Hello listeners, with this special presentation of Fusion Patrol, I wanted to give you a brief
word of, warning is probably not quite the right word for it, but introduction, let's say
explanatory introduction. When we recorded this episode, I had just had a cracked tooth
and a crown installed. And that tooth had gotten infected. And the morning I got up to record this,
it was pretty bad. It was really bad. And it was getting worse all the time.
Three hours after we finished this podcast, my wife came home from work and found me
lying in sunset on the floor, just in agony. I couldn't, I could barely move. I was in such pain.
It was terrible. And I had to be hauled off for an emergency root canal.
Now, I kind of vainly thought, you know, the show must go on. But in listening to this podcast
while I was editing it, I can tell I'm not entirely 100% on game or in the right frame
of mind here.
So if I seem distracted, if I seem like I'm completely forgetting things, or just remember,
I am in such, such pain while recording this episode.
But you know what they say, the show must go on.
We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an inch
of its life. This is the Fusion Patrol podcast. Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we're going to be looking at the 1970-something...
It's just not right in front of me here.
Six, seven, something like that.
76, 77, okay.
ITV production, Children of the Stones.
And I'm just going to tell you right now, it's seven parts long,
and I'm not going to synopsize, if synopsize is a world,
the entire every twist and turn in this story.
So it's sort of an expagated version.
Well, there goes any hope of me understanding what was going on.
Maybe that's why I didn't summarize the whole thing.
Professor Adam Brake and his son Matthew arrive in the small village of Milbury to conduct a three-month research project.
Milbury is built inside a Neolithic stone circle,
and Adam has come to conduct measurements on the magnetic properties of the stones and the general area.
As they learn about their new home, they discover that things are stranger than they could imagine.
Most, but not all of the people in the village are happy and seem a bit trance-like.
Their children in school demonstrate prodigious mathematical skills.
Only the recent arrivals in the village seem normal.
Matt and Adams make friends with Sandra and Margaret.
Margaret is the recently arrived museum curator, and Sandra is her daughter.
At the head of it all is the village leader, Mr. Hendricks,
a famous astronomer and discoverer of the Hendricks supernova.
He seems to have a sinister agenda.
Strange events begin to pile up.
The stones can impart electropsychic shocks to Adam and Matt.
Matt begins to be able to get psychic visions and perform psychometry,
the ability to remote sense activities while touching an object associated with a target.
A year before their arrival, Matt found and bought a painting that appears to depict Milbury's stone circle
during some form of supernatural event.
A beam of light emitting skywards from the center of the circle while people stand in awe, circling the light.
In the distance, a man and a boy run away from the light.
The picture appears to be a key to an event that has happened before, and might be happening again.
Each day, it seems, more and more of the normal people show up transformed into the happy ones.
One day, Dr. Lyle, the semi-retired local doctor, has to leave town to visit an old patient.
Matt inadvertently psychically reads the events from Dr. Lyle's gloves.
As he attempts to leave town, something stops him.
The next day, he and his son have joined the happy ones,
leaving only Adam, Matt, Margaret, and Sandra.
The transformation seems to coincide with a dinner invitation from Mr. Hendricks,
who has an extensive computer system and atomic clock in the disused church,
which he and his butler, Mr. Link, use for precise astronomical calculations of his supernova.
When Margaret and Sandra are next and turn up the next day as happy ones,
Adam and Matt decide to abandon his research and leave.
They are stopped at the edge of the circle and find themselves trapped in Hendrick's house,
awaiting their fateful dinner appointment time with the next conjunction with the supernova.
With some clever use of an oscilloscope,
they manage to throw off the timing of the event and leave pretending to be happy ones.
Unaware that the timing is off, Hendrix is caught in the beam instead, and chaos ensues.
The villagers are transformed into the stones as Adam and Matt escape to Sanctuary.
The next day, the village has been reset.
The villagers are normal.
They know Adam and Matt, but they are no longer happy ones
and seem to have no recollection of any of the events.
Adam and Matt still decide to hightail it out of town.
As they leave, a new person arrives.
Sir Joshua Lytton, looking very much like a young Mr. Hendricks.
He is greeted at the manor house by a young-looking Mr. Link.
Not only is the village in a circle of stone, it is in a circle of time, too.
Oh, Children of the Stones by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray.
Two writers I've never heard of.
A couple of things I'll say for American viewers.
This did appear in the United States on a show on the network Nickelodeon called The Third Eye,
which was like an anthology of various short, psychically themed adventures for kids.
So some of you actually may have seen this, listeners, in the U.S.
And of course it was on ITV.
and I'm sure it's been syndicated to other English-speaking countries around the world.
Some people claim this is the scariest thing ever produced for children's television in Britain.
I don't know.
Have you seen or heard of this before, Simon?
Well, no.
No, not prior to you telling me about it.
I mean, it's a bit older than me.
Right.
I didn't have an opportunity to watch it on first broadcast, and it's ITV, so ITV don't tend to repeat stuff.
But it does seem to have a bit of a cult following, as far as I can tell.
Yes.
Although it hasn't been repeated, as far as I can tell, it has been available, though it does seem to have gone out of print again on DVD.
And there do seem to have been programmes made about it and books written about it and so forth.
Yeah, yeah. It has a reputation.
Well, I'll give you first shot at it. Does it deserve a reputation?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Yes. No, I mean, in a way, I watched it and clearly, I mean, for 19, for something that was produced in 1976, I can see it would have been very effective.
There are some effects where obviously now it's kind of stretching the limits and you have to sort of switch back into a certain headspace for a kind of title sequence where the visuals are just these sort of rocks zooming in on static stones or whatever.
while the music, which in itself is quite extraordinary,
not necessarily in a bad way,
but again, it takes getting used to plays over it.
But if I think back to, you know, if I had been a little bit older,
if I watched this when I was 10 or something,
this is absolutely the kind of thing
that I would have been completely and utterly gripped by.
I, even as an old man, I find this to be a very well put together show.
I mean, it does have a bit of a sapphire and steel look to it when it comes to the special effects and the sets.
Oh, yes.
Did you see this on Nickelodeon?
I did not.
How long ago did you first watch this?
Probably four or five years, maybe.
from now
oh I see right
so still an old man
well obviously
not even an old man yet
even if I'd seen it on Nickelodeon
I would have been in my
20s or 30s
so
what I guess I was wondering was
whether when you had seen it
it was
it's just the
comparators the kind of
the kind of television that I'm comparing it now to in in 2019 would be very different if I had
watched something like this because it you know even 10 years later in the in the late 80s this
would have still looked kind of par for the course in terms of what kind of if you were telling a
story like this which is you know essentially a fantasy story this is probably what you could
feel you you you'd make you've done well with your money on a children's show budget let me put it
that way okay they did for sure well i mean they didn't need a whole lot of special effects in this
program um it's it well i'm i think that helps actually no i agree and it's not big it's not
big showcasing special effects but it is the language of um conveying psychic ability and
trying to put across what's happening when you know someone is getting sensations from the stone or
when you know effects are happening simultaneously by and large i thought they were done in this
very effectively because they were simple but we would regard them as being very simple now you
know when the effect is literally just jump cutting back and forth back and forth back and
forth every second or so it looks a bit vintage yeah i like to think i'm despite the fact that i
might be known as a very critical person i like to think i'm very forgiving of that it doesn't
really absolutely it doesn't really bother me you know if no if no that but it's getting used to it
it's just you know stepping back in because it's the reality is a lot of those choices are not
choices you would make now with what's available to you now but as soon as you stop thinking about
it from a from a production point of view and you lose yourself in the story it no longer matters
right um it's very atmospheric um it's got an an amazing uh village backdrop there uh which is
Avebury.
Avebury, yeah.
Which I have been to Avebury,
and it's a lot smaller than that town.
You know, I think there's like maybe...
You can see it in those pictures,
the aerial shots at the beginning.
There's really not a whole lot inside that stone circle.
There's maybe a pub and like two other buildings,
maybe three.
It's very small in that inside the stone circle.
Isn't that all there is in the show?
I don't know.
It feels to me like it's a lot bigger.
It feels bigger.
I mean, I assume that the house that Adam is in is inside the circle.
And it just, I don't know.
It just feels like it's, it feels like it's, you know,
a room for 53 people living with inside that thing.
And I don't think there's room for 53 people inside Avery.
Maybe my recollection is wrong of that.
That's a very small number of people, though, isn't it?
I mean, it's half a dozen households.
Okay, well, that at least requires a half dozen houses
and a pub and a shop.
No, not like a dozen.
A dozen households.
But, well, I mean, I haven't been to A3.
I cannot make the comparison,
but from the point of view of just watching the show
and seeing the size of it in the title sequence,
I get the sense of it being very, very small.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I will say, but I like that.
I mean, it contributes to the claustrophobia of it.
Yes.
And the only kind of thing where it did leave me with a bit of a question mark
was if you lived in a habitation of 55 people
and quite a bit of time passes during the course of this story being told.
Yes.
It seemed surprising to me that you would never leave.
I mean, you would never try to leave and discover that you couldn't leave.
Not, you know, purely just in the routine of things.
Wouldn't at some point you want to go to a bigger town?
Wouldn't you want to go out for a meal or, I don't know, go to a department store or something?
Well, in the 1970s, though, maybe not.
I don't know.
Didn't people go out in the 70s?
I'm going to express what is regrettably probably a gross mischaracterization.
But one of the things I noticed, and if I didn't just say this, I meant to.
Apri was one of the coolest places we went to in England.
It was just like it was, you know, Stonehenge, maybe a neater looking circle, for example.
But you can't get up to it.
But Avebury, you can walk up to those stones just like those kids were and wander around the field.
I mean, it's really cool.
So if you're ever there, you should go see it.
But when we toured around the country and we would stay in bed and breakfasts, so you'd get a chance to talk with the local people in the various towns, although we didn't stay in Avebury.
I noticed a very strange to me thing.
And that was they would be talking about, you know, like what would sound like an excursion, right?
Like, oh, yeah, we're thinking of going up to the to go making a trip next week.
And we're going to take the day and go up to the next town.
And you'd look on the map and the town would be 25 miles away.
And, yeah, you know, Phoenix is 60 across.
So 25 miles I'll drive for a hamburger.
and well i just you just made the point that needs to be made there which is that
for you guys i mean think what 25 miles is relative to the width of your country right
and now think about what 25 miles is relative to the width of our and and that's why 25 miles is
a long way okay but but that makes the point that that that distance makes it seem more like
a barrier so maybe maybe you don't go as often maybe it's not as it i i could i could i could
very much get behind the the idea that you wouldn't for a week or two but i'm not sure how
long they were there that's why i well we know that it's less than three months right because
that would have been he would have finished his research at that point and we know he left before
they'd finished but on the other hand that towards the end we know it took about four days yes yes
so well i don't know but even even then you've got to think about where did their food come from
um you know what about vegetables and things or or even like fresh milk how was that brought in
to the circle can you can can you was everything farmed within the circle i don't i didn't have
the sense it was large enough for that but if some you know if if uh someone were delivering
stuff would they be able to enter and leave the circle um we don't know if it's true but
hendrix did say link left town to bring in provisions but he might have been lying that
wasn't that wasn't true but it i guess the i guess the answer i mean i think the
this this series is very clever at deflecting you from that question it's it's not the kind
of thing that you think about straight away it's when you start getting into sort of critical mode
but um yeah if if there were if there were no way of getting stuff into the village or no regular
way of doing it then perhaps whatever that you know link was somehow supplying everyone with
produce because by the time everyone's happy day they're not going to ask any questions about it
so yes i don't know but like i say it wasn't it wasn't a wasn't a big issue yeah and it you know
there are a couple again i was trying to keep that mindset in my head that says okay going going to
the next town is a little bit bigger in mind than than it is to me because there are several points
during the course of this story where if i had been adam i would have said you know something
I think I'm just going to test a little theory and I'm going to drive out of here.
And I'm not going to tell anybody or everybody that I'm going to drive out of town.
I'm just going to head on down to the next town and, you know, have a meal out or something and not tell anybody and make sure I can go.
But they never do that.
Because the thing is, it wasn't anything like 25 miles.
At least, you know, the appearance in the sequences where either Dr. Lyle or at the point where Brake did try to drive out, it seemed as if they were driving for, what, a couple of minutes?
So, yeah, you know, it might be a mile at a stretch.
It certainly wasn't 25.
Oh, no, no.
I meant like the next town.
I'm just going to drive to the next town to see if I can do it.
No, no, but what I'm saying is they could, I don't think they drove more than a mile away from Millbury.
Exactly.
I agree.
At any point.
I was just thinking in terms of if I was in the character, I would go, okay, I need to get out of the town.
I need to get past the stones.
I don't know whether I would just drive out to get past the stones and then go, okay, I can leave.
So then I'd come back or whether I would just, you know, try to make it plausible and say, I think I'm going to, I'm going to pop over to.
hatebury and eat at the horse and lion or something and go down do that route that that
was i guess that was what i was getting at i would somewhere during the course of the story
i would i was curious enough to go can i leave these stones and they kept talking about it here
and there maybe you can't leave this it's like well why don't you go you're a scientist why
Why don't you go find out?
Experiment with it a little bit.
But nonetheless, it's seven parts.
It's quite long, but...
Seven 25-minute parts.
I found it goes by pretty quickly.
The pacing is superb.
I mean, I made that note straight after the first episode.
There's something new happening in every episode that keeps you hooked in.
Yeah.
I actually, in a way, think that the end of part one, end of start of part two, helps make it feel like it's going faster.
I don't know if it helps the flow of the story, but it did make it.
I'd be watching an episode and then it would go, end of part one.
I go, wow, that was quick.
Oh, you mean the bumpers into the ads?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it could be.
I must say I liked that.
liked that i mean i thought i thought the cliffhangers themselves were pretty entertaining
especially as one of them what has got to be just about the only cliffhanger i've seen that
involves morris dancing but they're they're good so in terms of the structure of the story that
but i but i think you're right actually the little kind of mini cliffhangers into the
ad breaks worked very well and again the the the way in which they used the music
over the bumpers was really effective
in bringing it to a kind of dramatic climax.
Yeah.
We should mention the music then.
It could drive my family out of the room.
It's very...
It's very discordantly...
I mean, it's effective for this story,
but it's unpleasant.
I find it unpleasant.
I wouldn't want to be, you know,
putting it on the record player just to sort of kick back and relax of an evening.
I thought you weren't old enough to have watched this show live,
but you just said record player.
Yeah, yeah, I'm old enough to have a record player.
I've still got a record player, in fact.
Oh, that's right.
That's very popular with the hipsters these days.
It's kids, too.
They're making a...
How dare you say that?
How dare you?
I've never...
Well, that's probably not true,
but I've certainly had a record player for most of my life.
I may have not had a record player briefly,
but I've always had the record.
I don't think this soundtrack's been released.
No, well, given that they let the DVD go out of print,
I suppose that's not surprising.
But I did think I heard, maybe it was in the interviews
or maybe I read it somewhere,
that the music, which is especially composed for the show,
was based on some kind of folky, druidistic kind of thing.
That I can believe. That I can completely believe.
I assumed that that was supposed to be some sort of faux druidic chanting.
And I'm going to raise the question here.
My understanding of our knowledge of druids is that what everybody thinks they know about druids
is basically not true because we don't really know anything about the druids?
Is that basically right?
Well, I don't know anything about the Druids, so I don't know.
I thought, well, you know, all the popular stuff about the...
Based on all the popular stuff that you hear about Druids,
and that's all just sort of made up,
that what we know of the Druids are from Roman writings,
and, you know, third person and not very reliable.
So everything you see is somebody goes,
oh, this is an ancient Druidic custom.
It's like, it probably is not.
so this is based on druidic chanting how would they know what what did you know all the people
that go out and do this stuff at stonehenge every year and claim to be druids no they're not you
know i mean it's it's all it's all just speculation so well all right then if i mean i can't answer
the question about the music because i i can't like i said i can't remember precisely where i
picked up that small piece of possibly apocryphal information but there's obviously the whole kind
of folklore thing running through this and some um science stuff so what do we think overall about
the accuracy well the accuracy of the psychic stuff is uh zero because psychic stuff's not real
But I actually kind of appreciated, it's not perfect, but I kind of appreciated the way Adam and Matthew went about their exploration.
I appreciated the fact that, because here's the position that I, and I did want to mention this so this seems like it fits.
Here's the position I'm in.
If I went into a town like that with my mindset and experience and somebody started going on about psychic phenomena, I would be 99.999% certain that there's another explanation.
And because that's the world we live in.
And in fiction, this is always a bit of a line, because if you're going to write a story in which psychicky stuff is real, then you have to be able to convince the people that, you know, even the scientists in the end, you have to be able to convince them that the psychicky stuff is real.
So I appreciated the way that Adam didn't buy it, but at the same time, you know, he's collecting data along the way, and he's got a bit of an open mind about it.
But he's requiring a higher level of proof than just, oh yeah, that must be what this is.
And he maintains that throughout most of the story until it's just overwhelmingly certain something is going on in this town.
Is that what you were going for on the science and the stuff?
or did you have something else you were thinking of when you asked that question?
Well, yeah, I mean, I guess, I don't know.
I sort of liked the hard science-y stuff,
but on the other hand, some of it was perhaps a bit iffy.
But I appreciate the effort.
And I remember, I can't even remember what the story was now,
but it was some kind of exciting children's thriller book,
which involved some kind of super power source thing.
And it was like this silver egg, and it got stolen from it.
The children nicked it.
But because of its properties, it was sort of suspended in some kind of fluid.
And so they needed to replace it.
And in order to do this, it's so contrived, but it's the kind of thing I love.
They took an egg and a candle covered the egg in sooty wax,
half filled the tank in which the device had been suspended with strong brine,
and then topped it up with water and dropped the egg into it.
And of course, the egg being less dense than the brine,
but more dense than the water, just hung in the middle.
And I loved it because I was like,
oh wow, I'm learning all things about different densities
and reflection of light and all this kind of stuff.
And so the bits that involved things like a set of clocks
that are all fed by electronic pulses from the same atomic clock
and quickly working out how many extra pulses you would have to feed in
to advance it five minutes and so that stuff i just you know i would have loved it i i i agree
that's probably uh strong i thought it was very interesting when they walk into the house
and they go oh look at this digital clock and they're all like oh amazed a digital clock
like it's a digital clock in 1977 right so i mean that some of the go ahead well i'm just
going to say some some of the stuff that um was maybe a bit less uh didn't sit quite right was
to do with the like magnetism of the stones and all that yeah i didn't think you could magnetize
a stone and not that not that level sort of horseshoe yeah just hugely powerful um but yeah
that that would have been a problem i mean his equipment all sorts of stuff would have been
stuck to those stones yeah that that's not yeah that was not good yeah i you know i think that
go ahead well not just i mean the other the other stuff i mentioned is folklore stuff and and the
stuff that's more kind of margaret's department than adam's that i i i guess i don't know anything
about it so i'm quite happy to you know if you say this this was some particular ritual belief
and such and such, then okay, whatever.
Yeah, you have to kind of just buy off on it, yeah.
What I was going to say about the clocks was my...
In 1976-ish, I had a digital clock, I was going to say.
And it was very novel,
but it was basically rotating wheels
that had flat sides like cogs,
So they would turn with a number facing.
And of course, that's driven by the electrical frequency.
So that's exactly the kind of thing that, like, and on VCRs of the day, where you would
unplug that.
And if you took it to the United Kingdom and you put it into an adapter, you could power
it, but the clocks would never run at the right speed because they were running at 50
and 60 hertz instead.
So you would throw the time off.
And when he started that with the oscilloscope, and he's like, oh, I bet you one of the writers traveled to America and his clock was off because of that.
And that stuck with him.
And he thought, oh, that's what I do.
I can just change the frequency and do that.
Either that or he actually had some verse in that area.
Although I'm not entirely sure you could smell ammonia coming from an atomic clock using ammonia atoms.
I didn't think that's what they used.
I think my kind of feeling about it is that although it might have been somewhat ham-fistedly executed in some cases,
I guess what they lacked in dexterity they made up for in commitment.
I liked the fact that Matthew was
I liked all of the relationships
I mean the father-son relationship
the mother-daughter relationship
and then the relationship between all four of them
but in terms of that father-son relationship
there was something terribly refreshing
about the way in which Matthew was
although he wasn't in the same league
as the happy day kids in class.
He was extremely bright and extremely, well, you know,
that he and Adam obviously discussed all of these things.
So he was portrayed as being this incredibly scientifically literate kid,
at least for someone of his age,
without it being in any way a kind of nerdy thing.
Yeah, and he's not an obnoxious know-it-all.
10 or 15 years later, if you portrayed a kid like that on TV,
yeah, he might have been an obnoxious know-it-all.
It would have been the specky kid.
There would have been some kind of, you'd have to hint at the social ostracism or whatever.
And there was none of that.
He wasn't like a super confident jock or anything,
but he was extremely sociable.
And he had a degree of self-confidence and just general comfort in, you know, both a confidence in his knowledge and the relationship he had with his dad, but also just the ability to kind of head out on bikes with his new friend.
And I just thought it was done very, very well.
It feels so... I didn't look up the actor, but if this was made in about 76, then that kid is about my age.
So I'd have been 10 to 12 in that range.
He was about 17 when it was made.
Oh, he's much older than he's playing, I think.
Yes.
Yeah, okay. Then he's older than me.
But looking back at about 1976, I can say that that had a very authentic feel.
I mean, you would go into a new town or, like in my case, we'd be camping a lot.
In the summers, we'd travel around the United States and we'd move from campground to campground.
And you'd hit a campground, and if there was another kid in the campground, the two of you would just, hey!
And you'd get on your bikes, and you'd start going.
I mean, that was just completely and absolutely authentically what it was like in that age.
So there was nothing, oh, new kid in town, I'm going to go over and look at him.
You know, hey!
You know, it felt very real.
And also, as you say, he's not portrayed as a nerd, but he is portrayed as the acorn that doesn't fall far from the tree.
Yes.
Right?
And that's generally real too.
But not in a problematic way.
No.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not like he's been hothoused.
It's not like dad is super protective or anything.
It's a very kind of, you know, there's a mutual respect between them, but also they let each other get on with their own lives.
and the dad doesn't dismiss his kid when he no which has which is which is interesting because
as you say the whole the whole point about adam break is that he is supposed to be the sciencey
one and yet when he witnesses matt you know having these these psychic visions he he doesn't he
doesn't disregard what although he doesn't try to know what's the explanation he doesn't disregard
hard what matt's experiencing right all of that very very good i mean i just um this is of course
um gareth thomas playing adam break who uh obviously is very soon to go off into the
federation and blake seven um as he says in the interviews i went home to do a show called blake
seven you may have heard of it yeah i you know i watched the interviews years ago when i got the
when I got the discs and I didn't have a chance to review them before this
before we did the podcast this time but I remember they sat down and
and he talked about it but I don't remember all
of the but I thought he was very good in it he's got an unusual
he has an unusual delivery he has it in Blake 7
and he has it here and I don't even know how to describe it
but it's just kind of the way he lines but it
it comes off, it works fine.
Even though it echoes Blake to me
because of that,
because of the uniqueness of him,
I don't get this as being the same character at all.
This is not Roger Moore
who's always playing the same character
from one show to the next,
even if they've got a different name.
This is a different guy.
It's just very interesting
that he has some of that same diction
and delivery that Blake does in it.
I mean, I probably mentioned on the podcast that I'm not a huge fan of Gareth Thomas as Blake.
And part of that is, I think, to do with his performance, which whether intentional or not conveys a kind of,
I don't really know what the hell I'm doing here and I'd rather be somewhere else.
I think there's a...
I think there are days like that, yeah.
Yeah, but there's a naturalistic style
that comes from being actually quite low-key
in the performance.
And, I mean, obviously, this is a different show,
a different director,
who, incidentally, I was interested to discover,
was editor on both Brighton Rock,
which is one of my favourite films,
and The Avengers.
No, you're talking about proper Avengers, not...
Yes, The Avengers, you know,
mrs peele and all that and you don't mean uma thurman you mean diana rick no no no no no i don't
mean uma thurman um i don't know where i don't know i don't know which series he was editor
on actually but uh he yeah so he may have got a different performance out of gareth thomas but i
also think there is just a sense in which the style of style of performance that he gives might
might be better suited to a show that you know Blake Seven is very kind of by concept and
everyone around him is just being enormously camp whereas this this is playing off the fact
that weird things are happening to what is supposed to be a normal village and so it is
very much the kind of contrast of these spooky events with these very kind of normal normal
people who are doing normal things,
going to sort of normal dinner parties
and wearing normal tweed jackets.
Although in the interviews, Gareth Thomas says,
you know, one thing that's changed between then and now,
no way I would wear that stuff
or get away with wearing that stuff.
So, well, you know, I really haven't got any,
much of anything but praise for the show.
There's just a couple of points along the way that,
Like I said, there's a point, there's at least two points along the way where I think if I were a Gareth Thomas character, I would go, I'm going to see if I can drive out of town.
That just feels like what any sane person would do to make sure there isn't something bizarro going on there.
I agree.
And I also think we need to know that from a storytelling point of view.
Because where I made a note of that was in episode four, where you wonder, Dr. Lyle has tried and failed to leave the village.
And so as a viewer, you wonder, well, is it possible to leave the village?
And if you're thinking that, why are Adam and Matthew not thinking that?
And if they're thinking that, why aren't they trying it?
Yeah, yeah.
So that's one.
And the other one that made me scream, there are two places that made me scream at the TV.
One was, well, I guess we'll find out tonight.
Sandra and I have been invited for dinner.
Don't go.
Oh, but I want to see the house so much.
I know he does, but she's like, but I've always wanted to see inside the house.
I mean, surely it's just a coincidence that everything we've been talking about and fearing about and agonizing about always culminates with the people going to dinner at the house.
But I'll be okay.
And I would be all right with that.
I wouldn't be all right with that.
If they had acknowledged the fact that we'll be on our guard.
We'll be looking out.
We'll, you know, we'll be really careful.
but you don't get that they just get like i'm gonna go you know we're gonna have dinner and
see what happens and then when they're sitting at the table and he uses the phrase it is time
i would be out of that chair so fast it's not even funny i mean surely they have to realize that this
this i mean you're taking the big freaking drittic stone and the chairs and and the top of the roof
and the people all chanting and the and doing all this incantation stuff you get out of that
chair i understand once the light hit them they couldn't get out of the chair but at that point
you stand up and you'll walk to the other side of the room and see what happens you go you know
i'll agree in part i mean i i i did get the sense that they were on their guard but they they
obviously weren't sufficiently on their guard and i i guess i had a bit of a problem with the fact
that they got happy people because i didn't want them to you know i i i wanted i wanted a an ending
in which they survive and i and no more than that actually i wanted i wanted them to to to carry on
as protagonists within the story but of course in the last couple of episodes they they can't really
because they've been
they appear. But that's
the ever decreasing
support group. Sure.
Part of the claustrophobia. But also
we know from the picture that only a man
and a boy get away.
It's foretold from the very beginning
of the show. You could have had a different picture.
You could have had a different picture.
Down to the number of stones in the
town to everything's pointing to it's like
well 53 minus 2
two guys running.
I mean, yes, I don't know that you would necessarily put it together, but from the audience standpoint, you go, yeah, they're not going to make it.
Here's my question.
Because, you know, I think you're also supposed to think that not only should they carry on as protagonists of the story,
I think you're supposed to think that they should sort of carry on, you know, like Margaret perhaps becoming a love interest for Adam.
You know, that they might have had a future together, right?
Well, yes.
Long term.
Yes, but I mean, absolutely.
Yeah, there is.
Nonetheless, they abandoned them in the town.
Like, yep, no, bye.
We're out of here.
Now that they've all been returned to normal.
How'd you feel about that ending?
Surely, it's like, why don't you come with us?
I can't.
I need this job.
And why, where was Sandra?
Why don't we see her at the end?
That is a good question.
I didn't understand the significance of that.
But then, I mean, my mind was fairly reeling at this point.
I certainly felt, because, like I say,
of liked the relationships that were going on there and the fact that this is a this is a kids
show and that they therefore although they you know they had these kind of relationships very
obvious for us watching to see what's going on they never show anything very explicit and i you
know i appreciate that i think it i think it adds to it so i was certainly disappointed about that
aspect of the ending i can see i can see why it happens for the same reasons you've just said
about the painting which is once you've established that that you know it's just the two of them that
escape and the circle is beginning again then they're part of that and so the only ending you
can have is that they are the two that got away this time so they have to get away and be two
right i i yeah and you i have my if i were adam or matthew for that matter i would have
felt the need to ask some questions because obviously everyone's been returned to quote
unquote normal even people they've never met as normal like miss crabtree and those people know
them clearly they've been living there and they know that they've been living there what do they
think's been going on yeah except for die well no he knew them too he just he knew them as people
who never come to him to get their knives sharpened yeah i for at first i thought die didn't know him
but then he said don't you know i know you you were the don't come never to come here to get
their knives sharpened or whatever he he said to him well all right but but i mean they obviously
had a completely different relationship is what i'm getting at and but i i don't think i agree
with you that I would have stayed around to ask questions. I'm not even sure, to be honest, that I
would have gone to the museum to see Margaret. I might have just got the hell out of there.
I think I probably wouldn't have even gone back to get the painting.
Well, quite.
You know, when they were really genuinely trying to leave the scary version of the town.
But since they did go back to see Margaret, I don't know. I think at least one question or
something and just like uh well what about mr hendrix or anything because obviously hendrix is
not there he's gone because he comes in a new so you know who lives in the house oh it's been
empty for years uh or i you know i don't know i would i would just i would have i couldn't resist
asking at least a question or two just to try to figure out who these people were how they know
me what did was since there was no mystery going on when adam was there maybe he got in two or
three full weeks of research that we didn't that's in his paperwork now and he does he'll find when
he gets back to the university i but i think the problem is that that if you start asking
questions i mean i agree with you the the scene the scene lacks a sense of urgency of trying to
get away and therefore that's why there are no questions being asked so you do wonder why there
no questions being asked but the reason you can't have questions being asked is because
they couldn't answer them that well the what what what actually was you know the the explanation
that we've got is that the the this the circle the dish or whatever it is has been transmitting
evil to a supernova extracted from the people in and it's and it's like what i yes how does that
even all fit together i mean this comes back to the question about the folklore stuff and the
science stuff i mean it's it's all a bit at some point in episode six adam starts coming up with
this stuff about a time shift and you think well where on earth is he getting this from
i mean obviously it's it it goes on to feed the stuff about the circular circular nature of it
in the ending and it sort of ties up some of the things that you get earlier on about previous
cycles but where is that how is adam reaching this extremely implausible explanation for what's
going on how how has he leapt to that and i i mean i think that that's why you can't have the
question because if you start asking questions isn't all of this just going to fall apart
well that's entirely true of every timey wimey story steven mofford ever wrote uh
if you start asking questions they fall apart um same problem i mean time loops are hard to
to do yeah yeah and the whole notion of a parallel universe and it's a rough one one thing i do think
is in but i like i like good i like that i like the stuff about about recurrence i like the way
in which the the same pattern is being played out again and again i didn't quite understand why that
actually had to involve others other than the barrier why that had to involve the whole village
being in a separate time time bubble psychic thing but there you go yeah that that that a little
problematic um one of the things i do like is first off ian cuthbertson who i guess is i've
seen him in a bunch of other stuff but not you know not nothing really like a major role this
is probably the biggest role i've ever seen him in um is suitably weird uh in this part but what i
i do like about it is and and i know this is a bit of a cliche to say but i think it really comes
across very well in this episode that villains don't see themselves as villains and he is trying
to do good to the village. He is trying to remove evil from them. He's trying to make them better.
And it's just, it's Adam's comment about, you know, well, it's his version. It's his version
of evil that he's removing from these people. And also he's lying about, you know, there can be no
happiness without free will. But, you know, clearly those two don't agree on that point of view.
And I do actually think it's about, it's a benevolence, not entirely, a little bit, but not entirely a power trip on his part.
I think he thinks he's doing, he's doing good.
Yeah.
Whereas, you know, you can have a show where the villain is absolutely over the top, horrifically bad.
And then, I mean, a comic book cartoon bad.
And then, you know, later on, the actor will be giving an interview and go, well, you know, I like to think of, you know, a character as baddies don't think they're baddies.
They think they're doing the right thing.
And, you know, you can look at some of these and go, there's no way that that guy ever thought he was doing anything other than just working for his own benefit, that he was not doing good in the world.
But in this case, I think it shows.
In the end, it doesn't show throughout the course.
Throughout the course of the thing, he's creepy.
He's clearly up to something sinister.
And it really is just towards the end where you finally get a framing of what it is he actually thinks he's doing.
And suddenly he just, I wouldn't say becomes sympathetic, but just a little bit more sympathetic than he was.
It's like he's not doing this out of malice.
He's doing this out of misplaced sense of goodness.
Yeah.
I think it's a terrific performance.
Because, I mean, apart from the fact there's a massive spoiler in the credits
where it says this starring Ian Cuthbertson,
and so you know he's going to play some slightly more major role
than just sort of the landlord.
But when he first appears, he's creepy, that's a good word,
but as in a bit of a slightly creepy guy,
slightly too fond of himself, you know?
But you kind of think, well, they're strangers in this village and, you know, he's come along to be friendly and welcome them and you make allowances and all the rest of it.
And it doesn't feel necessarily out of the ordinary.
And what's nice about his performance is that it then it does grow to the point where by episode five, there's no kind of pretense.
You see all the scheming going on and we get the double act with Link and all the rest of it.
Yeah.
But it still feels part of the same kind of progression through.
It's not a different character.
It's not like suddenly the mask falls and it's,
now I can show you my evil plans.
He's still the same guy and it's still the same slightly creepy vibe.
It's just now toward a slightly different end.
And yet in the end, as you say, you can still see beneath all that what it is that he thinks he's doing and why he's doing it and why he thinks that it is in everyone's interest, even though it's not.
Yeah. Mentioning the credits, it is weird.
There are four people listed in the credits, including Gareth Thomas, at the front.
So Gareth Thomas is listed front with Gareth Thomas, Freddie Jones, which is Di.
And then they list two other people who I can't remember the names off the top of my head.
I'm guessing it's Matthew and Margaret.
I'm not 100% sure there.
It's Margaret and Mrs. Crabtree.
Oh, it's Margaret and Mrs. Crabtree.
So the kids don't even get credit in the opening.
No, because they're kids.
Because they're kids.
Okay, well, I don't know.
I mean, it's a major part.
Matthew is...
Well, because they don't have this...
I guess they don't have the same kind of track record.
Okay.
But it's weird that it's with Gareth Thomas, Freddie Jones, and then starring Ian Cuthbertson.
He comes after them with starring, which, you know, to our...
Yeah, which is unusual, but maybe it's to balance the fact that the others are top of the bill.
I don't know.
I mean, Gareth Thomas is in, you know, 45 to 75% of all the scenes in the story.
And you would obviously now, I mean, he's clearly the star of the show along with the boy, but I hope to not.
I don't know that I have anything else with regards to it.
I thought, like I said, they had very effective, create a very effective claustrophobia in the town.
The stones are, they're just cool.
The stones are just cool, right?
I mean, even as just a prop when they're walking along and they're in the background, it's just like that is just that really.
And the fact that most of the stones, not all of them, but most of those stones are real.
So they don't look like paper mache, except when it's a person turning into one.
Those look like paper mache.
But there is there's there's an anecdote from the Gareth Thomas interview that I probably do need to relate because it's just so good.
He said, I mean, like you say, most of the stones are real, but not all of them are.
Some of them are polystyrene.
And because they were filming in Averbury, they had tourists around.
And so one woman was coming, you know, they were on their lunch break and just sitting around back to one of the real stones leaning up against it.
And these tourists came along.
And one woman was just admiring the stones and she just put her hand out to touch it.
And it was one of the, because they look so good,
it was one of the polystyrene stones.
And she knocked it over.
And she was apparently just completely distraught.
She was thinking, you know,
this stone has stood here for thousands and thousands of years,
and then she's come along and knocked it over.
And apparently it took them ages to convince her
that that wasn't the case.
They were in fits of laughter.
That's very mean of them.
Like, no, no, it's fake.
Here, try this one.
It's real.
I thought it was great.
Yeah, I was going somewhere, but that story was probably better anyway.
But it was...
Sorry.
No, no, no, it's all right.
It was all right.
I was just commenting on the feel and the action and the setting, I think.
Anyway.
I think a couple of things on feel which are period things.
I mean, one thing is about some of the female characters in this.
OK.
Like Mrs Crabtree, for example.
Well, I never.
Yes.
Tea for three, Mrs Crabtree.
And I'd rather think you could do with a cup yourself
after she's just collapsed on the floor for no apparent reason.
And it's like, surely wouldn't you say, you know, I mean...
I'll get the tea.
For a start.
Yes, I'll get the tea and I'll make you a cup of tea.
So, yeah, there are certain kind of 70s attitudes going on there.
And because there are various things that this had, you know, kind of reminded me of.
And I don't know whether, I mean, it's probably as much influencing other things.
But just the way in which people were turned into, I mean, it's not a terribly obvious parallel, but the happy day people.
reminded me a bit of the Stepford Wives because it's got that kind of small small community thing
and this and and the kind of this the dehumanizing effect of taking away what are considered to be
undesirable thoughts or whatever you know right um not not perhaps in that case done in in quite
even as a misguided act of altruism
not quite the same
but there's a line
in case you weren't sure that Hendrik is the villain
women, punctuality is not among their virtues
and Link says
yes sir, there is much to be said for the celibate life
oh yeah, I remember that line
that was
yeah, I'm not entirely sure what that
you know if they said it now i would assume that they were making a statement no if they said it
now i'm not if they said that in the 90s i would be sure that they were making a statement that
hendrix was a homosexual because that would be the the progression as in celibate life is
euphemistically used euphemistically used to mean yeah i mean women are well it could it could well
be i mean that could well be the intention i mean the the other thing that and i guess i say this
Well, no, there's two things, actually.
One, it reminds me of kind of,
this goes back to why I think I would have really liked it,
because there were certain kind of fantasy books of this ilk
by authors like Alan Garner,
who managed to make very,
to create these kind of very sinister extensions of reality, I guess.
But the other thing this made me think of,
nothing to do with an association from the time or anything,
But just everything, I guess, makes me think of, or many of the things we've discussed recently make me think of the X-Files.
Partly, I guess, because the X-Files draws so widely for its inspirations.
But nevertheless, this idea you have here of there being a kind of whole mythology to do with something essentially supernatural going on.
And Adam Brake coming in as a scientist and observing it through a very sort of scientific point of view.
And I have no idea whether it made a big enough splash across the pond for someone like Chris Carter to ever have seen it.
But it still seemed to me notable that it was, it's of that, if you like, tradition now of the supernatural show with a scientific, a sort of scientific approach.
Well, stone tape.
Yes, absolutely. And Quatermass 2, as we have also discussed, assuming we've discussed this.
Quatermass 3.
After that.
Quatermass in the pit, right?
Indeed.
Pit, yeah.
Indeed. Yes. So, yes, I guess maybe the correct, and if one were viewing it in 1977,
this would be what you would think, would be the Neil influence rather than the influence
on what was yet to come
unless you happened to be so incredibly psychic
you were able to tell what would be on TV
15 years in the future.
Well, maybe if you had the socks or something
of somebody who was going to be a future TV producer,
you might be able to use psychometry on that.
Absolutely, yes.
I don't think I have anything else.
Me neither.
But I do suggest that if you get a chance
to get hold of this, this is worth...
Which isn't easy.
No, worth taking a look if you can find it.
Anyway, Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.
Find out how you can be a sponsor and get early access to all episodes and more at patreon.com slash fusion patrol.
Come join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter.
All episodes are available at FusionPatrol.com
Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a Lone Locust production.