Geoff Fletcher

Remember “Journey Into Space” on the radio?

Roger Bunce

If you listened to Radio 4 Extra (April 2016), you’d have heard "Journey Into Space" quite recently – and very nostalgic it was. In fact, you would have only just missed "Orbiter X", which has not been heard since 1959, and is very reminiscent of "Journey Into Space" (some of the incidental music was nicked from "Quatermass and the Pit" – now that’s proper sci-fi!).

Bernie Newnham

Some of the sound effects in “Orbiter X” – "Open the airlock – deeee-daaaa"  – were nicked from “Journey into Space”. I have a cassette box set of “Journey into Space” and when my wife and I were working similar hours we’d listen on the way home in the car. We’d look forward to the next episode. That was 30 years ago, but whenever it’s on it reminds me. 

Geoff Fletcher

There is a DVD with all three BBC Quatermass serials on it. They were pretty scary at the time. I remember  in Quatermass 1 there was an episode  entitled "The Thing In Westminster Abbey" that had be cringing on the sofa watching through my fingers. Other moments – Quatermass 2 when Dilllon says to the guy in the ploughed field when they were examining the meteorite "There’s something on your face!", and the first glimpse inside the vat at Wynnerton Flats. Q3 was truly scary most of the way through what with Hobbs Lane, the earth moving and tea cups flying as the guy ran to the church for sanctuary and all that – but the biggest "jump" moment for me was when they opened the sealed compartment and first saw the "martians" and one suddenly slipped!  The main title theme started me off on a love of classical music – “Mars” from Holst’s “Planet Suite”. I have the Penguin books of the scripts and with some stills from Q1 and Q2 still on my shelves, and also the “Journey Into Space” novels by Charles Chiltern.

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Roger Bunce

Snap! I had exactly the same jump moment, although not when they were first shown. It was when they were repeated, in two 90 minute chunks. I remembered, from the first showing, that the Martian was going to slip. How could it possibly make me jump when I knew it was going to happen? But it bloody did! I too have the Penguin Quatermass scripts on my shelves, slowly turning yellow with age. They are where I first encountered words like ‘Pan’, ‘Crab’, ‘Crane’, etc, which became strangely familiar in my grown-up life!

But I bet you haven’t got one of these!

The Martian is homemade. Before they shut the craft shop in Eltham High Street, they sold a modelling clay called Fimo, which came in lots of colours and could be fired in a domestic oven. My son was collecting “Star Wars” figures, at the time, so I decided to make some 1950s aliens of my own, to a similar scale – a Mekon, a Triffid, etc. I didn’t know what colour the Martian should be, since “Quatermass” was in black and white. Only years later, when I got the Quartermass DVD, and looked at the bonus features, did I discover that I’d got it right!

A silly story on this theme. I must have been working with Geoff Goodwin about this time (or is he a Jeff? My brain’s going!). Inspired by my efforts, he bought some Fimo to make his son a Jabba the Hutt. Unfortunately, the stuff he bought was well past its sell-by date. It was stiff and difficult to model. He brought it into work, to see if I could do any better. I made something that looked reasonable Jabba-the-Hutt-ish. Then we needed an oven to fire it in. Geoff discovered that the Show Workers (or was it the Sparks?) had a small cooker in their rest room. He asked if he could use it, and they agreed. But when he arrived with something that looked like a cross between a giant slug and a frog on a BBC paper plate, they looked at him in horror. "You’re not going to eat that, are you?!"

….And have you noticed that, if you take the Martian spaceship from “Quatermass and the Pit”, – you stand it on end, dome at the top – then squash it down a bit, and splay out the base – add a sink plunger and eye-stalk – and . . . It’s a Dalek! 

John Smith

I met Charles Chiltern, the producer of “Journey Into Space”, at the age of 11 when he presented me my School Prize for coming top of the class in my final year in primary school. The prize I had selected was a science fiction novel by Arthur C Clarke titled “Islands in the Sky”.  It’s about manned communication satellites.

Dave Plowman

If I recall correctly, Charles Chiltern not only produced “Journey Into Space” but wrote it too. And another radio childhood favourite of mine, “Riders of the Range” which was in the “Eagle” comic too. A very talented man.