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

Serial offender - "Spellbinder" (1995 CITV)

Yeah, changing tack slightly from the norm, heres a series that aired on CITV.

"Spellbinder" was a 1995 Sci-Fantasy serial (26 Episodes) made as a co-production between the Australian children's film foundation (many of whose shows were a staple of kids TV in the UK during the 90s) an Polish broadcaster Telewizja Polska.

The series doesn't really star anyone you've ever heard of, although the parts shot in the "Spellbinder World" (all scenes of which were shot in Poland) star some famous names associated with Polish TV and films, The Australian scenes though (our world)  don't contain anyone of any real note, unless you count actress Heather Mitchell, who had a small part in the film "Muriels Wedding".


The story involves Paul, a teenage boy with a penchant for amateur science falling through a portal into a parallel dimension, created when a prank involving a lodestone outcrop and some high voltage cable goes a bit wrong.
The world he ends up in is ruled by an elite known as the "Spellbinders", people who use their fantastic powers to rule over the people of their land by fear, especially through the use of their "flying ships" and their power suits, which allow them to hurl bolts of energy at will.
At first, Paul thinks he has somehow travelled back through time, however when he sees the Spelbinders powers he recognises them for what they are...scientists who misrepresent their crude understanding of science as magic.
His adventures bring him into conflict with the spellbinder Ashka and her sycophantic apprentice Gryvon, who want to use Pauls knowledge of science (which, even though he only has a basic understanding of it, is actually more advanced than theirs in many ways) to help them create crude gunpowder weapons so she can conquer the world etc.
Over the course of the series it becomes apparent that the Spellbinders are not as evil as Paul and his native friend Rianna thought they were, so Paul helps them to put a stop to Ashkas evil plans.
About half way through the series, Paul manages to return home, only to have Ashka follow him and then try to use the science of our world to build an improved version of the power suit (which can now fly and is not susceptible to being shorted out by getting wet) and to acquire weapons to use back in her own world.
As it turns out, the "Spellbinder world" was once much more advanced than our own, but at some point in the past, a terrible disaster (implied to be a massive nuclear accident) sent the world into darkness, thus the spellbinders that survived decided to withhold their knowledge from the other survivors, but over time their own knowledge is diminished, tot he point at which they are now no longer capable of manufacturing new machines. To hide this, a series of laws are enforced which forbid the common people from inventing anything new or pursuing knowledge.

The story is nothing new, but, I have yet to see anything else with a similar premise and definite steampunk leanings appear on TV.
One other thing I like about this series is that many of the science concepts used are actually real science, and explained as such in a way that is educational and entertaining, even the parts that are science fiction are based somewhat on theoretical science, mostly the application of magnetic fields.
Oddly, even though CITV began airing this show in the summer of 1995, they only showed the first 13 episodes, meaning the series never aired in full in the UK, thus the only means of seeing the series in its entirety is via bootleg methods.


A second series, named "Spellbinder: Land of the Dragon Lord" followed in 1997. Although this second series is along the same lines as the first, the only returning characters were Ashka and Gryvon, and documented the discovery of a third alternate dimension, which resembles a high tech version of ancient china.

Pilot erroR - "Dafuq?" shows.....

Something a little different, but still within the spirit of this subject matter.
Sometimes, a TV show will be made, and indeed aired, which really shouldn't have been for one reason or another. More often than not, these shows will be pulled from schedules and archived, never to be shown in full again, and only referenced in the odd documentary here and there. Suffice to say that said shows are never given a second series either, and it makes you wonder sometimes as to exactly who gave the green light for these shows to be paid for by TV networks....leading viewers to wonder "what dafuq did I just watch?".


Heil Honey, I'm Home! (Noel Gay TV/Galaxy Channel - 1990)

Probably one of the more well known "dafuq?" TV moments. "Heil Honey, I'm Home!" was a 8 episode series that aired in the early days of what would go on to be called Sky Television.
The premise of the series was that Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were living in an apartment block with Jewish neighbours, and the shows humour, if you could call it that, was derived from a combination of Hitlers anti-semitic rantings, usually followed by him being outsmarted by the Jews in some fashion.
One episode aired at 9:30pm on the 30th of September 1990 before Galaxy channel (the station on which it was broadcast), quickly removed it from the viewing schedule, due to the massive number of complaints received from viewers who cited it as being tasteless, crass and anti-semitic amongst other things.
The writer and creator of the series, Geoff Atkinson, stated it was his intention to examine the process of the pre-war appeasement of the Nazis in an entertaining manner, so he decided the best way to do this was to create what he called a "farcical sitcom which lampooned American style 50s sitcoms in a satirical manner".

Viewers, and the board of executives at BSB didn't find it funny, and to date, the series has never been shown in full or released for home consumption.

World Series of Dating (BBC Three - 2012)

BBC Three had been trying, with a questionable degree of success, to recapture the BBCs dominance over the comedy genre, a position which BBC 2 had enjoyed for many years throughout the 1990s, but had fumbled and lost to SKY and Channel 4 as the millennium came and went.

One show which the Beeb hoped would be successful was "World Series of Dating", being as it had fly on the wall elements mixed in with a kind of quiz show atmosphere.
The premise of the show was that 6 men would attempt a "speed date" with 6 women, with the winner of each episode being decided by two faux-American accent sporting commentators who would make quips "in the style of" American sports commentators. During the various rounds, points would be awarded and penalties would be given by a man dressed as a baseball umpire.

Quite honestly, having personally watched a few episodes of this series whilst waiting for family guy to come on,  i really, really, really fail to understand what BBC Threes controller was thinking when they gave the green light for this show. Quite literally there was not a single laugh to be had from anything said or done on screen while this show was taking up space on the schedules, with the male contestants visibly uninterested in what they were supposed to be doing, and the female contestants either looking bored or revelling in the attention they were getting from strangers, all while two dickheads with dodgy fake accents talked about their own supposed sexual prowess etc.

After one production run of a dozen episodes, most of which were shunted to post midnight airing slots, and scathing reviews, the show vanished, never to be heard from again.

Show Me The Funny! (ITV - 2011)

ITV has always had a bit of a "hit and miss" relationship when it comes to stand up comedy. On the one hand, shows such as the "An Audience with...." series allowed many successful British stand up comedians to get an hours worth of airtime on a Saturday night prime time viewing slot, whereas ITVs numerous attempts to make a successful copy of the hit US Show "Saturday Night Live" have always been doomed to failure due to their over reliance on unknown or unpredictable alternative comedians.
"Show Me The Funny!" was an attempt to marry up stand up comedy with a fly on the wall type "documentary/journey" series, with he premise that 10 unknown (although this was most certainly NOT the case as it turned out) stand up comedians would compete for a place in the live final to be held at Hammersmith Apollo, with one of the unsuccessfuls being voted off each week by a panel of judges. The grand prize for the eventual winner being that they would receive a nationwide tour (backed up by the two runners up) and a DVD released before Christmas 2011.
While the concept was new and had the promise to be somewhat interesting, the main problem was that for a show which was centred on comedy...it wasn't actually that funny.
The majority of the shows hour long episodes, which ran over 7 weeks during the summer of 2011, focused mainly on the "journey" of the contestants, as they were taken to a new place each week and then expected to come up with a new 5 minute long routine based on their experiences of that week, in essence, limiting their material to purely observational and anecdotal comedy.
By week 3 viewing figures for the series had plummeted to almost nil, as viewers weren't interested in watching what was supposed to be a comedy program which featured little to no comedic content, other than from heavily edited down sets shown at the end, before the judges voted someone off.

The show was eventually won by the Irish/Iranian comedian Patrick Monoghan, who by the time he won, had already performed several times at the Edinburgh fringe festival, and had received several comedy awards.

The show was, understandably, not picked up for a second series.

Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos (Nine Network, 1992)

Produced as a spin off to the show "Australia's Funniest Home Videos", the show attempted to show some of the more "risque" clips sent in by viewers which would not normally be shown by the more family orientated version.
The story goes that on the night of transmission, the Director of Nine Network, Kerry Packer, was out to dinner with friends when he spotted the show on a television, and was so offended by what he saw, he rang the station up immediately and told them to "get that shit off the air now!". The show went to a commercial break at the halfway mark, and was then hastily replaced by a repeat of an episode of the American sitcom "Cheers".

Osbournes Reloaded (Fox - 2009)

Hoping to cash in on the success of the Osbournes previous docu-drama show, as well as the somewhat reknewed interest in variety shows, this strange program had members of the Osbourne family presenting a musical variety program.
After one episode had aired, reviews were scathing, causing many Fox affiliate channels to either shelve the show or play the remaining 5 episodes of the series in late night slots.
Fox themselves never aired any of the remaining shows.

Married...For Life (ITV - 1996)

The US sitcom "Married...with Children" had garnered a cult following in the UK (where it was most affectionately called "The Bundys" in our house and the homes of several friends) however in 1996 ITV decided to try and make a British version of the show. This concept had previously been successful in the form of "The Upper Hand", which was a British remake of the American show "Who's The Boss?", so, what on earth could go wrong?....
Starring Russ Abbott as "Ted Butler/Al Bundy" and Hugh Bonneville as "Steve Hollingsworth/Steve D'Arcy", the series lurched through seven painful episodes which saw gags from the original series "Britishified" and failing miserably, as well as the other members of the "Butler" household having little to none of the dynamic that the members of the "Bundy" family had in the original.
The series got shunted around as is the norm with these things, before never being mentioned again...but ITV didn't learn their from their mistake of trying to "Britishify" American sitcoms.....

Days Like These (ITV - 1999)

An attempt by ITV to remake the successful American sitcom "That 70's Show" which took the basic premise and characters and transplanted them from 1970s Wisconsin to 1970s Luton.
Needless to say, it lost a lot of what had made it funny in the transatlantic journey, with many jokes being recycled from the original, albeit with some slight name changes to link it to 1970s Britain, and one big mistake in making the character "Rasmussen" into an extremely racist stereotype of east European people.
Originally airing in a prime time Friday night slot, the show was quickly moved to a less conspicuous graveyard slot, before vanishing altogether with only 10 of the 13 filmed episodes being shown.

Minipops (Channel 4 - 1983)

A rather bizarre program which came about after a novelty music album, the titular "Minipops" was released featuring preteen children singing versions of popular songs was released in 1982.
Consisting of 6 30 minute episodes, the show featured children aged between 5 and 10 singing and dancing along to various pop songs.
Although initial viewing figures were somewhat encouraging, it soon dawned on the public, critics and network executives alike that the concept of a show featuring preteen children dressed in provocative clothing and singing various adult themed songs was somewhat disturbing, and soon enough, the show was quite rightly being described as a "paedophiles dreams come true".

The show was not renewed for a second series.

War Of The Worlds - The series (1988-1990)

The War Of The Worlds TV series was first envisaged as a concept in the 1970s by Director George Pal and was intended to be a direct follow on the the 1953 movie, however the series did not make it to screens due to no interest in it.
In 1988 however writer/director Greg Strangis managed to pitch a similar concept which found favour amongst US TV executives who were, at the time, quite keen on making TV series based on successful films, as the same year saw a "Friday the XIII" TV series and a "Nightmare on Elm Street" TV series.

Two full series were made, however there are massive differences in the settings and tone of the second series compared to the first, so much so that barring a couple of shared characters, the second series could be considered to be something entirely different based on a similar premise.

Series 1 (1988-1989)

The back story goes that both the events of the 1953 Film and the 1938 Radio Broadcast were actually real attempted alien invasions, however following the end of the 1953 invasion, the aliens (note - the aliens are not referred to as "martians", as a rule in all episodes, as the concept of life on Mars had long since been disproved and thus useless as a believable plot point) did not die when exposed to Earths bacteria, instead, the aliens entered a state of torpor, and thus, after the 1953 war ended, thousands of "dead" alien bodies were sealed into oil drums and sent to storage areas all over the world, supposedly for scientific research purposes, but in reality they were quickly hidden away along with any spacecraft and artifacts so that the worlds governments could quickly and quietly rebuild and forget about the horrifying events of the invasion.
35 years pass and in present day (1988) a group of environmental terrorists attack and take over a military storage compound, which they intend to hold for ransom due to it being used to store nuclear waste. Unfortunately for them the facility is also one of the places that sleeping aliens are stored, and, in the process of their assault on the facility, the terrorists cause the aliens to become exposed to radioactive waste, which reanimates them. The aliens quickly counter attack, and demonstrate that they have the ability to merge their bodies with a human body, thus allowing them to appear as human (This was actually a cost saving measure so that numerous difficult to produce alien costumes didn't have to be made and maintained, plus it also allowed the aliens to directly influence the plot. It should also be noted that throughout the entire series, the aliens are never seen clearly).

The aliens are discovered when they make a transmission requesting orders from their superiors, and this leads to the introduction of the series' main characters:-

Dr. Harrison Blackwood  (Jared Martin) - The adopted son of Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia van Buren. Harrison is an eccentric scientist who carried on Dr. Forresters work on the aliens, even though after the great cover up no one believed in aliens any more. He becomes head of "The Blackwood Project" a secret group dedicated to finding and stopping the aliens before they take over the world. Blackwoods curiosity quite often gets the team into trouble.

Norton Drake  (Phillip Akin) - A paraplegic computer genius who intercepted the aliens first transmission. (In the pilot episode of the series, Norton sported a faux Caribbean accent, however this was dropped for the series proper, although in the first few episodes he still uses it, however the actor playing him re dubbed his lines in his own voice) Norton, as well as being a top notch research scientist is also an expert hacker, and helps the team get access to information by bypassing governmental "red tape" from time to time with his skills.

Lt.Col Paul Ironhorse  (Paul Chaves) - A US army special forces operative of native American ancestry who serves as the liaison between Dr. Blackwood and the military. Ironhorse is a staunch conservative and generally prefers military action over scientific investigation, putting him at odds with the pacifistic Dr. Blackwood, however over time the two grow to hold a respect for each other.

Suzanne McCullough (Lynda Mason Green) - A Microbiologist and single mother who comes to work for Dr. Blackwood prior to the arrival of the alien threat. Throughout the series Suzanne works on numerous biological methods of identifying or attacking the aliens, as well as finding out more about them. Suzanne is a very "by the numbers" scientist, which causes problems with Blackwoods eccentric approach to science.

The Blackwood team are tasked with researching and finding ways to combat the aliens, however the aliens themselves face numerous problems. Firstly, although they have been resurrected by the radiation, its effect of killing the germs that harm them also causes their bodies to break down from radiation sickness, meaning the aliens can only spend short periods inside a human body before they too begin to disintegrate. Secondly, the aliens do not have access to their advanced weapons or technology this time round, so therefore have to make do with crudely adapted human technology, or hopefully be able to scavenge some of their own equipment from secret storage facilities, or left over from previous visits to Earth.
Over the course of the series the aliens revive more of their own kind and try numerous strategies to subvert and kill mankind, some of which end up being horribly successful (yes that's right, the baddies win sometimes), but the series does end on a fairly high note, as it turns out that humans may have allies from space as well as enemies, although by the end of the series, it is established that an alien colonisation fleet will arrive within a few years.

Series 2 (1989-1990)

Series 2 saw some major changes to the shows format. Firstly, the setting was changed from "present day" to "almost tomorrow", this allowed for the timeline to be moved on to accommodate the arrival of the alien colonisation fleet.
Also, and more bizarrely, the aliens from the first series (the "Mor-Tax") were replaced with another set of completely different aliens, the "Mothren", with little to no explanation given as to why.
Also, Ironhorse and Norton are killed off in the first episode, and instead replaced by a mercenary called John Kincaid (played by a pre-Highlander: The Series Adrian Paul).


In this series, Earth has fallen into a period of chaos and great social upheaval, leading to an almost total breakdown of civilised society.
The Mothren arrive on Earth, and, unlike their predecessors the Mor-Tax, have no trouble whatsoever adapting to the environment, however they find it inconvenient that the humans haven't been massacred, allowing them to begin full colonisation procedures, however, over the course of the series they try to complete their mission of finding a new home world, despite their many internal conflicts.



Overall Thoughts



While the series' original concept, and thus the first series itself was quite good, it completely went to pot with the changes made for the second series.
The first series mixed sci-fi with elements of adventure and horror, and was genuinely scary to me when I first saw this series as an 11 year old, especially some of the gruesome ways that the aliens killed people.
A nice touch was that Jared Martin was instructed to copy actor Gene Barrys mannerisms in his portrayal of Harrison Blackwood, so as to make another link between the film and the series.
Another nice touch was the episode "An eye for an eye", which first aired on the 50th anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast and pays tribute to it by having the Blackwood team visit the setting of the radio play and tangling with aliens with help from some of the town militia who fought them during the 1930s.
The series also had a lot of environmentalist themes, as well as some cleverly crafted bits of satire and black comedy, most notably that each episode of series 1 was titled after a biblical quote, which had an ironic connection to the plot for the episode.
Series 2 was just awful, with far too many plot and character changes to make the two series' related in any way, even the episodes of it themselves are boring, save for one episode which involves Blackwood travelling back in time to the 1950s.

This is a good series, so long as you only really watch series 1, well acted, and for the most part well scripted. Some of the special effects are a bit bargain basement, and any instance of alien war machines appearing in the series is simply repurposed footage from the 1953 film, but, even though the program is very 1980s in its stylings, and thus may be a little difficult for younger people to get their head round, it is still watchable and entertaining.