Earthsearch
 | It has been suggested that Earthsearch II be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since June 2011. |
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| Running time | 30 minutes |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | UK |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Radio 4 Extra |
| Starring | Sean Arnold Amanda Murray Haydn Wood Kathryn Hurlbutt |
| Written by | James Follett |
| Directed by | Glyn Dearman |
| Original release | January 1981 – March 1981 (last repeated June 2011) [1] |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 10 per series |
| Audio format | Stereo |
Earthsearch: A Ten-Part Adventure Serial in Time and Space science fiction radio series written by James Follett. It consists of ten half-hour episodes broadcast. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between January and March 1981. There is also a novelisation by Follett of the same name. The series has been released on cassette and audio CD Since 2003 it has been re-broadcast, several times in the Seventh Dimension science fiction slot on BBC 7 and its successor BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Main cast
- Commander Telson - Sean Arnold
- Sharna - Amanda Murray
- Darv - Haydn Wood
- Astra - Kathryn Hurlbutt
- Angel One - Sonia Fraser
- Angel Two - Gordon Reid
Other cast (across the series):
- Commander Sinclair - Christopher Scott
- Simon - David Bradshaw
- The Sentinel - Alexander John
- George - John MacAndrew
- Helan - Judy Franklin
- Emperor Thorden - John Bott
- Thail - Graham Faulkner
- Spegal - Stephen Garlick
- The Custodian - Eve Calfe
- Fagor - Sion Probert
- Krol - Michael Spice
- Dren - John Webb
- Lenart - Jane Knowles
- Tandor - Pauline Letts
- No. 41 - John Church
Episodes
- Planetfall
- First Footprint City
- Sands of Kyros
- The Solaric Empire
- The Pools of Time
- Across the Abyss
- New Blood
- Marooned
- Star Cluster: Tersus Nine
- Earthfall
Story
The crew of the Starship Challenger - a ten mile long survey ship - have been searching the universe for an Earth-type planet to colonise. Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra – the third generation crew – are the only survivors of “The Great Meteoroid Strike”. After the Angels – shorten from ANcillary Guardian of Environment and Life, the ship’s control systems – explain to them how their parents died, they plan their return to Earth. However, when they reach their home solar system, they find their planet has gone.
Disappointed, Darv and Astra explore an uncontrolled zone of the ship - a place where the Guardian Angels cannot trace them and discover a space shuttle. They use it to visit the moon, which has been left behind. They discover that the Earth has been gone for half a million years and that the Challenger left Earth over one million years ago. It seems, during the Great Meteoroid Strike, the Angels lost their information about the Theory of Relativity and since the ship has been travelling at near light-speed for over one-hundred years, more time has passed on Earth than on the ship.
The crew then travel to Kyros, a planet similar to Mars. While there, Darv and Astra are kidnapped by what remains of The Solaric Empire - an organisation that colonised the Solar System. Since the disappearance of Earth, the Empire has been based on Zelda V - one of the moons of a planet similar to our Jupiter. The Emperor Thorden agrees to join the Challenger on its search for Earth. He smuggles an armed space ferry and a warrior android aboard. Thorden explains to the crew that the Angels are just the ships control systems and if they were to find the Central Switching Room, they would be able to end the Angels' control over them and the ship. The crew and Thorden go into suspended animation. When the crew are woken, they find Thorden is dead. Darv suspects the Angels are to blame.
The Challenger picks up another ship on its radar - the Challenger Two. It appears derelict. Sharna and Telson go over in the shuttle to investigate and Thorden's warrior android Fagor ambushes Darv and Astra. They distract him and follow Telson and Sharna in Thorden's ferry. When they come to leave Challenger Two, they discover Fagor has taken it away and they must chase it. They manage to overcome an oxygen shortfall and Fagor trying to attack them and recover the Challenger.
During their examination of the crew, the Angels discover that Astra is pregnant. They must bring her out of suspended animation to protect her, but to avoid arousing her suspicions, they awake everyone. Astra refuses to go back into suspended animation so she and Darv break away from the control of the Angels. She tells Darv she is pregnant and suspects that the Angels will try to harm the baby. They set up home in an uncontrolled region where they discover a video broadcast from an instrument package left on a planet by the second generation. Darv insists that they tell Sharna and Telson. Darv and Astra say they are leaving the Challenger and they take a shuttle full of supplies down to the planet, where they set up home. Sharna and Telson follow days later.
Mythological approach
Earthsearch eventually reveals itself as an inverted creation myth, providing a possible "factual" story which could lie behind various Earth legends. The story deliberately misleads the listener in order to gradually reveal that the planet Paradise is in fact the Earth of human history as we know it (with the original "Earth" being a previous forgotten homeworld for the human race) and that the legends of authoratitive and fear-inducing "angels" refer to the domineering computers. Various clues are presented in that "Earth" and its sister planet Kyros and Zelda (the latter two clearly analoguous to Mars and Jupiter) are the second, third and fourth planets of their solar system rather than the third, fourth and fifth, while Paradise is the third planet of its own solar system (as is "our" Earth), although the different planetary names are at one point attributed to an administrative change of nomenclature.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (January 2012) |
Most of the regular cast had cameo roles (sometimes playing more than one character) in BBC Radio's 1981 production of The Lord of the Rings, because the cast were all still members of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company at the time when the Tolkien adaptation was being made.
In the original broadcast, when Angel One and Angel Two are talking to each other Angel One's voice is heard on the left stereo channel only and Angel Two on the right (although due to the technical limitations of the recording some crosstalk can be heard on the opposite channels). In the BBC 7 broadcast they are sometimes heard on the opposite channels, indicating that entire episodes are broadcast with the stereo channels transposed. Furthermore, listeners to BBC 7's mono DAB service complained that they could only hear one half of these conversations, indicating that the DAB transmission may have been sometime taken from one of the two stereo channels instead of being a mix of both.
Engineering: It would initially seem that using two computers to run a star-ship lacks Redundancy. The ship originally had 3 angels in charge, seemingly giving sufficient redundancy should one computer malfunction. However the design of the Angels was itself flawed, with the general mode of failure the development of megalomaniac tendencies. When one and two fail they destroy the third computer.
Although it has not been confirmed, it is entirely possible that the android "Fagor" was named after a make of refrigerator which had been made available in the United Kingdom at the time of writing.