Blake's Heaven Part Two

By David Richardson

TV Zone Mag Issue 58 Sept 1994

After his successful stint as director on Ace of Wands, Darrol Blake found himself summoned to the office of the Head of Children's Programming at Thames TV. He was introduced to Roger Price, who was working on a proposal for a brand new science fiction series.

"They were going to make a series called The Tomorrow People," Blake explains. "Roger described it, I said I was interested, and they gave me a two page treatment to look at. I thought it was the most appalling rubbish I'd ever seen in my life. It had bits stolen from Star Trek; it had bits stolen from Dr. Who, and bits stolen from everything else he'd ever seen in children's comics. I took it back to Sue and said, "I'm terribly sorry. I don't want to do this. I think it's dreadful." She laughed her head off.

"They got another ex-designer, Paul Bernard, to do it. He had the devils own job to get it to make sense and get it done on time. They did it in studio 2 at Teddington which wasn't equipped to do special effects."

Having turned down the first season of The Tomorrow People, Darrol Blake was rather more amenable when approached to direct A Rift in Time for Season Two.

"They had cleaned it up a bit for the second season." He maintains. There had also been a number of major cast changes: Carol and Kenny had left for the Galactic Trig, and biker Ginge had been replaced by his cousin Chris. Although Blake was not officially involved in Chris' debut story the Blue and the Green, he recalls how the role came to be cast. "Just before they started the second season Michael Standing had an accident on a motor bike and broke his leg. I suggested that they use a friend of mine called Chris Chittell, who had played the pop star in Doomewatch's sex and violence for me."

A Rift in Time found the Tomorrow People confronting the time meddling villain Gaius in Roman Britain. However, Darrol Blake reveals that in Roger Price's original script there were two different opponents, one in the past and one in the alternate present. "Since it was involved with time travel, I said 'Why can't this be the same person?' It seemed as though they'd whip up a threat and it would disappear, and then they'd whip up another threat. So we did that and Stanley Lebor played the part."

On their return the Tomorrow People find Earth populated by simian creatures. The director laughs as he recalls early production discussions about the monsters. "I'll never forget the producer Ruth Boswell saying, 'Are they going to have long tails?' So I said, 'what do you mean, long tails?' she said, 'You know, cats have long tails.' I said 'No that's feline… simian means monkey-like'.

Blake found his inspiration for the creatures in the most unusual place. "On my time at the BBC, there had been pinned up on the notice board a picture of an extra with his clothes off, and he had all-over hair. I thought of him immediately, we found extras that were about the same size and covered them in hair.

With a guest cast including a young Peter Duncan and Keith Chegwin and his twin brother as extras, A Rift in Time was shot on location and at the Teddington studios. "I did some day location filming in Burnham Beaches all of those youngsters running around, and then the rest of it was done in the studio. We were supposed to have night filming in a forest, but it seemed pointless taking a film camera out when you can't see anything, so we built the forest in the studio.