The Idiot's Lantern 1 - Connections

So this is the part of the blog where I'm going to talk about TV shows that are not Doctor Who. However I couldn't resist using  the name of a David Tennant episode of the series as the overarching umbrella title for this section - it just seemed to fit. The intention is not really to talk about other science fiction or fantasy shows (although they may make the odd appearance) but to focus on the more unusual or important things that have captured my interest over the years.

I alluded to some of these in my "Things To Come" post back in April 2015, so now it's time to start the ball rolling. To begin with let's go all the way back to the 1970s...

There are some TV shows that stick with you because of their characters. Then there are others where the plot is so absorbing that you get lost in the narrative. There are those which make you marvel at the beauty and wonder of the world around us or astound you with their sheet audacity and originality. And there are those  - like the one I'm writing about today - which change the way you think. Possibly forever.

As a child, as much as I loved science fiction and fantasy novels I was also fascinated by real world science and technology. I think the wellspring of this was the BBC series "Tomorrow's World" which my dad watched religiously every week. This was the BBCs premier popular science programme running for a staggering 38 years from 1965 to 2003. Slotted in between the early evening news and the music chart run-down of "Top Of The Pops", the show covered a wide range of new ideas, developing technologies, achievements, failures and down right daft inventions, via studio demonstrations and location films. It also introduced the unsuspecting British publish to technology that would one day become commonplace such as the alcohol breathalyser, the pocket calculator, the digital watch and (in the early 80s) the personal stereo and the compact disc (with presenter Kieran Prendiville memorably spreading jam on a Bee Gees CD to prove its indestructibility!). By the time I guess I was old enough to understand things properly (around the mid 1970s), the series was in what many consider to be its most popular phase, with presenters Raymond Baxter, Michael Rodd, Judith Hann and William Woollard (with Prendiville joining in 1979) and attracting millions of viewers every week. For people of my age, *this* was the definitive set of 1970s opening titles:

The other key ingredient to this story is James Burke. A former English lecturer based in Italy, Burke had been presenting shows on the BBC for many years. He was one of the original Tomorrow's World team alongside Raymond Baxter and was the key BBC anchor for the coverage of the US and Soviet "space race", including the historic moon landing in 1969 (famously broadcasting for up to 30 hours in one stretch). His quietly intense, somewhat eccentric style was very popular with younger audiences of the time. Capitalising on his popularity, Burke left Tomorrow's World in 1969 and went on to present a series of illustrated science lectures in front of a studio audience called "The Burke Specials". Between 1972 and 1976 these shows covered a wide spectrum of topics on modern life and where it might be headed, including ID cards, test tube babies and super-computers, alongside informative but slightly mad studio demonstrations - all presented in Burke's trademark enthusiastic style. He was the Professor Brian Cox of his day. Just with a white safari suit and far less gazing off into the sunset.

By the time 1978 came rolling along,  I was eleven years old and in the first year of senior school. Science fast became my favourite subject (thanks in part to an excellent teacher whose name sadly escapes me - Mr. Keene perhaps?). I have fond memories of being part of one of the after school clubs and building water powered jet rockets and going to technology fairs to marvel at very early Apple machines. My parents bought me electronic project kits and I even had a build your own computer (I so wish I could find a picture of that - it had sliders and a plastic housing with different paper inserts and light bulbs which flashed when you "programmed" it to answer questions by moving the wires around). The teacher even starting lending me his copies of "New Scientist" magazine. Yes, I was that guy.

I'm sure I was too young to watch some of these early episodes of "Tomorrow's World" or "The Burke Special" when they were first transmitted  - or if I did sit there with my dad in front of the TV a lot of it may have gone over my head. The thing is something must have sunk in, because I was well aware of who James Burke was when he returned to television in 1978 after a two year break with what was to be his masterpiece...

Subtitled "An Alternative History Of Change", "Connections" was unlike any science documentary I had ever seen before. This wasn't a staid chronological retelling of the birth of modern science. Instead over ten programmes Burke circled the globe, carving a path through the history of technology to educate the viewer on subjects such as what on earth improvements in medieval castle fortifications and ivory billiard balls had to do with the creation of the movie projector - all through a series of what might seem to be random leaps of logic - the connections of the title. What's more he asserted that you could make these kind of links between just about any two historical discoveries or events if you looked hard enough. The series could be about anything and everything and it all mattered because a cascade of seemingly random events had lead to a major invention that changed our world forever - it was the butterfly effect in technological terms. The whole point was that you couldn't consider one thing in isolation. It's true - Everything *IS* Connected.

Further examples of Burke's genius lectures during the series were:

• how telecommunications exist because Norman soldiers had stirrups for horse riding and scientists tried to stop mine shafts from flooding.
• how you get from Greek astrological manuscripts to the modem day production line
• how the invention of a 16th century Dutch freighter led to the discovery of nylon

Burke also postulated that if new innovations develop because of the connections between past events and discoveries, then as time goes on the number of connections will multiply, and the speed of development of new technology will increase exponentially. Change causes more change. But what happens when this rate of change is too much for a person to handle? How will they cope? This was a concept I'd already come across in comics. The "Judge Dredd" strip in those early issues of 2000 AD had a name for it - "Future Shock" or "Futsie" (although they didn't invent the term - that was futurist Alvin Toffler is his book published in 1970). Hey, comics could be educational too !

To say that this series blew my mind was an understatement. Suddenly I could see that I wasn't an isolated individual, but part of something larger and greater stretching back into history and forward into the years to come. It made the young, innocent me *feel* connected, because what I did with my life might seem mundane or meaningless right then, but an insignificant moment could have potentially massive ramifications in the distant future. What's more this was a TV show that made me want to work hard to understand it because I was so fascinated. It might be a documentary but it was also a detective novel or a puzzle - could I work out what connected these seemingly random things with the final invention before Burke revealed it at the end? To keep viewers like me interested he would lay red-herrings and clues along the way, often questioning his theories, changing his mind mid sentence or memorably suddenly dismissing everything he had been saying for the last five minutes by walking off screen and then ducking back into shot to quip “except, that last bit isn't true at all..." or suddenly declaring “what this programme is *really* about is....”.  What is even more amazing is that you don't realise just how connected the series is until the last few minutes of the last episode, when Burke pulls back the curtain and reveals what linked all the innovations he has talked about together. Just stunning.

The series was incredibly successful both in the UK and overseas and led to an indirect sequel "The Day The Universe Changed" in 1985. This was a more chronological series concerned about the philosophical effects of science and technology and how we "change" the universe around us by altering our perception of it through the acquisition of knowledge. I was older then and just starting my working career, but I still lapped it up. Two further series of "Connections" followed in 1994 and 1997 but I am not sure they were ever shown in the UK as they were made for the American "The Learning Channel". Certainly I've not seen them as yet, but I will be seeking them out.

I can honestly say that there are two series which fundamentally changed the way I think about the world and made such an impression on me as a young man that the memories and reverberations have lasted for over thirty years. One is Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (and trust me we will get to that in time). The other is "Connections".