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The Tomorrow People | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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he time is early-'70s Great Britain. Young Stephen Jameson (Vaughn-Clarke) wakes up in the hospital after collapsing in the street one day, only to be visited by the insistently chipper Carol (Winmill). She tells him that he is among the first representatives of an emerging species of man known as Homo Superior, known among themselves as the Tomorrow People, whose powers include telepathy, telekinesis and teleportation. The Tomorrow People, who at the onset number only four, are so far advanced that they've been able to supplement their already advanced powers with technology that includes spacesuits, stun guns and a helpful supercomputer men to call ... Tim (voice of Philip Gilbert).
The Tomorrow People are also genetically incapable of using violence to defend themselves, forcing them to live in secret as they protect humanity and their own kind from a series of exotic menaces. Before long, they're joined by the lower-class twits Lefty (Derek Crewe) and Ginge (Michael Standing), who pal around with the Tomorrow People because their first career path, as thug henchmen to the alien robot Jedikiah (Francis De Wolff), proves a career dead end.
Their early antagonists include a would-be conqueror named Rabowski (Roger Booth), who now appears suspiciously fey, especially given his penchant for uniforms with plenty of fringe, his delight at presentable male companions and his reliance on a shipboard robot who is essentially a buff muscle man in silver body paint. That robot, who is given little to do beyond menace the kids and say things like "I obey," is played by one David Prowse, whose name, if not his face, may seem familiar from certain bigger-budget offerings.
Nothing works; everything works
Some time ago in this space, reviewing a movie with first-rate actors, an interesting premise, production values more than sufficient for the story at hand and quality direction, that nevertheless possessed as much impact as a foam-rubber mallet, I sadly concluded, "Sometimes you have all the ingredients but fail to bake the pie." The opposite is also true. Sometimes you have third-rate actors, poverty-row production values and special effects so fake that every development on screen reeks of failed artifice ... in short, a near-total dearth of effective ingredients ... and you bake the pie anyway.
The Tomorrow People is a case in point. Its special effects are hilariously bad even for its time, with cheap video mattes that utterly fail to produce the effects intended; the props are poverty-row; the scripts are breathless and basic and filled with developments that collapse the instant they're subjected to a moment's logic. They're best defined by the moment when a villain complains that the kids are too clever for him, which sounds pretty good until you review all their actions up to that moment and realize that they've done nothing but blunder into traps.
None of its kids are good actors, at least at this stage of their careers, but to the extent they're bad actors, they're bad actors in precisely the right way. Vaughn-Clarke seems game for anything. Nicholas Young doesn't communicate much beyond a determined urgency, but since it's exactly what his character would be projecting anyway in most of the situations here, it's pretty much enough. And then there's the best of them all, who is also simultaneously the most annoying, Sammie Winmill. When she's supposed to be earnest, she's not just earnest, but the most earnest young girl who ever really, really, really meant what she was saying. When she's saddened by a development, she's not just saddened, but the saddest young girl who ever really, really, really thought something was sad. When she's worried, the room vibrates with the very force of her concern, and when she's perky, the energy comes across in waves sufficient to light London. She also tends to say everything important twice, as in "We've got to save Earth! We've just got to!"
Performances of this kind would be ghastly indeed applied to, let's say, multilayered dramas about the problems of disaffected youth. But they're exactly what's needed in science-fiction juvenalia of this most gosh-wow variety, investing the proceedings with an uncompromised breathless conviction that carries them well past the limitations of scripts and special effects and staging.
The truth is, Tomorrow People works because of, and not in spite of, its many limitations. It's fun stuff. It makes you exactly as old as you have to be to enjoy it without reservation.
This edition includes a commentary track on the first arc, featuring several of the kids as adults, in a charming mix of nostalgia, irreverence and late-life mortification.
There was an early-'90s revival which, if its reputation is to be trusted, didn't quite succeed in capturing the earlier version's goony innocence. —Adam-Troy
Also in this issue: Batman Begins and Quantum Leap Season-Three DVD
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