British television in the 1970s featured a number of surprisingly innovative science fiction series; time hasn't been kind to all of them, to be sure, but even in the case of the more worn and faded examples, there's usually something that can be appreciated in the present day. Timeslip is one such show, rather too marked by the passing of time to create a whole new generation of viewers, but remarkable as an example of how British television treated the children's audience of the time with a great deal of respect.

The premise is based on time travel, as the name of the show suggests. While searching for a missing girl, teenagers Simon Randall and Liz Skinner accidentally pass through a "time barrier," leaving them apparently stranded in the past. The first of the four Timeslip stories follows their adventures as they try to rescue the missing girl and make their way back to their own time in 1970. Along with their other adventures in this episode, the young protagonists meet the mysterious Commander Traynor, who features prominently in the other stories as well, sometimes in a disturbingly different "version" of himself, depending on what time period they're in.

Timeslip is a children's show in the same sense that Doctor Who was originally considered a children's show; that is, by U.S. standards it is a perfectly reasonable show for adults that happens to also appeal to younger viewers. In the case of Timeslip, the fact that the two main characters are teenagers makes a stronger connection to the children's audience, but the overall tone is straightforward and serious, addressing complex issues with the confidence that the viewers would rise to the occasion (always a better approach than the dumbing the material down).

Timeslip is structured differently from most U.S. television programs; rather than having each individual episode be self-contained, the series is made up of four complete stories consisting of multiple half-hour episodes. The upside of this is that the stories can be (and are) more fully developed and complex, allowing for the ideas to be presented and explored more fully. The downside is, not too surprisingly, that there's a tendency to have some padding in the stories, which sometimes feel that they didn't really need six or eight episodes to develop. This was probably much less evident in the original television broadcasts, since viewers would have to wait a week before seeing the next episode, but the feeling of extra length is more apparent when you can watch the programs as unified stories.

The first episode, "The Wrong End of Time" (6 parts) is the only one to take the show to a different, known historical period (1940). Perhaps because of budgetary limitations, the other three stories take a different path. In "The Time of the Ice Box" (6 parts) Commander Traynor gets the children to pass through time again, but this time it's twenty years ahead, to an Arctic research base (1990 must have sounded very futuristic in 1970); "The Year of the Burn Up" (8 parts) also takes them twenty years into the future, but this time to an alternate version of reality, an overheated Earth that has been crippled by its own technology. The series wraps up with "The Day of the Clone" (6 parts), in which a research center located five years in the past is doing dangerous research with cloning.

The stories are an interesting mix of the slightly surreal and the scientifically plausible; we get topics like global warming, cloning, and drug research as integral parts of the episode plots. The emphasis on exploring genuine scientific ideas (albeit ones on the fringes of the known) is apparent in the brief introductions to "The Wrong End of Time" and "The Time of the Ice Box," in which Peter Fairley discusses the concept of time travel as it's used in Timeslip. There's a odd feel to these clips, as though the filmmakers were unsure if their audience would "get" the science-fictional premise (since this is post-Star Trek and post-Doctor Who, you'd certainly think so), but it does reinforce the feeling that, despite the low budget of the show, they were aiming for real content and interesting ideas.

Timeslip: The Complete Series contains all 26 half-hour episodes of the series, so viewers who watched the series as children can indulge in seeing the complete programs once again. Unfortunately, no one will be able to see the show exactly as they saw it the first time. Originally, Timeslip was produced in color, except for parts 1-4 of "The Day of the Clone," which were originally filmed in black and white due to production disputes at the time. However, in the ensuing thirty years, the color masters were lost for all the rest of the episodes, except for one (part 6 of "The Day of the Ice Box"), and as a result, the black-and-white versions were the only ones available to put on the DVD.

The DVD

Timeslip: The Complete Series is a four-DVD set, with one complete story (in six or eight parts) on each disc. The DVDs are in ultra-slim cases inside a glossy paperboard slipcase.

Video

As noted in the main body of the review, all but one of the 26 Timeslip episodes here are in black and white. The transfer is watchable, but certainly looks worn; the image is soft and fuzzy, and frequently has small jitters in the frame. A few flaws appear in the image, but not many; overall it is soft but clean. The one color episode is, in contrast, remarkably bright and vibrant, with strong, vivid colors despite still being soft overall. The episodes appear in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented here as a Dolby 2.0 mix. The sound is clean and clear, without any problems.

Extras

One convenient feature in the Timeslip set is that each story has a "play all" feature, along with the option to select the individual episodes.

The special features for the set are located on Disc 4. Of most interest is a short featurette (17 minutes) called "Behind the Barrier," which is made up of modern-day interviews with the people involved in the show, including the now-adult actors who played Liz and Simon. The other features are minor: text background information on the show, text biographies of the main actors, and a Timeslip map that's too small to really see any details of.

Final Thoughts

Viewers who enjoyed the 1970 British science fiction show Timeslip when it was broadcast will enjoy this complete set of all the episodes, even though it's largely in black and white rather than the originally broadcast color. The overall presentation is solid, and the transfer is likely as good as it can get considering the wear and tear the show has taken over the years. I'd say that it's too dated, now, to really appeal to a new generation of young viewers, but it will be a fun trip into the past for long-time fans. If you're reading this, you're probably one of those fans, so I'll go ahead and give this set a mild "recommended" rating.