Children's Sci-fi and Fantasy TV of the 80's

Aliens in the Family TV Theme Tune

David (Rob Edwards) and Phillipa (Clare Clifford), are a newly married couple, both having children from previous relationships.

David is bringing Jacqueline aka Jake (Sophie Bold) to his new home to Phillipa and her daughter Dora (Claire Wilkie) and son Lewis (Sebastian Knapp) Jake, is very tomboy like in nature is the polar opposite of Dora who's all lipstick and hairspray.

Meanwhile, up in that there galactic galaxy, is a Galgonquan spaceship where - another set of siblings - Bond (Grant Thatcher) and Solita (Elizabeth Watkins) are getting all anxious about Bond's upcoming assessment. Solita needs to disguise herself on Earth as an everyday object and Bond is tasked with locating and retrieving this (all after disguising himself as a human being man). 



Doesn't sound too testing, but there's also the threat of the sinister Wirdegen to contend with who want to do nasty things to Galgonquans.

Things go wrong for everyone. Jake can't stand life at David and Phillipa's house and Bond finds himself fleeing from the Wirdegen almost as soon as he's set foot on Earth. Bond ends up with the Earth kids on a desperate quest to find Solita and get home asap. 


I remember something to do with magic stones at the end, but as this series has yet to grace YouTube, I can't watch it to say what the idea of the stone circle was. 

I loved this series because I fancied the pants of Grant Thatcher and I had this sneaky wish to be an Alien. Think it may have something to do with being all seeing and all knowing.

The Wirdegen were a great addition and the menace portrayed by the Wirdegen leader was simultaneously fantastic and nightmare inducing. There were a few dark and disturbing moments when the Wirdegen takeover the mind of Lewis.

And it turned out the Wirdegen's were just Galgonquan in disguise, testing Bond, so we didn't have to worry about being taken over by aliens.

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The other inspiring favourite sci-fi drama series of the 80's I remember watching was 1984 adaptation of John Wyndham’s Chocky. This was Wyndham’s final science fiction novel published in 1968 and set slightly in the future, where as the Children's TV version was contemporary. 

The TV adaptation was pitched as a children’s series but it’s one of those rare children’s series that is perfectly watchable by adults. 

The premise of both the novel and the series is that Matthew, a 12-year-old boy, suddenly appears to have an imaginary friend named Chocky. His parents become worried about his behaviour and eventually Chocky reveals herself as this ball of glowing light. She's here on a mission to understand Earth and uses Matthew as a vessel to understand the world.

The interest of the story is that it’s a kind of science fictional twist on the demonic possession idea, but the real twist is that Chocky really appears to be rather benign. Perhaps even benevolent. Having your son possessed by an alien entity, even an apparently benevolent one, is still rather disturbing. The series created two sequels Chocky's Children and Chocky's Challange.

In Chocky's Children Matthew goes on holiday and meets a mathematical prodigy Albertine (after Einstein of course) who is unaware of Chocky, but the alien tutors her and makes her uber clever. The precocious child hates Matthew's suggestion that she is clever through alien intervention until she is kidnapped by a group who want to find out Chocky's secrets. 

The third series, I don't think I watched... Chocky's Challenge, (I was probably too old to watch kids TV by then), but I have watched it since and think it was... not very good. Basically, they had to build something that would save the world, but if trapped inside would kill them!!! The series threw up more questions and most of it was spent with Chocky's Children silently talking to each other telepathically and smiling or giggling at one another because they'd figured something really intelligent out. Big thumbs down.
Chocky Theme Tune and First Episode

Great Old Sci-Fi TV that Inspired My Imagination

Sapphire and Steel

This had to be one of the creepiest TV series I remember. Even back then I liked scary stories and science fiction. The programme centres on a pair of inter-dimensional operatives, Sapphire and Steel. Very little is revealed about their purposes or backgrounds in the course of the series, but they appear to be engaged in guarding the continuing flow of time. They are two of several elements that assume human form and are sent to investigate strange events; others include Lead, who takes the aspect of a jovial, friendly giant, and Silver, a technician who can melt metals in his hands, there is also Jet and Copper.


Sapphire's special powers is to manipulate time in small ways as well as determine the age or historical details of an object by touching it. Her most prominent ability is to "take back time," literally rewinding it in a localised area to see or replay the past. Steel can freeze himself to absolute zero which gives him the ability to destroy 'ghosts', which are remnants of Time. 
Theme Tune Intro


He possesses immense strength  and is telekinetic, freezing people with a look or unbolting or welding metal objects.

The scariest series I thought was assignment four where the man with no face controlled people in photographs and all the children were dressed as Victorian children, but when Sapphire touched them they turned to paper. The worst bit was the shop keeper setting fire to a photograph with a woman in the window of the building screaming. Horrible, but as a child I found fascinating and glued to the box.



Space 1999

The series is set in the year 1999. The crew on moon base Alpha are sent hurtling in Space when a nuclear waste storage unit explodes, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it, as well as the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, hurtling uncontrollably into space. The runaway Moon, in effect, becomes the "spacecraft" on which the protagonists travel, searching for a new home. Not long after leaving Earth's solar system, the wandering Moon passes through a black hole and later through a couple of "space warps" which push it even further out into the universe. 

During their interstellar journey, the Alphans encounter an array of alien civilisations, dystopian societies, and mind-bending phenomena previously unseen by humanity. Several episodes of the first series hinted that the Moon's journey was influenced  by a "mysterious unknown force", which was guiding the Alphans toward an ultimate destiny.
I loved this series so much and used to pretend I was on the spaceship and was some kind of alien like Maya, with special shape shifting powers.
Theme Tune and Episode


Blakes Seven

The TV show is set in the third century and at least 700 years in the future. Blake's 7's premise concerns the exploits of political dissident Roj Blake, who commands a small group of rebels against the forces of the totalitarian Terran Federation that rules the Earth and many colonised planets. The Federation uses mass surveillance, brainwashing and drug pacification to control its citizens. 

Blake is arrested and tried on false charges then deported to a remote penal colony. En route he and fellow prisoners Jenna Stannis and Kerr Avon gain control of a technologically advanced alien spacecraft. It's central computer, Zen informs them the ship is called the Liberator. 

Theme Tune and Episode



Liberator's speed and weaponry are superior to Federation craft, and it also has a teleportation system that enables transport to the surface of planets. Blake and his crew begin a campaign to damage the Federation, but are pursued by Space Commander Travis – a Federation soldier – and Servalan, the Supreme Commander who used to seriously scare me. Secretly I fancied Avon and used to play Blake's 7 on my local park many times. 


The Tomorrow People


The premise was about the emergence of the next stage of human evolution (Homo novis) known colloquially as Tomorrow People. Born to human parents, an apparently normal child experience a process called "breaking out" during adolescence and develop special paranormal abilities. These abilities include powers such as telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation. However, their psychological make-up prevents them from intentionally killing others.

Weirdly I don't remember much about this programme, but I do remember the Theme Tune and it still gives me goose bumps today. It also gives me a sense a nostalgia for the old house I was born and brought up in.

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