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The Tomorrow People 4:2: Into The Unknown
pub: DVD: Fremantle/Revelation PAR 61146. 85 minutes. Price: £15.99) stars: Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughn Clarke, Elizabeth Adare, Michael Holloway, Dean Lawrence and Philip Gilbert with Geoffrey Bayldon and Stephen Garlick .

check out website: www.revfilms.com


Season 4 of ‘The Tomorrow People’ was a bit of an oddity as it only had two stories. The previous one, discussed above, was very much Earthbound with a lot of outside filming and effects. This one, ‘Into The Unknown’ practically reeks of budget restriction with only four sets and minimal effects...or rather where the group are jaunting themselves or using their powers were concerned.

What special effects were there was for the spacecraft. Compared to today’s efforts, such effects will seem right out of the Stone Age but this was also in the early days of chroma-key and extremely tight budgets.

The Tomorrow People 4:2: Into The Unknown

From a conceptual point of view, this is a very considered SF story. From an execution point of view, it was padded out to four episodes when at most three would have done, especially as so much of the time, the cast were just talking and, all right, the aliens prayed a lot as well.

A small spacecraft is noted near Pluto giving out a distress signal and the Tomorrow People investigate and rescue its young pilot, Kwann (actor Stephen Garlick). He tells them he was seeking help for his fathership where his father, Tirayaan (actor Geoffrey Bayldon - more famously known as ‘Catweazel’ after all these years) find the way back to their home planet.

In the meantime, Tirayaan has called his son’s spaceship back and the Tomorrow People find themselves trapped on board after a military coup and the combined spaceship facing what appears to be a black hole. John negotiates their freedom in the smaller spacecraft if he repairs their engines and jaunts across to join them. They then find themselves all trapped on board unable to escape as the hole in space looms ever closer.

It’s interesting to note that the script says it's not a black hole - despite the voice-over commentary thinking it otherwise - and certainly a brief cameo from Timus suggests it's not either. Considering the nature of what it is - which I’m not going to say what it does cos it gives the end of the plot away - this reviewer thinks it's a wormhole. As such, this is probably one of the first recorded instances of them used in a televised SF series.

The voice-overs this time is again by actors Nick Young, Peter Vaughn Clarke and Mike Holloway and even they felt this story was a bit on the slow side. Interestingly, their side-tracking into Holloway’s own pop career also revealed both had been ‘talent-scouted’ themselves. PVC was an admitted hopeless case but Nick Young worked alongside Adam ‘Batman’ West on a single as Robin. Holy Homo Superior!

This was the first Tomorrow People story that wasn’t written by creator Roger Price, although he directed it. As such, a lot of the ‘humorous’ elements of his work were removed and put the series back to prior to that time. The worse failings though was what to do with such a large main cast so they all had meaningful things to do and to tell a decent story and for that we turn to season 5.

GF Willmetts


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