1 9 5 6 (UK)
4 x 30 minute episodes
The three tweely-named Winter children – Wallace (Michael Maguire), Winnie (Anne Cooke) and Wilfred (David Barry) – live with their mother (Maud Long) on the space station Earth Satellite One while their father is on a survey mission to study the moons of Mars.
Between classes at space school, the Winters become friendly with the various people who live and work in the colony.
There’s ace pilot Space Commodore Sterling (John Stuart), hot-headed Irish daredevil Captain O’Rorke (Matthew Lane), Cockney navigator “Tubby” Thompson (Don McCorkindale) and Sam Scroop (Neil McCallum), the “trapper of the spaceways” and cook onboard the Commodore’s ship. On the periphery is Humphrey Soames (David Drummond), a newshound for the Interplanetary Television Commission.
The series acted as a lesson in science and then-current theories about space travel, postulating a possible future amid never-knowingly-too-thrilling space adventures.
The four-part BBC series aired on Sundays in January 1956.
Commodore Sir Hugh Sterling
John Stuart
Captain Michael O’Rorke
Matthew Lane
Engineer Tubby Thompson
Don McCorkindale
Sam Scroop
Neil McCallum
Miss Osborne
Julie Webb
Wallace Winter
Michael Maguire
Wilfred Winter
David Barry
Winnie (Winifred) Winter
Anne Cooke
Humphrey Soames
David Drummond
Mrs Winter
Maud Long
Captain of the School
Anthony Toller
The Stranger
Shay Gorman