The New People

Even though I was only three years old at the time this show came out, for some reason it stuck with me. One reason is the fact that it is one of the few failures in the illustrious career of the master television writer Rod Serling. It also marked one of the few failures for Aaron Spelling, who had just produced the Mod Squad and would later go on to dominate the 1970's with such shows as Charlie's Angels and the Love Boat. Another reason is the concept of the show. The whole concept of this show was that a plane carrying a group of college students on the way back from a trip abroad gets caught in a storm and crashes on a seemingly deserted island. However, this seemingly deserted island was an abandoned nuclear test site, which was completely stocked with enough provisions to keep them alive almost indefinitely. They then go about creating their own society complete with their own rules as they try to survive on the island. This show definitely was a product of its time, the late 1960's, when youth rebellion was was very prevalent. I think that this would have been better if instead of being a weekly series that it should have been either a movie of the week or maybe a mini-series and maybe it would have been remembered better.

This show was an experiment. It was 45 minutes per episode and it followed David Steinberg who also had a 45 minute time slot. I'm assuming that they expected you to be captivated by Steinberg and then trapped into watching The New People since you were left 15 minutes into everything else that was on. The premise was: "What kind of world would young adults create if they were left to their own devices?" The plot had them stranded on a remote island that was designed to be destroyed by an atomic bomb. It had a complete town constructed to test the effects of said bomb. Sort of a metaphor for the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war. So there they were with a civilization to build while trying to avoid the mistakes of their parents. They even had an episode where the castaway's found a cache of weapons and had to make the decision to keep them or destroy them. (Remember we were in the middle of the Vietnam war). It showed promise, but I'm assuming it didn't work because adults were writing it and they had a hard time thinking like teenagers.

I loved this show when it was aired in 1969. My Mom didn't allow us to watch it as it was very controversial at that time. I remember the episode in which one girl got pregnant, and then, before I found out what happened, my Mom came downstairs and whooped on me for watching it. She thought it was "filthy". Crazy. It really does have a lot of parallels with Lost. This didn't last, as many good and interesting shows don't. But I would sure love to see it again. It's funny how this one has stuck with me over the years. I agree with many of the other reviewers that this was undertaken as an experiment and was a concept and effort born of the times. What I enjoyed most was the pushing of the envelope of what kinds of social structures are possible in such an isolated environment. I would have liked to see it last longer and explore these ideas even more.

I too was a very young 10 at the time. For some reason I always thought the show was called "The Young American's". I remember the plane crash, and their attempt to form a new Utopia. I don't recall individual story lines or the characters, but I also remember it followed David Steinberg's show. I do remember that Three Dog Night played Eli's Coming on that. I would love to see it again, but it would probably be like watching My Three Son's grow up and get real long(shoulder length) hair. Would original copies of this still be archived anywhere? Send an e-mail if available.

It is ironic that the top show on TV in the early 21st century, "Lost" echos greatly the rarely seen 1969 TV series, "The New People'. Like "Lost", "The New People" concerned the survivors of a plane crash in the pacific. "The New People' however was a reflection of the social issues of the day and in the pilot episode it featured the only adult in Richard Kiley. Kiley did a superb job in the clash of generations and made the pilot episode seem like a 1969 episode of The Twilight Zone.

All of the existing episodes of the New People aired only once on US TV and have never been even surfaced on internet tape trading sites. Recently however all of the episodes have been found at the UCLA video library. It would be great, now that "Lost" is such a big hit, to show people....new people, (ahem) what the original plane crash survivor show was like...and issue these episodes as a boxed set....for Christmas....perhaps even track down the original cast for commentary....etc......The New People shouldn't be lost forever.....(ahem)