Timeslip – The Complete Series

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Episodes: B-

 

 

In a golden age of children’s television in the United States and United Kingdom, Timeslip (1970) was ahead of its time, doing a sort of combination of Dr. Who and Irwin Allen’s Time Tunnel as a brother and sister (Spencer Banks, Cheryl Burfield) land up traveling through an experiment at school!  Before you can say Tomorrow People, they are experiencing yesterday and tomorrow in four stories split into 26 shows.  Denis Quilley and Iris Russell head the adult cast, and as the mother, Russell has a psychic connection to her children.  It is a quick substitute for all those concentric circles on the Irwin Allen classic.

 

There was a point where Stanley Kubrick almost made Philip K. Dick’s book Martian Time Slip into a motion picture, but that did not happen and the concept has still not become popular, even after the spread of the Star Trek franchise and all of its imitators.  Other issues like cloning, global warming and even post-modernism (without realizing it) are addressed by a show, which is remarkably smarter than most Science Fiction feature film and television productions since the 1980s.  The acting is good and the teleplays always interesting, as are the sets with futuristic technology that is often dated.  The four stories are:

 

1)     The Wrong End Of Time

2)     The Time Of the Ice Box

3)     The Year Of The Burn Up

4)     The Day Of The Clone

 

 

Unfortunately, the show did not catch on beyond the U.K. and despite being a big hit, ITC wrapped it up and it was never revised and barely revisited.  If it had been a hit in the U.S., one wonders if it would have lasted longer.  Either way, James & Ruth Boswell made a solid show and it should find a whole new audience in this nicely produced DVD set, on four DVDs in slender boxes.  It could be seen as a bit of a forerunner of the even greater Sapphire & Steel (reviewed elsewhere on this site) that also did not last much longer than this series.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image comes from various sources.  Though all the shows were originally taped in full color analog PAL video, many were lost or destroyed and the fact that the show survives at all is amazing.  Some of the shows are in their original color and look good for their age, but others are either black and white backup videotapes or even film copies not unlike what Sid & Marty Krofft did when they had to syndicate their shows to stations around the same time who were not set up for videotape.  The sound has been upgraded to simple Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo from the original broadcast monophonic sound.  Needless to say this sounds best from the first generation color shows, which there are too few of.  Extras do not include commentary tracks, unfortunately, but there is a little bit of text about the show, four text biographies of the stars and a featurette where all the surviving principles are interviewed.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo