“FOG AROUND PLANET - UNIVERSE CUT OFF” (aka MAPPING A VERY BRITISH TAKE ON THE FORGOTTEN FUTURE...)

Having looked hard at this blog and decided it wasn’t nearly nerdy nor provincial enough, for the impending seventh anniversary the chaps in charge here have decided to devote a new series to old British sci-fi.* Fellow Englanders! Let us journey back to those days when the chaps in charge knew how to do that stuff properly, before reliable old Airfix and bakelite had been supplanted by all that CGI and 3D tommyrot.

When you could rely on a raygun to look like a hairdryer and a spaceship like another hairdryer. When the Union Jack fluttered proudly atop heathen planets, boffins were running the show and sets were as wobbly as upper lips stiff. When, for their part, envious aliens ceaslessly plotted to invade the Earth, with particular interest in the strategically important location of Chipping Sodbury.

The cheaper the effects, the more cardboard the costumes, the more black-and-white the... uh... black-and-white the better. Not emotionally constipated about everything bar football and Royalty? You are most likely a colonial. Please change channels now.

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony involving Jenna from 'Blake's Seven' (subject to availability), proceedings will commence with Nigel Kneale’s pioneering ’Quatermass‘ series. To be shortly followed by a wheezing, groaning noise. From there, who can say? Does anybody here stll remember 'Star Maidens'? If so, don't worry, there are treatments...

And for those who don't know the in-joke in the title...

* Yes, I am using the term ‘sci-fi’ to try and wind up 'proper' fans...