Phoenix Five

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!!

Another North-Easterner who remembers Tyne-Tees showing Phoenix Five. I don't think I was at school when it was on so we must be talking 1972-ish. Apparently everything concerning old tapes of P5 has been binned in Australia, but someone on a certain website that hosts old video clips claims to have 3 episodes on VHS. Here's hoping we may at least see something sometime. Yes it was wooden and cheap but certainly not nasty. On the face of it it looks like a carbon copy of Star Trek, but it had a better theme!! I too remember the heads that lit up when they talked...always taking the mickey out of the villain (Zodian?)

(Was the female presenter you mentioned Lyn Spencer???)

God...the only Aussie to comment on this show!. Only remember it when I was really young, but it made an impression on me as a kid. Not sure what adults thought of it. I remember the model shots being a bit dodgy, and it had freaky futuristic sounding music.

I'm sure it would of made Dr who look very sophisticated! :-). Would love to see clips from it. No one in Australia ever mentions this show, and I daresay not many would remember it. The only person I know of that knows it is my g/f, who is a hardkore SF fanatic and knows everything. Hmmm... wonder if Youtube has it? Australian Sci Fi has come a long way since this...thankfully!

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 !