Pathfinders to Mars

The story of the first humans on Mars appeared shortly after Pathfinders in Space took our heroes to the Moon. This series is a vast improvement on the first serial, largely by giving us a villain, in the shape of George Coulouris, probably wondering how he had progressed from Citizen Kane to this. The script and plot are tighter, and there is some genuine drama and conflict.

It was sensible to reduce the numbers of children, though Geoff remains as pompous a child as ever flew into space - in his actions and diction, remarkably like Burt Ward's Robin in the US Batman series (except that was played for laughs).

This was an utterly naïve series - especially when compared with the radio Journey Into Space, which appeared seven years before, and which it aspires to imitate. How seriously you take it depends on how you react to the situation in episode 1 - the captain of a rocket breaks his arm a few hours before take-off, and so it is proposed to replace him with a journalist who happens to be passing. Said journalist will only go if his niece comes with him, as he is babysitting, he promised to take her fishing and she would be disappointed. It's OK, as the captain was already taking his teenaged son. No-one seems to mind that, with only a few hours to go, the crew of the ship has increased from four to five. To cap it all, the final member of the crew is late, and only turns up ten minutes before launch, so he is rushed on board without anyone checking that he is not the tall, young Australian with a full head of hair that everyone expects, but in fact a short, fat, bald loony. If you think that is a plausible set of events, then perhaps it is lucky that the British never had a space programme of their own.