Gareth Preston's Blog, page 16

Return to the Unknown

It has been a real pleasure to watch and review this British Film Institute box set of Out of the Unknown. Just to wrap up this series, I thought I would take a look at the collection itself – seven DVD’s in a sturdy plastic case and cardboard sleeve. We have been particularly fortunate that after announcing the release, the BFI listened and cooperated with a group of classic television enthusiasts to produce a remarkably complete collection, for a programme which is missing so many episodes....

The Uninvited

by Michael J Bird

So here the series ends, as far as we can know it, sincethe finalepisode The Shattered Eye is long since missing. And a series that had been conceived as a showcase for the best of literary science fiction finishes with a ghost story.

George and Millicent Patterson about to emigrate to Botswana, and are spending their last night in their old, virtually empty flat. But their night turns into a frighteningordeal as they are assaulted by visionswhich gradually tell the story of...

The Man in My Head

by John Wiles

More by accident than design, due to the intervening episode The Last Witness being lost, The Man in My Head continues the theme of the misuse of psychology and drug therapy whichWelcome Homebegan. Not only that but its criticism of the military mind, with its emphasis on obedience and the chain of command, and the way most of it takes place in an underground complex, it also recalls season two’sLevel 7.

It is the ultimate in covert operations.A crack team of commandos on a miss...

Welcome Home

byMoris Farhi

It is less a case of whodunnit than ofhowtheydunnit in this entertaining paranoia story. Moris Farhi MBE is definitelya renaissance man. Author of several novels, including the multi-award winning Children of the Rainbow, poet, acclaimed writer on Jewish history and philosophy, campaigner for writers imprisoned by oppressive regimes, and jobbing scriptwriter on television series from Return of the Saint to The Onedin Line. His late wife Nina Farhi (nee Gould) was a psychoanalyti...

Deathday

By Angus Hall
Adapted by Brian Hayles

Angus Hall was not impressed with the BBC adaptation of his 1969 novel. Nearly twenty years later during a correspondence in the letters page of the BBC’s culturalmagazine The Listener, about the recent BBC2 25th anniversary programming, the author wrote in about the absence ofany mention ofOut of the Unknownin the celebrations. “I still shudder at how my perfectly respectable ‘psychological thriller’ Deathdaywas turned into a grotesque ‘other-worldly’ tr...

This Body is Mine

by John Tully

Probably the most obviously science fictional episode of season four, yet it’s strength comes from the character drama. In fact with a little rewriting, much of the plotcould work equally well as an espionage yarn or a crime thriller.

Allen Meredith is a brilliant research scientist who has accidentallydiscovereda process to transfer a person’s mind into another body, whilst experimenting with a mind reading device. His mild, bookishpersonality means he has been taken advantage...

To Lay a Ghost

by Michael J Bird

Plenty of changes came with Out of the Unknown‘s fourth and final season in 1971, and a new title sequence was just the start. It is an effective montage of surreal imagery that creates an uncanny mood without being too random. An infinite series of opening windows, a flower a hatching from an egg, a face pushing out a white surface. Helping immeasurably is the haunting music – Lunar Landscape by Roger-Roger, which had previously been heard inThe Prisoner. More significantly...

The Yellow Pill

by Rog Phillips
Adapted by Leon Griffiths

I’ll admit I’ve always had a fondness for interrogation style dramas. Two people duelling with words and strategies. The Yellow Pill is a great example of the genre. You carp that it is not particularly televisual and could have worked equally well as a radio play or on the stage, but that is a compliment to the quality of the dialogue and the clever short story it is adapting. Viewers of the time might have recalled watching the same story a few year...

Samuel Crompton, Wyrd Sisters and more theatrics

This has been an exhausting month or so. Although the plays Samuel Crompton – A Fine Spinner and Wyrd Sisters are many months apart on the calendar, they have been overlapping to hectic effect. I’ve been directing the former with a small group of talented actors, whilst at the same time auditioningthe large cast for the latter. Not to mention there being a family crisis that necessitated spending a lot much more time than I like in the local hospital. Although I am happy to report that things...

The Little Black Bag

by Cyril M Kornbluth
Adapted by Julian Bond

This short story seems to something of a favourite with television producers. It was featured in the USA anthology Tales of Tomorrow (1952) and a year after Out of the Unknown‘s adaptation, it appeared in Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Sadly the Out of the Unknown version is incomplete, missing about twenty minutes but there is enough to form a fairly clearimpression.

A futuristic medical kit from 2450falls into the hands of Roger Full, an alcoholic d...