Journey into Space
- Thread starter diankra
- Start date
I'm not familiar with this; is it available online?
I've been listening.
I remember quite vividly listening to a re-run of Operation Luna when I was a kid. I've taken the opportunity over the last few weeks to listen to the sequels. They're good fun!
The interviews with Charles Chilton have been interesting too. It's odd that he doesn't seem to like watching sci-fi on tv, but prefers writing sci-fi instead.
Check out Journey into Space on wikipedia
Apart from what's available for a limited time on iplayer... there aren't any legitimate online source and the disc/tapes are difficult to find and expensive.
EDIT: There's a feature length audio drama being broadcast this afternoon - Journey into Space: The Return from Mars - it should be available on iplayer for the next week.
I remember quite vividly listening to a re-run of Operation Luna when I was a kid. I've taken the opportunity over the last few weeks to listen to the sequels. They're good fun!
The interviews with Charles Chilton have been interesting too. It's odd that he doesn't seem to like watching sci-fi on tv, but prefers writing sci-fi instead.
Check out Journey into Space on wikipedia
Apart from what's available for a limited time on iplayer... there aren't any legitimate online source and the disc/tapes are difficult to find and expensive.
EDIT: There's a feature length audio drama being broadcast this afternoon - Journey into Space: The Return from Mars - it should be available on iplayer for the next week.
Yes, both the new play, The Host, and 1982's The Return from Mars should be available on the BBC listen again facility for the next week. (www.bbc.co.uk/radio, and then head for radio 4 and radio 7 respectively)
Quick summary: it's radio sci-fi series created and, until now, entirely written by Charles Chilton, which began in the mid 1950s and has been revived occasionally since.
Operation Luna (13x30m episodes) is a late 50s rerecording of the lost original 17 episode first season, from 1953: In 1965, Captain 'Jet' Morgan heads the first flight to the Moon, with crewmates Doc, Mitch and Lemmy.
The Red Planet (20x30m, 1954/5): Jet's crew lead the fleet making the first manned trip to Mars...
The World in Peril (20x30m, 1955/6): Jet and his crew prepare to fight off the attack on Earth they now know to be imminent, despite official scepticism.
The Return from Mars (90m, 1981): Jet and his crew return to Earth decades after they disappeared en route back from Mars, with a curious tale to tell...
Space Force (2x6x30m, 1982 & 1984): Originally scripted as a new run of JiS, Space Force was rewritten as a seperate series with new characters at the last minute, though 'Chipper' Barnett mentions his grandad Lemmy, linking it to the original.
Frozen in Time (60m, 2008): 30 years after they were lost in space during the late 1970s Operation Neptune, Jet's crew return to the inner solar system and divert to Mars... but a systems failure means one of them has been awake and ageing all that time.
The Host (60m, 2009): Jet's crew divert to answer a distress signal...
Continuity can be a bit shaky from play to play, but worth hearing (David Lean wanted to make a film version during the early 60s) - though Return from Mars is, be warned, probably the weakest of the lot (more like a pastiche of 50s SF than anything). Charles Chilton (whose other credits include the Goon Show and Oh What a Lovely War) wrote everythign up to Frozen in Time; The Host is by Julian Simpson, but Chilton reads the end credits...
Thanks, guys-- sounds like some nice vintage Space Opera here. 
There's a new one?!! I thought you were refering to one of the repeats. I'm going to have to check out "The host".
Thanks for the info. I make an effort to check Radio7's schedule regularly, I must try to do the same for Radio4.
I've had plenty of radio drama's to listen to lately, with radio7 replaying Journey into Space, John Buchan dramatisations (not sci-fi) and Torchwood on radio4 next week... phew!
There's a new one?!! I thought you were refering to one of the repeats. I'm going to have to check out "The host".
Thanks for the info. I make an effort to check Radio7's schedule regularly, I must try to do the same for Radio4.
I've had plenty of radio drama's to listen to lately, with radio7 replaying Journey into Space, John Buchan dramatisations (not sci-fi) and Torchwood on radio4 next week... phew!
The Radio 4 plays might have their share of 'therapy dramas' ("How someone helped me come out," or "How I got over my divorce thanks to the nice postman who unfortunately turned out to be dying."), but there's an equal amount of good stuff. Last week's Enron two-parter was pretty impressive.
What kind of SF is it?
I suppose, you could think of them as an alternate history of early space exploration, eventhough the first three series were written and broadcast before Sputnik was launched.
There's the standard 1950's fare of atomic rockets, some-what stereotypical characters, etc. But for it's time most of the science is pretty good. The first three series deal with the crew braving the various perils of space travel (on journeys to the Moon then Mars) and attempting to unravel their encounters with mysterious aliens.
Of the later series I've heard, like Space Force, they seemed to have moved with the times and their encounters with aliens are more of your standard Trek kind.
I've listen to the latest episode "The Host", now. I'm not sure what to think of it, so far. It's just not the same without Andrew Faulds and Guy Kingsley Pointer... and Lemmy didn't panic even once!
One thing I really liked about Frozen in Time was the way it managed to reconcile being a follow-on to the original 1950s series (with Moonbases and Mars missions in the 1970s) with being made in the 2000s for an audience who've grown up with a different history; in effect, Frozen in Time has Jet and co as men out of time, who find themselves 30 years into a future where their missions happened decades back, but politically, things have followed our history in the meantime (Thatcher, Reagan, Iraq and he collapse of communism); hence humanity's followed them out into the solar system, but it's all privatised exploration, where missions whose parent companies go bust can find themselves cut off and stranded...
Hrm, oh well. I'm still curious enough to listen to it, just to see how a radio play would work nowadays.
There's a lot of it now in podcast form... but most of it suffers because of the poor voice actors.
There's a lot of it now in podcast form... but most of it suffers because of the poor voice actors.
Well, for The Host Toby Stephens takes over as Jet Morgan - as in the villain of the Bond film Die Another Day, who also played Bond for a Radio 4 version of Dr No last year. Pretty decent cast on the whole.
