By 1960, children’s television programming had developed to levels of such sophistication that producers actually started to put some effort into them. Sydney Newman wanted to treat his juvenile audiences with the same respect usually reserved for proper adults with proper appreciation of proper productions. Astonishingly, this resulted in programmes overseen by Newman’s magisterial gaze more successful than other competitors in the late afternoon timeslot. So when he posed to create a space series for children, he was determined that the fantastic adventures portrayed onscreen be rooted in science fact. This way, the children of the land might shut up and actually learn something for once. The first serial of this skyward-focused series, Target Luna, showcased a mission to launch a man to the Moon (which was all the rage back then) and introduced audiences to the incredibly well-pronounced Professor Wedgwood and his far more common children Valerie, Geoffrey, and Jimmy. There was a rocket base, scientists, flashing lights, and an incident involving little Jimmy being launched into space. It took them six weeks to get him back down. Little bastard.
The success of the serial spawned a sequel later that year, Pathfinders In Space, starring Gerald Flood’s chin. Here, we have some more of the same as a rocket is to send Professor Wedgwood (Peter Williams) and a crack team of stage actors up to the lunar surface. Journalist slash jet pilot slash well-mannered jutting features Conway Henderson (Flood) has to sweet talk his way past some local bobby security before having the top secret launch plans spilled to him by the Professor’s three excitable offspring. Nowadays, the self-service Coca-Cola machines in Burger King have a more air-tight security protocol, but this was 1960 and you could just wander into a rocket base with a cheery grin and a tweed blazer any day of the week. Unlike Coca-Cola, this is rather refreshing. And so, our dear Wedgwood and company lift off in a washing up liquid bottle rocket to the Moon! Does something go wrong? Of course it does. This means only one thing for it – Conway Henderson (that really is the sort of name a devil-may-care American fighter pilot would have loved in the 1930s) must lift off to aid them. But he needs a crew, and in a large island rocket base full of trained personnel, he chooses to enlist… the Professor’s three children. Of course he does. This is a children’s programme, after all. It’s got to have children involved somewhere. Never mind the exceptional irresponsibility of the entire venture. Not only do small unaccompanied children get given free run of a top secret scientific institution because daddy has to work during the Easter holidays, only for one of them to get shot into orbit by accident (little bastard), but they are quite clearly the ideal choice to mount a daring rescue mission where no man has of yet gone before. If there was a space rocket version of Ofsted, there would have been some serious mark downs.
(Ooh, Blast-Ofsted! Hahahaha, I'm such a wit.)
So they all get to limber up and jump aboard. Apart from Valerie. Jimmy says she can’t come because she’s a girl. But this was 1960 and toxic masculinity wasn’t recognised as a major issue back then, so on we jog. Jimmy can, however, take his pet rodent Hamlet along with him. For reals. The little bastard. Valerie has to stow away on board, and bloody good on her for doing so. Somehow, Hamlet is not turned into a squishy puddle by the G-forces of take off, nor is his tiny heart shattered by the trauma of space flight. He must be made of the stuff they make black boxes out of.
There’s a distinct and charming difference between American and British science fiction from around this time. Whereas the Americans were zooming around thwarting invasions red, white, and blue with military might and bigger budgets, the British liked to take their time carefully explaining how they were going to plan to adjust the angle of the projectile to compensate for wind resistance and the unusual payload. Much of the second episode of Pathfinders In Space is spent discussing the trajectory of Henderson’s rocket to the Moon. Because it’s educational, damn it!
The Moon itself turns out to be a tiny set in the corner of the studio with a few school workshop rock formations for dressing. All the best celestial environments are made on tiny sets. It adds a hint of claustrophobia to proceedings, not least in thanks to the space pioneers’ shadows being cast onto the distant valley backdrop. Unfortunately, when Wedgwood’s rocket blows up, one of the crew members only has to scamper all of two metres to crouch behind an inadequate plywood crag to avoid being vaporised by the massive stock footage blast. The children are disappointed that they don’t bounce around like kangaroos while exploring, but as Henderson sagely explains, the weight of their spacesuits counters their weight reduction by one sixth. Yes, it’s very easy to smirk at something being set on the Moon with the hindsight and knowledge of the manned missions that started nine years later. But it’s also fun, too. And they make a spacesuit for Hamlet, so let’s forgive them.
Guess which of the characters falls down a hole and discovers something mysterious hidden below the lunar surface? Correct, our little bastard Jimmy. An alien spacecraft! And an incredibly square-jawed man in a stalactite! The alien spacecraft turns out to be terrestrial in origin, however, from a race that inhabited the Earth millions of years before mankind traded the tree canopies for Scunthorpe. Because that… makes… sense..? And is educational? Still better than the Moon being an egg, or some such shit. They learn all this from video footage shot by the ancient super advanced race on black and white 8mm film in a remarkable parallel development of visual entertainment. Maybe it’s best they died out before they got to I’m A Celebrity.
Due to one of the rockets being rendered inoperable by exploding, our group is faced with a horrible dilemma – only two people can return to Earth in Henderson’s ship. We’ll forget that four people and one guinea pig managed it just fine four episodes before. There’s a rather convincing possibility that the majority of the cast will be left to perish on the barren rock, which would certainly have been a humbling reality shock worthy of a country not long off the ration books. But hooray! The remooners manage to get the not-alien spacecraft operable so that they can all escape their moony fate. Once they’ve got it off the ground, this means a daring spacewalk over to Henderson’s rocket so that they can survive re-entry. Cue a wonderfully silly sequence in which everyone is lying on a black platform pretending to be in the void of space, rolling around without trying to look like they’re crawling along a table. But hey, when you’ve got 50p to manage your effects budget, what can you do? They even had a go at early CSO (colour separation techniques) techniques in Episode 2 when Jimmy goes for a zero gravity spin. Little bastard.
Pathfinders In Space was just that connote by its name – a relatively new breed of programme finding its way and learning how to be itself. Too proud and stiff upper lipped to realise the ridiculousness of it all, it nevertheless lit the way ahead for what Newman would be involved with on the BBC three years later. And they did eventually end up saying the Moon was an egg. Ho hum.
And for the record, I really like Coca-Cola.
