02 February 2012

Audio Catchup: Journey Into Space: The Red Planet

written and produced by Charles Chilton
broadcast 1954-55
released July 2011

starring
Andrew Faulds as Jet
Guy Kingsley Poynter as Doc
Bruce Beeby as Mitch
David Kossof as Lemmy
Journey Into Space: The Red Planet

“Orders must be obeyed without question at all times.”

Until my editor asked me if I was interested in reviewing it, I had never heard of Journey into Space. But looking it up revealed that it was a BBC radio drama from 1953-58 about a group of people on, well, a journey into space. Well, I like vintage science fiction, and I do need something to listen to while I do the dishes, and so I said yes, and soon a copy of the second Journey into Space storyline, The Red Planet, had fallen into my hands. It actually let me do quite a number of dishes, with 20 half-hour episodes stretched across ten CDs.

The Red Planet was written by Charles Chilton, and was broadcast 1954-55. It was a followup to the first Journey into Space story (Journey to the Moon, erased and later rerecorded as Operation Luna, which admittedly I haven’t heard), which had been hugely popular, and The Red Planet itself was also quite popular; Episode 19 was the last time a radio show in Britain achieved a higher audience share than its television opponent. In Journey to the Moon/Operation Luna, a crew of astronauts lands on the moon for the first time, while in The Red Planet these same astronauts set off on a mission to Mars.

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