Looks Unfamiliar 32: Vikki Gregorich And Jeff Lewis
Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to. Joining Tim this time are Game Developer Jeff Lewis and Board Game Collector Vikki Gregorich, who are going back three spaces in the hope of finding anyone else who remembers Animalympics, Conrad’s War, The Last American, the books of Paul Biegel, Harry Harrison’s Deathworld series and The Secret Cabaret. Along the way we’ll be evaluating the lack of viable life choices for anyone named ‘Ulysses S. Pilgrim’, debating the identity of ‘soft lad who stood on a pole’, and perusing adverts for Genuine One Hundred Percent Legal Generic Seeds.
Support Looks Unfamiliar by buying one of Tim's books! Can't Help Thinking About Me is brand new and features loads of brand new material, and you can get it in paperback here or from the Kindle store here.
Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to. Joining Tim this time is writer Jonny Morris, who wonders if anyone else recalls the BBC Micro Welcome cassette, The Dandy strip Jack Silver, Mr Men book Mr Spendy, BSB’s The Carmen Ejogo Show, Andrew Sachs sitcom Dead Ernest, and Jesta Giggle by The Barron Knights. Along the way we’ll be finding out how to estimate James Bond’s ‘Biorhythms’, what the second worst ZX Spectrum game was, how many times it’s possible to say ‘Padmasambhava’ in one sentence, and why The Barron Knights should have covered T.V.O.D.. Also, we solve two mystery half-recollections live on air!
Support Looks Unfamiliar by buying one of Tim's books! Well At Least It's Free, a collection of columns and articles (including lots on early Doctor Who) is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here. And there's several other books to choose from here...
You don't really tend to get very many people talking about archive BBC radio sci-fi. In fairness, that's probably because there's never really been that much of it to talk about.
Well, in fairness, there's been quite a lot of it, just very little that is actually widely known about. Leaving aside the possibly unresolvable question of whether The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy counts as 'sci-fi drama' or not, there are indeed a couple of well-remembered and widely-loved examples; the original atom age Light Programme cliffhanging serial Journey Into Space, Radio 4's lengthy post-microchip 'intelligent sci-fi' cult favourite Earthsearch, and the same station's superlative adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings (the former, incidentally, almost shorter in its entirety than the first part of Peter Jackson's bloated big-screen reading).
Beyond these there are a handful of shows with minor but significant appeal to fans of other genre favourites; Nigel Kneale's largely forgotten nineties postscript The Quatermass Memoirs, serials and plays by Doctor Who writers including Victor Pemberton's The Slide and Robert Holmes' Aliens In The Mind, and a late sixties version of The War Of The Worlds with music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's David Cain. And beyond these, there are hundreds if not thousands that came and went and thrilled a few million listeners before being almost completely forgotten.
Broadcast once by the Light Programme late in 1959, Orbiter X was a relatively straight-laced serial inspired by recent scientific developments in the 'space race', which was then at its most intense and confrontational. Running to fourteen episodes on Monday evenings between 28th September and 28th December, the storyline was based very closely on theoretical plans for an orbiting 'refuelling station' that would enable rockets to travel deeper into space than was then physically possible. However, this wasn't the only topical aspect to the serial; while it was carefully and diplomatically disguised with less contentious character and place names, there was a definite tinge of Cold War paranoia in the unfolding storyline.
You would be forgiven for expecting the action to take place on board Orbiter X itself, but at the start of the series it hasn't even been built yet. A rocket carrying a team of experts who were due to supervise the construction process has gone missing, prompting Captain Britton and his assistants - more inquisitive than intrepid - to set off on a rescue mission. On arriving at the station's intended location, they are greeted by an unidentified spacecraft, and discover that they've been led into a trap; someone - who may or may not be from Earth - has plans for Orbiter X that go way beyond doling out a bit of additional rocket fuel. Brilliantly, the audience must have been as surprised by this as the characters were; the sizeable Radio Times article that accompanied the first episode cunningly only suggested that the series would examine the emotional and technological impact of working in a vacuum.
Produced by Charles Maxwell, a name more normally associated with radio comedy (most notably commissioning the phenomenally popular sketch show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again), Orbiter X was written by prolific radio dramatist B.D. Chapman. Previously a lead writer on Dick Barton - Special Agent, Chapman had deliberately devised the serial to appeal to a family audience rather than just flying saucer-obsessed youngsters, and saw the scientific plausibility and topical concerns as key to achieving this; indeed, Chapman only half-jokingly told Radio Times that he was concerned some aspects might be overtaken by reality ahead of transmission. Hammer Films and ITC regular John Carson headed the cast as Captain Britton, with Barrie Gosney and Andrew Crawford as his assistants Flight Engineer Hicks and Captain McLelland; reportedly, the three wore makeshift space helmets during recording to get an authentic sense of change in breathing for scenes where they were required to put them on or take them off. This attention to sonic detail was shared by sound effects designer Harry Morriss, who created a set of around forty effects that could be combined in different ways to lend the serial a touch of variance across its lengthy run.
Orbiter X was apparently never repeated, and was also apparently wiped shortly after its lone transmission. Following that, the series was all but forgotten about, and until recently the only mention of it on the entire Internet was on a general fifties nostalgia site. At some point, a set of BBC Transcription Services discs of the entire series were discovered at BBC Enterprises; putting it in very simple terms, these were essentially vinyl records of BBC radio shows made for sale to overseas broadcasters. Often these would have material removed or re-recorded to avoid confusing or offending overseas listeners, and a small amount edited out to allow broadcasters to fit in commercial breaks, so these recordings may not quite be what audiences thrilled to back in 1959, but the fact that they survived is remarkable enough frankly. Now they've been literally dusted down by Radio 4Extra, and have proved to be a more compelling listen than perhaps anyone was reasonably expecting.
Far from being a creaky relic weighed down by overly polite voices and laughable 'futuristic' elements, Orbiter X is a taut and believable thriller, and enough time and technology have elapsed for its quaint sounds and equally quaint theories to blast off into their own esoteric solar system. True, given that it was made not just with a different audience but with an entire different way of enjoying radio in mind, it isn't exactly what you would call an easy background listen. But it's one that rewards the small amount of additional effort and attention required tenfold, and if you blast it out from a tiny phone or tablet speaker, you can even get some sense of what it might have sounded like issuing from the 'radiogram' back in the days before Yuri Gagarin had even lifted one foot off the ground.
Orbiter X is hugely enjoyable proof that there's always something new - and good - to find hidden away in the radio and TV listings of the past, and let's hope there's more to come. Meanwhile, you may well have noticed, there aren't any radio stations devoted to revisiting the vast archive of sci-fi - or drama, comedy, documentary, soap opera, live sessions or whatever else you might care to mention - from commercial radio. Funny, that.
Not On Your Telly, a collection of my columns and features which includes tons on obscure archive radio, is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here. And there's several other books to choose from here...
If you were a science fiction fan in the days before box sets, 'webisodes' and kickstarter-funded revivals, you had to make your own entertainment in the long, long months between series of TV shows or instalments of film franchises. This usually involved throwing yourself in sheer frustration into impenetrable library-sourced novels by Americans with superfluous middle initials, radio serials with 'computers' that spoke in that tinny know-all female voice, interminable board games about trading intergalactic fuel stocks or something, and numerous other fondly-recalled bits of marginal interest rainy day 'space' substitutes that you can read more about in my book Well At Least It's Free. And of course, you would get to enjoy all of these things that you didn't really enjoy that much uninterrupted, whereas the second that The Tripods started again you'd be called to the phone to speak to a well-meaning relative who'd rung to 'make sure' you know 'that it's on', and have to miss half the episode politely responding to being asked if you were watching it.
One less widely acknowledged side-effect of all of this was that you were widely assumed, often incorrectly, to have no corresponding interest in popular beat music, and that as a consequence you would like it when there was a pop song about 'space'. And not even the actual themes from your favourite films or TV shows. No, the the ones that had embarrassing lyrics about 'galactic robot battles' or something and were performed on TV by dancer-heavy ensembles apparently dressed as extras from Come Back Mrs Noah. Here, then, are fifteen of the best chart toppers from out of this world...!
Sheila & B. Devotion - Spacer
Erstwhile cutesy teenpop Gallic chart star hooks up with Chic and reinvents herself by going absolutely induced magnetosphere with the Bacofoil-clad interplanetary stylings and a song about a gadabout lover so insatiable in his appetites that he whizzes off across the cosmos in pursuit of alien 'skirt' - the possibility that this is actually about Captain Jack Harkness should not be discounted - and rendered in the sort of bing-bong-heavy existential disco sound that ensures it still enjoys bafflingly enthusiastic Jackson Sisters-levels of popularity with hen parties to this day.
Dee D. Jackson - Automatic Lover
Swoosh-heralded I Feel Love-meets-Rock Follies robo-voiced Battlestar Galactica-bandwagon gambit which sounds as though it may actually be about the female protagonist finding ways of 'enjoying' herself during epic intergalactic voyages, but was nonetheless performed on TV with the assistance of the most unreasonable sub-CP & Qwikstitch attempt at a robot ever. And bear in mind this was at a time when it looked ridiculous next to Twiki.
Space - Magic Fly
France-originated enigmatic instrumental-only 'mystery band' in stylish post-Doctor Who And The Ambassadors Of Death colour-coded spacesuits equipped with shoebox-sized synths to denote 'future', whose stark dispersonalised ode to a winged insect doing all tricks like that Derren Brown would enjoy years of ubiquity as 'and that's Thursday... on BBC1'-type backing music, to the extent that the original solarisation-ahoy performances on Top Of The Pops et al became little more than a troubling Rondo Veneziano-like half-memory. Later had their name stolen by some bloke putting new lyrics to Well Jemima, Let's Go Shopping.
Mankind - Dr. Who
Incalculably uncalled-for boogied-up mangling of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's finest hour by ad-hoc collective of unenthusiastic-looking session men, replete with nasty monophonic synth melody line, decidedly non-'canon' xylophone voluntary, and what is presumably meant to be a vocodered mock-Dalek offering such urgently-required clarifications as 'he journeys in The Tardis - through time and space!'. A novelty hit at the time but, in retrospect, probably the moment at which it all started to go wrong. And ironically, it would take another, later dance version of the theme to provide the moment at which it all started to go right again...
Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip - I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper
The Everett-endorsed lingerie-almost-wearing 'racy' dance troupe led by Arlene Phillips push resident springy-haired space minx microphone-wards for an arse-waggling splits-abundant Points Of View-enraging tale of transgalactic soft-porn-shenanigans with one 'Captain Strange', given a cosmic sprinkling of Kremmen-esque 'space cruiser intercom' spoken word bits, samples from Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Close Encounters four note thingy, and a modish mention of one 'Darth Vader'. Subsequent to this success, an outer spiral arm-sized schism developed and while La Brightman strove for further chart success with the wheel-reinventing Adventures Of The Love Crusader and Love In A UFO, Hot Gossip attempted to leap on another sci-fi themed bandwagon with the similarly underachieving Space Invaders. More recently, Ms. Brightman has announced her intention to bring the lyrics one step closer to reportage by going into space herself for real. Rumours that America are planning to actually traverse the desert on a horse with no name sadly cannot be confirmed.
Meco - Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band
Hilariously camped-up soaraway Hanna-Barbera-end-sting-esque sashay through the main title theme from The Unyclopedia Of Rock (or, if raining, sci-fi's most overrated franchise) as it might have been heard in The Blue Oyster from Police Academy, replete with puzzlingly-sourced genuine article lazer blasts and R2D2 blipperings, intertwined with sidesplittingly sped-up version of Figrin Da'n & The Modal Nodes' signature show-stopper sounding as though it's come straight out of a space-themed Benny Hill chase medley where he gets his head stuck in a slightly out of proportion Darth Vader mask or something. Trioculous reported to be 'getting down' with immediate effect.
Duffy Power, Victy Silva & The CPO's - Disco Round The Moon
Sadly not online anywhere, this shameless cash-in was only available to avid scoffers of KP's virulently-flavoured modishly-monickered pasty round corn snack Discos. Masterminded by cheapo foodstuff cash-in supremo John Mears - whose other opuses include something called Moveaboutalot With Arthur Lowe And His Animal Friends, and, lest we forget, the single length version of Jon Pertwee's I'm The Noodle Doodle Man jingle - Disco Round The Moon features synth-toting library music powerhouse Cy Payne, middle-bit-of-BBC-variety-show-tastic session singer extraordinaire Victy Silva, and erstwhile UK rock'n'roller Duffy Power boogieing their way through such crisp-friendly numbers as Hot Dogs And Mustard and That's The Way The Cookie Crumbles, which audaciously combine junk food endorsements with occasional flashes of flying saucer-level sci-fi references. Every bit as sleazy, antiseptic and indescribably inauthentic-sounding as you're imagining, and frankly all the better for it. You didn't get this with your Smiths Football Crazy.
Manhattan Transfer - Twilight Zone
Jazztacular Wodehouse-meets-Vidal-Sassoon standard-belters perform their usual lyric-adding instrumental-vocalising magic on that all-too-familiar four-note guitar jabbing (and, more importantly, the creepy 'angry flute' bit that followed it) and do some Studio Line From L'oreal-anticipating jagged lines on their faces, and come up with a song that appears to celebrate the actual act of watching an episode of The Twilight Zone. The video, however, seemed to be more closely modelled on the opening titles of Sapphire & Steel.
Liquid Gold - Don't Panic
Vaguely Hitchhiker-infringing sub-Dooleys disco-lite I Will Survive-alike Eurovision hopeful with plenty of lyrical references to romantic turmoil but nary a mention of The Great Green Arkleseizure, falling on the same bird twice, or "that's nothing - anyone could have a Thing Their Aunt Gave Them Where They Don't Know What It Is". Not even a half-expected mid-solo quotation from Journey Of The Sorcerer. "You're a jerk, Liquid Gold".
Federation - Blake's 7 Disco
Pulp-purloined hold-music-tacular with added vocodered Federation Guard threattage (you can tell they aren't proper because nobody shouts 'CRIMOS!') attempt at shaking a few extra coppers out of the few remaining viewers of a once-mighty TV 'Space Opera' heading rapidly for cancellation, working on the strange assumption that what their devotion to the show was REALLY missing was the opportunity to bust a few moves in a disco that they'd be unlikely ever to go to and would be unlikely ever to play this record which is probably impossible to dance to in the first place. Sadly the planned tie-in album Disco Darrow remains in the vaults.
Chris De Burgh - A Spaceman Came Travelling
Post-prog Chariots Of The Gods-riffing sword-and-sorcery-horse-flogging dishwater-singer-songwritery alienned-up reimagining of the Nativity, full to radio-smashing point with dreary space-travel-as-seen-by-Nasir-from-Robin-Of-Sherwood imagery and 'meaningful' insight about how you and I could make a difference if only we tried etc etc etc. We thought he was dull enough then, but little did we know what was just around the corner. And that all-important message that said extra-terrestrial vagabond had to impart to us all? "A-a-a-aa-a-a-aa-a-a-ah", apparently. We could have heard that from Tony Parsons!
Adam Ant - Apollo 9
Post-Puss N' Boots shark-hovering panic-fuelled image reinvention for the man who had been the biggest name in pop only months earlier, opting for an ill-advised 'Adam Ant On The Moon!' makeover whilst slowly but surely becoming as musically adrift as Major Tom. Aside from an occasional countdown which gets abandoned at 'five' anyway, it's not really that musically spaced out, although the lyrics gamely try to equate NASA's largely unremarkable third manned mission with the antics of a flightly lady friend, and that famous cosmological phrase "yabba yabba ding ding", which weirdly coincided with the surfacing of more or less the same phrase in the hated theme song of hated eight million episode animated tweeness Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds. Ahead lay Vive Le Rock...
Brian May & Friends - Star Fleet
Unlikely all-star re-recording of the hard-rocking end theme from the redubbed puppet escapades of Captain Orion and company, with May and Eddie Van Halen battling it out over who can contribute the most ludicrous guitar squiggling, and Roger Taylor (who, lest we forget, once recorded an album called Fun In Space) throwing in the odd PPA-esque bit of backing vocal chirruping. As the lyrics exist primarily to explain what's happening in the show you've, erm, just been watching, there's tons of refreshingly to-the-point stuff about sending a message out across the sky and 'the people back at Earth Control', while the video at least counteracts the expected extreme close-up May-emoting with lashings of hot suitmation antics courtesy of TV's top half-remembered big red robot, Dai-X.
The RAH Band - Clouds Across The Moon
Schmaltztacular Jupiter Moon-esque proto-It's-Cold-Outside-No-Kind-Of-Atmosphere calm-before-the-Star-Trek-The-Next-Generation-storm static-prone one way conversation between a lonely earthbound lady and her starship-employed Rimmer's Z Shift Gets It Clean beau, conducted to mercurial Barrowman-friendly jazz-funk-electro-pop backing with the 'twee' fader pushed up to maximum, and equally memorably enacted in a video apparently taking its pipes-and-stripy-tape visual cues from Galloping Galaxies!, only with that Hollywood bloke from Mannequin doing robot dancing in front of a telephone exchange standing in for Dinwiddy Snurdle. Ironically for a record set in the distant future, it doesn't get much more eighties than this.
The Firm - Star Trekkin'
Prank-friendly producers string together helium-voiced misquotes from Star Trek over the most subconscious-drillingly irritating tune in the entire history of recorded music, and watch in satirical satisfaction as it tops the charts for ice age upon ice age. Started off by infuriating all the humourless Trekkies who didn't like it when people didn't take it seriously, which made it immensely likeable, but then pretended they saw the joke and liked it all along and they got it more than everyone else got it ha ha ha its funny it is, which made it immensely detestable. Now likeable again on account of unparallelled ability to induce eye-rollment in rock bores. And indeed the sheer audacity of the video, made so cheaply and nastily that it probably went right round in the other direction and actually ended up unspending money.
Edelweiss - Starship Edelweiss
Long-forgotten widely-ignored follow-up to the bizarre KLF-inspired camptastic sample-fest Bring Me Edelweiss, with the thigh-flashing ladies and their less easy-on-the-eye male co-stars doing their own bit of Star Trekkin' across the universe for a Roddenberry-aping trip aboard the Enterprise, only with additional yodelling. The request to "beam me up to Mars", however, suggests they hadn't quite understood how it worked...
You can find lots more on 'The Sci-Fi That Time Forgot' in Well At Least It's Free, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.
