In 1960 we were still three years away from Doctor Who’s premiere—however, producer Sydney Newman was already hard at work creating family-oriented science fiction television at the independent network Associated British Corporation (ABC Television). Between 1960–1961, U.K.’s ABC ran four serials, Target Luna, Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars, and Pathfinders to Venus, and the U.K. was enchanted with journeys to Earth’s nearest neighbors. Alas, Target Luna is missing from the television archive, but the Pathfinders serials are available for enjoyment and cultural time travel.
The Pathfinders serials belong to a different era and were ahead of their time. The show aired before Yuri Gagarin made his monumental voyage as the first human to fly in space, yet the show gave its audience a manned orbit of the moon eight years before Apollo 8’s historic trip to Earth’s nearest neighbor, and showed a moon landing nine years before Neil Armstrong’s first step onto our planet’s satellite. Pathfinders is from a time when concepts such as Britain winning the space race or a hidden world on Venus would not have seemed too fantastical to be believed.
Though science fiction serials were far from unknown to British audiences at the time, Pathfinders represented a novel viewing experience. It aired in the family slot—5:15 on the weekend-—sandwiched between afternoon films and sporting events and feature prime time programming. This family time slot was usually dedicated to historical adventure serials. In the weeks before the first Pathfinders serial, the BBC chose to broadcast the American Western The Range Rider and the English Civil War swashbuckler The Splendid Spur, while ITV channels were predominantly aired ITC series like The Adventures of Robin Hood and William Tell.
Prefiguring his plans for Doctor Who, Sydney Newman devised a science fiction series that could appeal to the whole family but would be grounded in real science. Commissioning the hot new writing team of Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paine, Newman created a family atmosphere centered on rocket scientist Professor Wedgwood and his three children. The most fantastical elements of the Pathfinders serials are the excuses invented in each serial to explain why the professor’s kids keep launching themselves into space in rockets.
The first serial, Target Luna, has the team at the Buchan Island rocket research station in Scotland attempting the first manned orbit of the Moon. When the scheduled astronaut falls ill, the rocket accidentally takes off with Jimmy, the youngest of the Wedgwood children, along with Hamlet the Guinea Pig, aboard. By radio, the Earth-bound scientists help Jimmy complete an orbit of our planet and return to Earth safely.
Next is Pathfinders in Space, detailing a fictionalized first Moon landing. Although the initial rocket flight is successful, the autopilot on the supply ship fails, and the Wedgwood children must team up with a former jet pilot to deliver essential cargo to the astronauts on the Moon. Once there, the children discover an ancient spaceship from four hundred million years ago, and learn about humanity’s fictional first technological evolution before the two superpowers destroyed themselves in an ancient war.
In Pathfinders to Mars, a mission to set up a permanent observatory on the Moon is hijacked by a ufologist, who takes the mission team to Mars to prove that intelligent life exists on the planet. Instead of intelligent life, they discover a species of lichen able to survive in Mars’ extremely cold and dry conditions.
On the team’s way back to Earth, they receive a distress call from an American astronaut stranded on Venus. Pathfinders to Venus becomes the team’s final adventure, as they attempt a rescue from a jungle world hidden below Venus’ clouds, and there finally encounter extraterrestrial intelligence.
Pathfinders is an enjoyable and underappreciated series, but it is a hard sell for modern audiences. The Pathfinders serials lack the wild imagination and magnetic actors of Doctor Who, and viewers must be willing to tolerate the low-budget special effects and casual pacing common to that television era. But if you bring this piece of television’s past into your present, you may find your own path to the stars.