Timeslip

This was actually released on Video quite a few years ago, and I bought the first three series, but somehow missed out on the fourth. This is a classic children's sci-fi drama which gripped tea time viewers during 1970. Comical in parts, and quite dramatic in others, particularly the cliff hangers which left you waiting for the next episode. Those who love Cult TV would have really enjoyed this. Perhaps now is the time for a re-release, perhaps on DVD.

Simon Randall (Spencer Banks) and Liz Skinner (Cheryl Burfield) are teenage friends who slipped into a time hole to find themselves trapped in various periods of the 20th century, where they encounter all sorts of strange environments.

Another traveler, Commander Charles Traynor (Denis Quilley) also played Caliban in "The Tempest" with John Gielgud

They are not always alone and are also connected telepathically. Similar to projects like "The Time Tunnel" (1966), but has more of that ancient British TV such as the first shows of "Doctor Who" (1963) with William Hartnell.

This program is broken into many small parts which can be annoying and must have been annoying if you had to wait between the parts on the original presentation. Now we have the opportunity to binge 26 episodes. No fare looking ahead as it does wrap up well.

Kids have adventures back and forth in time. The show had flaws in some ways. In spite of the fact a respectable name is credited as scientific advisor, and a legitimate Scientist Man prefaces several episodes assuring us it's all plausible and trying to explain how it might work, I never did quite get the hang of the rules, and several times it's suggested that they're in effect only hallucinating, which would lower the stakes if true but is surely contradicted by other things. The overall story arc is fairly clearly being made up as they go, and without the slickness with which some modern shows do this, and the ending breezily retcons an early part in a way that made no sense to me.

But it's very entertaining and just has a certain something about it, perhaps just the charisma of the leads, in particular the kids and Dennis Quilley as the machiavellian Traynor, and some very good scripts, and it fully deserves its enduring cult status. The parts revolving around the children encountering their future selves and not much liking how they've turned out are especially great. There are some good twists and cliffhangers, images that stay with you and much food for thought, and it gets eerily apocalyptic at one point in a way I've rarely come across. Among other highlights is a turn by CJ out of Reginald Perrin as a genuinely chilling and intimidating mad scientist that has to be seen to be believed.

I was six when Timeslip was shown, but it has really stayed with me. I am surprised that no-one has published anything about it on the WWW, and yes, I have indeed been sad enough to search for it. Hell, there is even a Double Deckers page, so why not Timeslip!

Some things I remember are:

*some episodes were in colour, and others in black and white. Might this be why it has not been reshown?

*that the scary blary ATV sig tune blended perfectly into the theme music: da-da-da-da-DAAAAAA.....

*the way Liz and Simon would feel along the gap in the wire netting to find the Time Barrier.

*thinking how freaky it was when Liz met herself in the future (probably 1988 or something), but that she was called Beth.

*I used to have the novelisation, and there was also the comic strip version in Look-in (someone needs to do a Look-In website, by the way).

Does anyone know if Timeslip is available on video? I have never found it and would love to see it again.

There are four TimeSlip video sets, long out of pring, and the series is currently on DVD with a colour episode (how careless that the original colour tapes have been wiped).

The special effects are quite primitive - but it's the ideas that strike a chord when you watch the stories today. The second and third stories are set in the "future" - of 1970, which is now our past. 1990 must have seemed the distant future back then - long enough for many changes to have happened.

We see ideas that do concern us today - cloning, putting faith in computers, virtual reality, and global warming. Perhaps some borrowed elements, e.g. from The Prisoner - the boy as an adult has just a number in the third story.

It should be said that the series is not by any means perfect. It is slow in places, the acting sometimes is a bit creaky, and Liz and Simon's parents don't seem to quite be old enough when another 20 years is added on. The 1970 visualisation of a 1990 computer was always unlikely to be correctly guessed, after all pocket calculators were a few years off, and home computers in any form were easily eight years away.

The first story, set in World War II, has some genuinely inspired moments, and the story as a whole is never completely finished - I think there was always a possibility of them coming back for a fifth series.