The Tomorrow People – Set Two
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Episodes: B-
A&E continues their DVDs of the British children’s
favorite The Tomorrow People, with season three through five in this 4
DVD Set Two collection. These
shows run from 1975 – 1977 and they did get technically better as analog
videotape gained in fidelity.
To recap, the show stars Nicholas Young, Peter
Vaughan-Clarke, Dean Lawrence, Elizabeth Adare and Mike Holoway in a story
about a group of young children who have the ability to communicate
telepathically. Fortunately, some
scientific interests are aware, and even have a supercomputer and teleportation
powers to help them. As the children
try to find each other, themselves and a future, each multi-episode story has darker
interests who want to use and exploit them for all the wrong reasons. The stories featured this time are:
1) Secret
Weapon
2) Worlds
Away
3) A Man
For Emily
4) The
Revenge Of Jedikiah
5) One Law
6) Into The
Unknown
7) The
Dirtiest Business
8) A Much
Needed Holiday
9) Heart Of
Sogguth
Though there are some comparative technical improvements
and the show remains interesting, some of the charm is gone. This is not totally the case, but the
earliest episodes of such shows always have that almost experimental spirit, at
least from that period of television.
The show continues to be about as well acted and produced as such a show
for its time could be, and again the more realistic the empowerment of the
young cast, the more believable the storylines and the threat that darker forces
would want to stop them. The
Tomorrow People was able to respect its young adult audience by putting its
cats into serious situations and the empowerment to do something about it. The world has changed, which dates some of
the plots, but you do not see the equivalent of this show today because the
“youth audience” is dumbed down beyond belief.
No wonder classic TV like this goes over so well. Start with the first set (reviewed on this
site) before you decide to move to this one, but both sets are equally good.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image is again an amusing mix of
film, PAL videotape and very dated videotape visual effects. This is about as good as this is ever going
to look, give or take any upgrading that could be done on the film segments if
that. The old monophonic sound has been
boosted to Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which is pretty good for a limited-budget
series from the mid 1970s. The extras
text biographies of the cast, on the show’s continuing success and a too-brief
commentary by Young, Vaughan-Clarke & near cast member Ann Cuthoys on part
of Secret Weapon hosted by Nick Briggs.
These extras should suffice, though there must be some memorabilia to
check out. Otherwise, a competent
successor DVD set.
- Nicholas Sheffo
