Phoenix Five

There are very few things I remember about this show. One of the things was the theme.... Which stuck in my head for no readily apparent reason. I can still hum it today, even though it has probably been 30 years since it has ever been seen by the public. Another was the apparently sparse sets requiring a lot of metaphorical plots.... Which they probably weren't, but that is all that still exists in the old brain.

I'd like to see this again, even if it is probably creakier than Doctor Who at its low-budget 60's zenith. I really want to know if these few scraps of memory were right.... It still exists in its entirety in the Australian Archives....

Well remembered 6 week holiday TV for kids during the morning on mid1970s TyneTees in the UK. The main things I remember of the series are Platonius' side kicks were two glass heads who lit up when in conversation.Plus Space, Platonius' Base, which looked suspiciously like a studio cave on a planet of stock film of the Australian desert, and the Pheonix spaceship itself were amazingly dark either to create a menacing feel or it was so low budget that the creators of the show could only afford one light in the studio! If Mark is correct and the whole series remains in Australia, where is the DVD box set with extras!!

I remember this show from the early 1970's and would have been about 10 at the time.

I don't remember many of the details except that despite it not being as good as Doctor Who, Star Trek or Land Of The Giants, my other favourite shows at the time, I enjoyed it.

I'd love to see it again to find out if the sets and spaceship models really were as bad as I remember them, and if the plots were as silly. But then, isn't that half the fun. Don't we think the same thing when we watch the original Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serials. The lack of any real knowledge of science, and poor special effects, overacting and any other similar complaint doesn't detract from the fact that it was fun for children.

Amazed to see comments from others remembering this program, since even dedicated tube-heads of my acquaintance (some of them professionals !) don't recall this one. It must have a been a regional ITV distribution thing in the U.K. I can vouch for the fact that it was screened on Ulster Television (UTV) pre-1974 (though I'm not sure exactly when).

Unfortunately, my recollection of it extends to little more than the unforgettable title and that a solid part of its appeal lay in the fact that the titular ship was relatively easy to make from old cardboard toilet rolls. This belongs to a select group of T.V. shows ('Ace of Wands' and 'The Tomorrow People' spring to mind) that you could emulate and play outdoors - often on 'bicycling' spacecraft !

Wow Leachy, I remember it from Tyne Tees Saturdays mornings too, introduced by Neville Wanless (remember him) and that woman with the dark haired bob who always wore slightly too much lipstick but was strangely attractive??? Can't remember too much about it other than the sets were very dark and the spaceships were very pointy and futuristic to an impressionable 7 year old. Like so many series it just seemed to "end" (presumably when the TV company lost interest and stopped importing it). This fate seem to befall a lot of TV from the colonies, do you remember the Lost Islands? Did they ever get off or are they still stuck there!?

I have looked on and off over the years for any mention of it but seems largely forgotten, at least in the UK, which is a shame. I wonder, does this have a cult following in Oz? Is there a fan site anywhere?