The Tomorrow People – The Making of Terminator 2 3D – tape 2185

Over to the Sci Fi Channel, which makes a nice change from Sky One.

Here’s episode four of The Medusa Strain, the second story in the first season of The Tomorrow People, and probably the first story I saw, having missed the first one.

It starts with the cliffhanger from episode three, with John and Stephen being shot by Jedekiah and almost dead. They’re jaunted back, and Tim tries to heal them with special effects.

Meanwhile, Carol, Ginge and the alien Peter are imprisoned on Rabowski’s ship. Where Jedekiah has taken over.

A reminder that David Prowse plays Rabowski’s robot, in silver paint and not a lot else.

After this episode, there’s a brief interview with Philip Gilbert, who played the voice of TIM and also Timus.

Before the next episode, Sci Fi had a Millennium countdown going, so it’s fairly easy to date any episodes that had all the channel intro stuff. Here it is for the next episode. I make it 10th June 1996, just after 7pm.

Next, it’s The Vanishing Earth part 1. Tim is showing them some extreme weather events, and warning that they have increased in frequency. Tim estimates that the Earth has only a week left.

There’s deathless dialogue here. “But we can’t just sit here without trying to do something.” “Yeah, but what?” “Well whatever it is, it’s obvious it’s got to be done. And soon.”

Apparently, what needs to be done is setting up some weather equipment. Carol goes somewhere cold.

Stephen is somewhere hot, firing the Neutrino Cannon.

Meanwhile, Ginge and Lefty go to Clacton fun fair. Ginge meets a young woman, Joy, who seems to be interested in him.

But there’s someone watching them with a telescope.

In the haunted house, Ginge and the girl, Joy, find the hall of mirrors, and he’s suddenly trapped, and dropped down a shaft. Joy has been collecting men who wouldn’t be noticed, for unspecified duties underground.

At the bottom he’s met by some guards.

He gets away when there are more Earth tremors, and he sees what could be the worst alien I’ve ever seen. I thibnk it’s supposed to be an alien. It’s hard to tell when stuff is made as badly as this.

Once again, there’s a millennium countdown, so this episode is from 17th June 1996, 7pm.

The episode recap for episode 2 is egregiously long and boring. It’s 2 minutes 30 seconds long.

Ginge meets the alien in charge of the underground work, The Spidron. He appears to be wearing the robes of a Ku Klux Klan member. Literally, that’s the entire costume. At least, later in the episode, Ginge actually comments on this (calling him a ‘Kru Klux Loony’ or something similar). I hope the esteemed actor John Woodnutt, who voices Spidron, didn’t have to wear the costume, and just provided the voice. The character doesn’t move an awful lot.

Stephen goes investigating the Haunted House, which appears to achieve most of its scares by using early 70s colour posterisation effects.

He’s captured by Joy and her henchman (Mr Smithers, would you believe) and paralyzed, then chucked into the sea. I think I remember this as a child, and being quite concerned for him.

John and Carol spot him just as he’s being rescued by the telescope guy we saw earlier.

At this point (pretty much the end of the episode) the recording switches to later in the evening, and a different programme. It’s The Making of Terminator 2 3D.

It’s a look at the making of the Terminator 2 3D theme park attraction, for Universal Studios. I managed to see this at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, when I went to a Microsoft developer conference, and they booked the entire park for an evening for the conference guests. It was a lot of fun.

This is a remarkably long behind the scenes item – it’s longer than the whole attraction itself, which is only about 10 minutes long. And it features all the major players. Arnie, of course.

James Cameron

Stan Winston

Also involved is Gary Goddard, who previously directed the not very good Masters of the Universe movie, and who has been accused of some rather horrible sexual assaults in recent years.

Edward Furlong stretches his acting abilities with a new headband.

Even Robert Patrick returns as the T1000

Some of the Camera rigs look like something out of a Terminator movie themselves. They used a lot of cameras rigged on long wires so they could run the camera fast while tracking a speeding motorcycle.

Before the next programme, another countdown – 24th June 1996, 7pm

Then, episode 3 of The Vanishing Earth. Underground, lots of kidnapped men are digging up a rare mineral, supervised by Joy, who has now changed out of her comfortable surface clothes and is now wearing a sci fi leotard. I can’t shake the feeling that these men are just one brass section away from breaking into YMCA.

Joy’s henchman Smithers is reading Hey Diddle Diddle magazine. I’m not familiar with it. I found one of a similar vintage, and the name underneath the title is ‘with Bobo Bunny’.

Joy, meanwhile, relaxes with some vaping.

Smithers is visited by telescope man, who is played by Kevin Stoney. He is Steen, an interplanetary policeman investigating Spidron and Joy’s plan to extract Magmanite, the ‘rarest element in the universe’ which is also absolutely vital for keeping the Earth’s magma held together, and the reason there’s been earthquakes and bad weather.

Ginge gets the ‘tied to a couch and fitted with a sci fi helmet’ treatment.

At the end of the episode, the whole base is collapsing, and there’s lots of running around. The end of this episode is cut off again.

Episode 4 follows, which sees the Tomorrow People, along with Steen, searching for the true location of Spidron. They track him down to Teddington Lock, which is convenient because that’s probably where the show was filmed. So they go boating.

That doesn’t go well, when Spidron blows the boat up, but they jaunt away in time. Then they find the sewer he’s hiding in, only to see him turn to liquid and escape.

He didn’t get away with the Magmanite, because Joy double crossed him, so all’s well that ends well.

After this, recording continues with an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker, shown as part of the Bad Girls of Sci Fi, with an introduction from Richard O’Brien.

The tape ends during the episode.

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