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This is the never before seen 1997 documentary looking back
at the 1970s cult classic The Tomorrow People, with
personal reflections from the original cast about the series
development from its conception in 1972 to it's conclusion
in 1979...
I not sure that I was ever the right person to review Beyond
Tomorrow, from Fantom Films, a 1997 documentary about
the children's television show The Tomorrow People,
as I always thought it a particularly bad show. Poorly acted,
with at best average scripts and decidedly below average special
effects, the show ran for an incredible eight series between
1973 and 1979 and was subsequently remade, without the original
actors, in the early '90s. The show has had a continued life
as a series of audio plays from Big Finish.
The basic premise behind the show was that certain children
were exhibiting powers of teleportation, telekinesis and telepathy;
they had evolved into homo superior. With their great powers
came limitations, they were not able to kill, only stun. Aided
by their sentient computer, TIM, the Tomorrow People hid
in the shadows helping others of their kind to break out into
their new full potential.
The
documentary is a little short of an hour long. It contains
no sequences from the show, presumably for copyright reasons,
so what we have here is a series of talking heads discussing
their time on the show. Most of you favourites are here John
(Nicholas Young), Mike (Mike Holoway), Tyso (Dean Lawrence),
Stephen (Peter Vaughan-Clarke), Carol (Sammie Winmill), Liz
(Elizabeth Adare), and the sadly deceased Philip Gilbert,
who played the voice of TIM and was the best bit of the show.
For the most part the actors come over as very personable
people and their recollection of the show is often brutally
frank, with many of the recollections accepting the shortcomings
of the show.
It was interesting that, for the most part, the story The
Blue and The Green is held up as the best story and if
I'm being honest, it was the only one which deserves to be
re-watched even now. Strangely no one mentions A Man for
Emily which had Peter Davison and Sandra Dickinson as
silver clad space cowboys, something I'm sure they would want
to erase from their respective CV's.
For extras the disc contains a further four, much shorter,
interviews with Philip Gilbert, Mike Holloway, Nigel Rhodes
and Jackie Clarke, plus a complete audio of the Beyond
Tomorrow song.
In the end you are either going to be a long standing fan
of the show, warts and all or, like me, thought it should
have been strangled at birth. However that should not put
you off watching the documentary as it gives a good, if slightly
one sided, look at the making of a television show with all
its requisite back biting and sharing of blame.
Charles
Packer
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