Running from 1973 to 1979, The Tomorrow People is one of the most fondly remembered shows from the period. Delving into ViaVision’s DVD box set, it’s easy to see why.
Created by Roger Price, the story follows the titular ‘Tomorrow People’, a group of youngsters who are the next band of evolution, the Homo-Superiors. They are blessed with the three T’s: telepathy, teleportation, and telekinesis. They watch for others to develop the traits (‘breaking out’) in their headquarters at a deserted underground station with the help of their AI computer Tim (voiced by Philip Gilbert). Led by John (Nicholas Young), their adventures thrilled kids across 68 episodes. We still remember being the in the schoolyard grabbing our belts pretending to ‘jaunt’ to different places.
The Tomorrow People follows the structure of Doctor Who at the time, with several stories spread over three to five episodes, and around three stories per series. Despite being a kid’s show, it doesn’t talk down to its audience and isn’t afraid to show a bit of peril to our heroes. The show was also ahead of the game by including people of colour in the core cast. This continues throughout the series, even when cast members leave. It’s less routinely studio-based than Doctor Who was, with a lot of action taking place outside, although the mix of visual effects with outside shot-on-film footage suffers from being quite cheesy to modern eyes. For those of us around at the time, though, it’s still quite ground-breaking.
ViaVision’s complete series set includes all the various stories on separate discs (with some doubled up for shorter serials) with text-based extras including story overviews and background titbits that fun to get into. Image quality on the episodes is better than we can expect, too, although the overuse of stock footage is now obvious.
Re-watching the show after so many years is a revelation, as it’s still a lot of fun and there’s plenty of forward-thinking from the writers’ perspective with topics such as ecological concerns and elements of politics that still stand up today. We still get the heebeegeebees from the iconic opening credit sequence even after all this time, with Dudley Simpson’s evocative theme still as memorable as it always was. If you’re of a certain age, it’s an essential purchase and stands up much better than any of the reboots.
The Tomorrow People – The Complete Series is available here.
