First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 14th 2023

It’s long been known, at least in archive television circles anyway, that the charismatic Canadian television pioneering producer SYDNEY CECIL NEWMAN was enticed into working for ABC television in Britain in the late 1950s, and was responsible for such high profile dramas such as ARMCHAIR THRILLER, as well as creating the sixties phenomenon known as THE AVENGERS, before his successes led to him joining the BBC in 1962, which eventually led to the creation of the long-running, and much loved, TV cornerstone that is DOCTOR WHO, although that’s a long and oft-told story which we aren’t going to go into today.

However, before deciding to bring teatime science fiction stories to children on the BBC, SYDNEY NEWMAN did actually have a bit of a track record of trying some quite similar ideas over at ABC, at least when it came to bringing Science-Fiction stories to children.

In April 1960 he was the Producer on TARGET LUNA, a six-part science fiction adventure serial now sadly lost to time and, perhaps, videotape wiping policies, which involved those exciting possibilities offered up by the dawn of the space age in which children and hamsters could occasionally replace trained astronauts when British Rocket Groups were trying to send rockets to the moon.

The success of this serial led to the swift commissioning of three further serials which we now refer to as the PATHFINDERS IN SPACE trilogy to differentiate it from the later 1972 series about World War Two bombers.

PATHFINDERS IN SPACE, a six-part serial, largely recast and now including the chiseled good looks of GERALD FLOOD as Journalist CONWAY HENDERSON, was broadcast in September of that same year, with PATHFINDERS TO MARS following in December, and PATHFINDERS TO VENUS following in MARCH 1961, and proved to SYDNEY NEWMAN at least that Science-Fiction as an exciting storytelling device for family audiences was, on the whole, a pretty neat idea.

TV Historian MICHAEL HERBERT, who recently shared his insights into the life of MALCOLM HULKE on the show, got in touch with VISION ON SOUND and asked if I might like to discuss these series, along with a later set of adventure serials also featuring GERALD FLOOD CITY and SECRET BENEATH THE SEA, on the show, and, of course I was not going to say no to an offer like that now, was I?

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.