Television & Video

As I stated on my Bio page, I have been following Science Fiction since Dr Who first started in 1963, with the late Bill Hartnell as the Doctor. Although my favorite doctors have to be Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

I remember such shows as Star Trek (TOS), Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Mission Impossible, My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Airwolf, Blue Thunder and other such worthies. Of course I have to include the home grown live action stuff of the seventies and eighties, Blakes 7, The Tomorrow People, Timeslip, Survivors and the Anderson live-action productions, UFO and Space 1999.

I also remember some of the more obscure or short lived series, such as Search Control (Does anybody have any of these?) which starred Burgess Meredith and, alternating each week, Hugh O'Brien (Probe 1), James Francescoa (Omega Probe) and Doug McClure (Back-up Probe C.R. Grover), Barbery Coast, with Doug McLure and William Shatner, and, latterly discovered, Star Cops. A brilliant series that, like most decent BBC SF got canned and lasted a mere 9 episodes!

Yes I said decent. Given that it was really a cops and robbers in space premise, it achieved 'cult' status because of the usual BBC reasons, wonky sets, really dodgy 'weightlessness' and free-fall and the black lined matting of the SFX. But those things are not the real reason for it being so good. It was the performances of David Calder as Commander Nathan Spring, interacting with Erick Ray Evans, Trevor Cooper and Johnathan Adams and the ensemble cast that made it such a fine series. If you haven't seen it, get hold of someone who has the videos, because I think the BBC have already deleted the set of three tapes, and they won't bother to farm it to DVD!

Of the more recent stuff, I enjoyed Star Trek - The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I enjoyed Babylon 5, although the ending was a tad too gooey for me. It was also a pity we lost Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian) AND Marcus Cole (Jason Carter) for Season 5, I liked them and their relationship and I met Jason at a UK con. Of course, .Buffy - The Vampire Slayer is a favorite. It is unfortunate that the internecine wars between the channels over here means that the BBC will be showing Buffy on BBC2 while it's spin-off program, Angel, is being screened on Channel 4 at different times each Monday night. Of course both suffer from sport or other 'important' scheduling changes which means that we skip 1-4 weeks between episodes (Okay so in the U.S. they have repeats of earlier shows to stretch out the wait, but at least it's AN episode....!)

On the standard television side I enjoy several of the general interest programs, then came Warship (BBC again!)-(I have all three books on the series Warship, Warship - HMS Hero and Warship - Holt RN). I have always enjoyed series like that, including Casualty, Soldier Soldier and London's Burning. I also enjoyed the period pieces, Jane Eyre and I Claudius to mention but two. Currently I follow the Time Team, Due South, Hornblower, Sharpe, Brooklyn South (The new Steve Bochco series - an updated Hill Street Blues which also only lasted One season thanks to the 'ratings' system) and Ally McBeal.

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