally it was thought that these creatures were only capable of simple tasks, and were not sentient at all, however some time in the 2070s, the Neo-Sapiens working on Mars staged a violent revolt.
The revolution, although unsuccessful, did lead to the recognition of Neo-Sapiens as being a sentient species, and their status as a "slave race" was cast off. The Neo-Sapiens were given custodianship over Mars, and at the time of the series beginning, the Neo-Sapien leader, Phaeton, has spent years planning another revolt, however this time his aim is not merely to secure Neo-Sapien freedom (which they already have) instead, his plan is to assure Neo-Sapien dominance over the solar system, with the long term goal of completely eradicating Homo Sapiens.

While the ExoFleet (the name given to the armed forces of this future time because of their use of "ExoFrame" technology to fight with) are distracted by the perceived threat of space pirates, who are themselves descendants of people transported to penal colonies on the outer planets and then subsequently abandoned, the Neo-Sapiens conquer the inner planets in a lightning fast assault.

The series itself follows the exploits of "Able Squad", a unit of ExoTroopers whose role in the war is pivotal in the goal of liberating the inner worlds and stopping the Neo-Sapiens from committing mass genocide.

The main characters are as follows:-

Lt./Cmdr J.T Marsh - Commands Able squad, but is later promoted to be commander of a full platoon. Marsh is a fair man, but does not tolerate members of his squad going against orders. He is fiercely loyal to Admiral Winfield and is a skilled ExoFrame pilot. Marsh usually pilots an aerial assault E-Frame.

Lt./Lt.Cmdr Nara Walsh - Initially Nara is Able squads tactical officer, but gets promoted to squad leader after Marsh's promotion. A native of Venus, her parents were killed in the first days of the Neo-Sapien war, and he younger brother leads the human resistance on the planet. Nara usually Co-pilots the squads ground attack E-Frame with Marsala, but wears a suit of powered armour when working alone.

Lt. Maggie Wilson - Able squads technical expert and field engineer. Maggie is responsible for field maintenance of the squads ExoFrames, and her skills come in handy whenever the squad need to infiltrate buildings or spacecraft without blowing things up, or need some assistance with unfamiliar technology. During the later series, she is often seen helping Professor Algernon. Maggie usually pilots an armed Engineers E-Frame.

Sgt. Rita Torres - Able squads 2iC who harbours an intense hatred of pirates due to an incident in the past where her entire squad was killed in an ambush except her. She was left to die a slow death from suffocation by the pirate Jubail, whom she later encounters when the ExoFleet allies with the pirates.
Torres is a perfect soldier and is very loyal to Marsh. Rita usually pilots a heavily armed assault E-Frame.

Alec DeLeon - Able squads communications and intelligence expert. His skill with computers and technology rivals that of Maggie, but his preference is for active combat as opposed to research. He is eventually killed in the closing days of the war but is resurrected thanks to Neo-Sapien cloning technology, where he begins an oft hinted to romance with Maggie. Alec usually pilots a C3i E-Frame.

Wolf Bronsky - Wolf is the squads heavy weapons trooper. Loud mouthed, rude and gluttonous, but also extremely dependable, Wolf prefers action over stealth and intrigue. When not on mission, Wolf likes to spend most of his time eating, so much so that his speech is often punctuated by a series of loud burps. Wolf usually pilots a heavy assault E-Frame.

Kaz Takagi - The youngest and newest member of Able squad. Kaz is the squads aerial support trooper. As Kaz is fairly young and impressionable, he is often easily swayed into going "off mission", especially so whenever the opportunity is presented for him to prove himself in the eyes of the other squad members, although this brings him into conflict with his superiors and lands him in trouble more often than not. Kaz usually pilots an Exo-Fighter, an light fighter air/space craft equipped with lasers and missiles, and he is regarded as one of the best fighter pilots in the fleet.

Marsala - One of the few Neo-Sapiens that remained loyal to the ExoFleet, Marsala faces considerable opposition in the face of human prejudice against his kind. As he is a Neo-Sapien, Marsala is considerably stronger and more resilient than his human comrades, and is able to easilly infiltrate Neo-Sapien bases. Later in the series it is revealed that Marsala and Phaeton are genetic twins, the closest the sterile Neo-Sapiens can get to being "brothers" (Neo-Sapiens reproduce via being grown in laboratories, with "spawnings" of new Neo-Sapiens numbering from small groups to theoretically hundreds of thousands). It is also revealed that Marsala was one of the instigators of the original Martian Neo-Sapien revolt. Marsala usually pilots the ground attack E-Frame with Nara, whom he shares an emotional bond with, but is unable to express due to his concern for the prejudice that comes with him being a Neo-Sapien.

Phaeton - Marsalas twin and eventual leader/tyrant of the Neo-Sapien order. Phaeton is originally the governor of Mars, however he instigates a plot to secretly build weapons to overthrow homo sapien dominance. Later in the series, it is revealed that Phaeton suffers from a debilitating genetic condition which is causing his body to randomly mutate and degrade, requiring that he use a life support E-Frame at all times. Phaeton was originally Marsalas second in command during the Martian revolt, however his capture by a young Admiral Winfield and subsequent betrayal led to a humiliating defeat for the Neo-Sapien cause. Due to his disease, Phaeton gradually becomes insane, and towards the end of the war decides that if he cannot control the solar system, then no one will, and has an anti-matter bomb built on Earth with which he intends to use to destroy the inner planets.

Admiral Winfield - A veteran of the Martian revolt, Winfield rose through the ranks to become supreme commander of the ExoFleet. An extremely capable wartime commander, it is his strategies that prove to be successful in eventually liberating the inner worlds from Neo-Sapien rule.
Along the way, Winfield overcomes a mutiny instigated by his second in command and is instrumental in negotiating an alliance with the pirate clans of the outer planets. Winfields flagship is the ExoCarrier Resolute, which ends up getting destroyed during the mutiny, he later takes command of the Resolute II, an ExoCarrier constructed by rogue elements within the pirate clans which is equipped with a pirate cloaking device.

Professor Algernon - A human scientist who eventually becomes the ExoFleets chief scientific officer.
At the beginning of the war, Algernon is trapped on Earth, but has no interest in whose side he is on as he has previously been belittled by the military, his only interest is his pursuit of scientific research. To this end, he strikes a bargain with the Neo-Sapien scientist Xenobius, where he will be allowed to carry on his work as Xenobius's "assistant", while Xenobius claims any credit for Algernons discoveries.
While Xenobius is a scientist, the Neo-Sapiens lack of any sense of imagination or curiosity seriously hampers his ability to actually make any new discoveries, therefore he is completely reliant on Algernon to produce results, and claims credit for them despite not actually understanding any of the devices.
Algernon invents the GraF (Gravitational Focus) shield, a devastating directed energy weapon which the Neo-Sapiens use in the early days of the war, however after he is captured by Able squad he is convinced to work for the humans, where his discoveries are finally recognised.

Jonas Simbacca - The gruff leader of the pirate clans. Jonas was one of the people originally abandoned on the outer planets when he was just a boy. Over time he rose in the pirate ranks to become their leader, mainly through a combination of political savvy and martial prowess.
Simbacca, as with many of the pirates, is initially an enemy of the ExoFleet, however after the Neo-Sapiens try to assassinate him (his life is saved by J.T Marsh) he orders the pirate clans to join with the ExoFleet to put a stop to Phaetons plans.

The series 2 ended with a major cliffhanger, involving the possibility of series 3 being centred around the ExoFleet and the Neo-Sapiens being forced to join forces in order to combat an alien threat, however due to the series' cancellation, this was never resolved.

The ExoFleet brand was expanded to include a toy line, a video game and a short print comic series,  however the declining popularity of the TV series meant that the periphery stuff outlived the series itself (Later releases of ExoSquad 6" action figures included some repaints of "Robotech" mechs, released under the "ExoSquad : Robotech" sub line), but did nothing to improve the shows fanbase.

The series itself treads some very familiar territory, and has many tropes taken from series such as the Gundam series, Robotech, Battletech, and it draws inspiration from sci-fi sources such as BladeRunner and Starship Troopers, but even with all these familiar bits of background fluff, the series still manages to be entertaining.

The series has never been released in full on DVD, however streaming sources such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu have featured the series in full on numerous occasions.
"Other" online sources tend to be very poor quality VHS rips, so it is in viewers best interests to try and watch the series via "official" channels as opposed to "by other means".


I love this series, as it was, along with shows such as "The Pirates of Dark Water", "Bots Master" and "Phantom 2040", a good indicator that western animation studios were perfectly capable of providing well thought out and well animated shows which weren't afraid to step outside of the "Looney Toons" pigeonhole, and compete directly with Japanese imports.





 

Pilot erroR - TV Pilots that didnt make the cut.

Before a TV channel wants to spend money on something, its usually traditional for the producers to make an initial episode or TV movie which outlines the basic plot and premise of the program.

However, not all of these projects get the green light and make it as far as getting an actual full series commission, due to the fact that they are poorly timed, excessively expensive, or just being plain old crap.

I'm going to have a look at a couple of these pilot shows that were given the thumbs down from the TV people, and give my opinion of them...oh yes.

ReWind (SyFy - 2013)
Its a bit like- The Time Tunnel,Quantum Leap, Sliders

Premise -
After a terrorist group destroys New York with a nuclear bomb, an international team of  scientists and military types assemble to make use of a top secret time travel device to subtly change history so that "bad" events (usually ones that involve mass death and so on, particularly connected to the US) don't happen. However, the time travellers can only spend a short period of time in the past as the time window created by their machine only remains open for a fixed, but random, amount of time, meaning that if they fail to get back to the window, they will be stranded in the past, and, if they fail their mission, they will not be able to try again without causing a temporal paradox!
The team are aided in their efforts by a computer called the "Panopticon", which can fairly accurately predict the outcome of changes made to the past and what their knock on effect will be in the future, however the machine is not always correct.
Finally, the time travellers and their secret base are protected from changes in the time line by a side effect of the time window, so no matter what they do to change the past, they themselves will not be changed.

Plot of Pilot -
After the nuclear destruction of New York, a team travels back in time to 1929 to kill a street punk who spends the majority of his life committing crimes. This punk will eventually kill the wife of the scientist who built the nuclear bomb for the terrorists in a botched mugging attempt, sending the scientist insane, which eventually leads him to build a bomb.
The team are briefed on 1920s culture and language and given era appropriate clothing and equipment, then they step through the portal, being the first humans to attempt time travel.
they are successful in their attempt, but find that time travel is a fairly gut wrenching experience.
Once back in the past, all of the travellers are tempted to alter events to suit their own personal needs, but decide against messing around with their own personal histories.
Back at time travel HQ, the technicians find that after the travellers have departed, the amount of time they have to get back decreases, this, coupled with the fact that the travellers get lost while trying to find the guy they're supposed to kill, and end up nearly getting killed when they have a traffic accident with a moonshine bootlegger.
Just as they think they are going to fail in their mission, they find the man they are supposed to kill, and discover that he is committing crimes in order to provide for his younger sister. They decide against killing him, instead, one of the travellers poses as the mans "guardian angel", and tells him of what will happen if he continues being a criminal. The man heeds the warning and New York is restored, however the travellers run short of time to get back to the time portal, so it becomes a race against time to get back to their starting point, which is made significantly easier by one of the historians remembering that a hidden road used by bootleggers can get them back much quicker.
With seconds to spare, they make it back to the portal, and are relived to see that New York has been restored.
While they celebrate, the military liaison dresses in a winter coat, loads a gun and steps through the portal while no one is looking, which immediately causes New York to disappear again.....

So why did it fail?
While the basic premise of the show was good, the problem was it has all been done before. Both "The Time Tunnel" and "Quantum Leap" covered the whole "time travelling to change things for the better" trope, while "Sliders" covered the whole "a team of people go about alternate Earths correcting wrongs". With such a well trodden concept, and a large budget required to recreate the past, this show, if it ever made it to a full series, would have to have been really popular to justify itself.
The plot of this initial episode is fairly bland and uninteresting, I knew as soon as it was mentioned that they were going to go back in time to kill someone that there would be a reason found for them not to abuse time travel for the purposes of cold blooded murder, and it came as no surprise whatsoever that at the end someone else found a way to use the machine to fiddle around with history and cause a disaster, so as a series, each week the team of travellers would have jaunted through time fixing problems etc etc, exactly like Quantum Leap and Sliders.

Final Score - 4/10

doorways (sic) (1993)
Its a bit like -  Sliders (see later)

 
The Premise-
Our reality is not the only reality in existence, as Dr. Thomas Mason finds out when he stumbles across a young woman named "Cat". Cat has the ability to find and travel through "doorways"(sic) , which are naturally occurring portals that allow anyone stepping through them to travel to an infinite number of alternative realities. Dr. Mason and Cat travel through these portals in an effort to keep one step ahead of "The Dark Lord", an enemy from Cats home reality who relentlessly pursues her.

The Plot -
Dr.Mason MD meets a woman called "Cat", who is on the run from someone she calls "The Dark Lord", who appears to be some sort of demon/alien from her own reality. Cat struggles to convince Dr.Mason that she is telling the truth, both due to the fact that she can barely speak English, and due to the fact that the police and the FBI are wanting to have words with her.
Eventually, Cat proves she is telling the truth by showing Mason a "doorway" to another reality, which they promptly end up falling through after the bad guys catch up with them.
Cat and Dr.Mason visit various different Earths, including one where there are no petrochemicals left and the towns and highways of America are terrorized by gangs of bicycle riding punks.
Cat has a defense against the bad guys though, in the form of a weapon she stole from her own reality, which is a sort of gun that fires explosive flechettes, or, as she describes it "Fwick!...BOOM!".
Dr.Mason faces up to the fact that he wont be returning any time soon, and continues to travel with Cat hoping that they will eventually find a way for him to get back to his own reality, however no matter where they hide, the servants of the Dark Lord are always able to track them down....

Why did it fail?
Despite the series concept being created by George R.R Martin , its timing was completely wrong. The early 90s were not a good time for Sci-Fi offerings, particularly one which was as weak as "doorways" ended up being.
The pilot episode was poorly scripted and acted (With the character Cat pretty much sounding like she suffered from some sort of mental retardation, and Dr.Mason spending most of the time acting like a confused buffoon) and the special effects were of very poor quality (even by early 90s standards), Plus, the series itself would have been expensive, as each week the travellers would have had to visit an alternate Earth, which would have required a lot of money to be spent on costumes, sets and special effects. In the end, with the main characters being thoroughly unlikable, and the premise being a tad on the expensive side, the series was given the thumbs down.
Interestingly enough though, when you watch this pilot, it has many, many, many similarities with "Sliders", which eventually got greenlit 2 years after doorways had been binned. these similarities did not go unnoticed, so much so that George Martin himself had to issue a statement to say that screenwriter Tracy Torme, the creator of "Sliders", had had no involvement with "doorways" bar his agent applying for a job on his behalf as a writer.
Another interesting note is that doorways starred a young Carrie-Ann Moss , Kurtwood Smith and Max Grodenchik , all of whom later went on to find stardom in other projects.

Final Score - 3/10