Sky

1 9 7 5 (UK)
7 x 30 minute episodes

Out of the sky falls a youth, not of this place or time – “part angel, part waif” – a youth with powers he can neither control nor understand.

He has a specific purpose in minds but finds himself in the wrong time. He expected to arrive “after the chaos”, a period in which he clearly expects to be recognised. Instead, he has taken shape during “the decline”.

Now he seeks the ‘Juganet’, a circle and machine that can transport him to the desired time and location.

This mysterious visitor, “Sky” (17-year old Bristol-born Marc Harrison) and his attempts to rejoin his own time and dimension – and the three West Country teenagers who discover him and set out to help: Jane (Cherrald Butterfield); Roy (Richard Speight); and Arby (Stuart Lock) – provided the unusual background for this intriguing seven-week HTV series.

Whatever catastrophe is set to occur, Sky has no intention of preventing it. “In your terms, I am to be a god,” he tells the kids.

The icy indifference he displays to events on contemporary Earth and the wellbeing of those trying to help him is also unsettling. “Your problems do not concern me,” he dispassionately informs Arby. As a result, Sky’s agenda and motives are never above suspicion, making him more anti-hero than hero.

As soon as Sky arrives on Earth he is attacked by nature. “The animus of the organism . . . all natural organisms reject that which is foreign to them,” he informs Arby. These attacks increase in strength until a physical manifestation takes place and Goodchild (Robert Eddison) is created from the wind and the leaves as a sinister spirit figure with the ability to materialise and dematerialise at will.

The presence of a second ambivalent figure furthers the tension in the drama.

Arby ultimately finds himself transported with Sky to the time following the chaos, where he discovers a tribe of telepaths who have learned to live at one with nature.

Arby cannot understand where his people went wrong.

Sky philosophically tells him, “You do not reach the stars with rockets anymore than you invent radio by shouting at the sky. You believe in machines and that is not the way”. Following the chaos, man has learned to exist without the machines that destroy the equanimity man should have with the Earth.

Now that mankind has learned to respect nature, Sky has arrived to guide the race towards the next stage in its evolution, explaining “It is the destiny of all intelligent beings to stand outside space and time.”

Sky – written by playwrights Bob Baker and Dave Martin – was filmed at such legend-rich locations as Glastonbury Tor, Avebury and Stonehenge. The two writers had previously provided scripts for Doctor Who and were responsible for Arthur of the Britons.

The series first aired on Monday 7 April 1975 at 4:50 pm.

Sky
Marc Harrison
Arby
Stuart Lock
Jane
Cherrald Butterfield
Roy
Richard Speight
Goodchild
Robert Eddison