space force season 1 & 2: Recent Episodes
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Space Force was a BBC Radio science fiction serial, broadcast from 4 April 1984 to 17 June 1985.
Written by Charles Chilton, it was originally intended to be a sequel to his 1950s Journey into Space series, using the same cast who had made a one-off revival of that series entitled 'The Return From Mars’ in 1981. While this idea was dropped late in the development of the serial, the four characters, played by Barry Foster, Nigel Stock, Nicky Henson, and Tony Osoba, are nevertheless essentially the same as those from the earlier series, albeit with different names.
.Captain Saxon Berry and his crew, flight engineer Lodderick Sincere, radio operator Lemuel ‘Chipper’ Barnet and Professor Magnus Carter are on an astronomical expedition to the Egyptian desert when they spot a fireball in the sky. The authorities search the desert, but can find no trace of the suspected meteor. Saxon and Carter decide to launch their own search, whilst Chipper and Lodderick visit the pyramids. A woman at the tourist office informs Chipper and Lodderick that the tours are fully booked, but they can instead visit a step pyramid, which is not usually open to visitors. Whilst inside the pyramid, Chipper and Lodderick notice a painting on the wall which looks just like the woman at the tourist office. They become separated from their tour group and find themselves in an anteroom to the burial chamber, where they hear a voice claiming to be a servant of the god Ra. The voice instructs them to open a locked door and they pass into the burial chamber, to find their tour guide and the woman from the tourist office, both claiming to be servants of Ra. Lodderick is asked to examine the God’s sun boat, which he is told travels across the sky, as it is no longer working. He finds it is powered by an unknown propulsion system which he cannot repair. Chipper and Lodderick are allowed to leave. They rejoin Saxon and Carter and recount their adventure, speculating that the sun boat was the fireball they had all seen. The crew later blast off on a mission to Mars, where they find the two servants of Ra have stowed away on one of the freighters.
Captain Saxon Berry and his crew, flight engineer Lodderick Sincere, radio operator Lemuel ‘Chipper’ Barnet and Professor Magnus Carter, set off for the Moon on board a Lunar freighter, in order to join their new exploration vessel ‘Space Force’. Contact with both Earth and Lunar control is lost, and Chipper is sent outside the ship to check the antenna. Whilst outside, Chipper hears strange music and voices through his radio and passes out. Brought back into the ship, Chipper decides to watch a videotape on TV, but the TV explodes and he hears the music and voices again. Professor Carter realises that the voices are a reply to the message sent out into space from the Arecibo radio telescope, as part of the SETI program, over thirty years previously
Saxon and Carter reduce the pressure in their spacesuits, in order to squeeze into the airlock. The Space Force blasts off, just as the alien ship accelerates for Alpha Centauri. Chipper hears Jenny’s voice, trying to persuade him to return to the alien ship. Space Force is hit by some sort of beam from the alien ship and loses power. The crew are knocked unconscious. On recovery, the crew find Space Force tumbling out of control in space, with no sign of Jupiter on the televiewer. The crew receive a response to their radio messages from Jenny, but this Jenny is a radio operator for an airbus service on Earth. The crew are put in touch with Control, who inform them they are only around half a million miles from Earth. It seems the alien beam which hit their ship accelerated it towards Earth at enormous speed
Due to his telepathic abilities, Chipper is selected to return to Alpha Centauri with the aliens. The rest of the crew are given ten minutes to leave. Saxon devises a plan for them all to escape, but Chipper refuses to go, as he is in love with Jenny. Overpowering a security detail and stealing their anaesthetic guns, the crew order Chipper to return with them to the Space Force at gunpoint. Chipper escapes and finds his way to Jenny’s cabin, where he discovers she is an artificial intelligence program, created to persuade him to return with the aliens. The crew find Chipper, and they all make it to the airlock leading to the Space Force, but there are only three spacesuits provided, as Chipper was expected to stay. Professor Carter remains behind, while the rest of the crew cross to the Space Force. Saxon returns with a spacesuit for Carter, but the airlock loses power, with the door only partially open and the alien ship about to leave for home.
Professor Carter is taken aboard the alien’s ship, whilst one of the aliens stays aboard the Space Force for the journey to the mothership. Carter discovers the aliens are from Alpha Centauri and have travelled to Jupiter in less than one year. The crew arrive at the mothership and are assigned quarters. A holographic image of one of the aliens, named Jenny, informs the crew that men are used as slaves on the alien’s homeworld, with only a select few used for breeding purposes. Chipper begins to fall in love with Jenny. The crew are taken to meet the mothership’s commander, who orders Chipper to be taken for interrogation.
The crew hear a knocking on the outer airlock door, but they cannot open it due to the ship’s power loss. Power returns to the ship when it moves further from Jupiter in its orbit, and Chipper hears the strange voice again. A ship is seen approaching the Space Force and two humanoid figures emerge. They float across to the Space Force and make contact with Chipper telepathically. The crew allow the figures to enter the ship and discover they are seven foot tall, silver aliens. The visitors demand that the Space Force rendezvous with their mothership on the far side of Jupiter.
Professor Carter reveals he is a member of a secret organisation set up to study the alien signal. He informs the crew that their mission is to travel to Jupiter, where the signal originates, and where all contact with four unmanned probes has been lost. During training on the Lunar surface, Chipper becomes separated from the rest of the crew and hears the music and voices again. The Space Force blasts off for a three year return trip to Jupiter. The ship is hit by a small asteroid, and Chipper begins showing signs of mental impairment, due to the long voyage. The crew encounter one of the unmanned probes and discover that all its electrical equipment has been removed. Chipper again hears the music and voices. The Space Force approaches Jupiter orbit and suffers a complete systems failure.
Saxon, Lodderick and Chipper explore the interior of the asteroid, while Professor Carter tries to decipher the hieroglyphs on a wall mural. Freighter 2, returning from the asteroid belt, makes contact with the crew. Carter discovers the hieroglyphs tell the history of the Martians. They explain that the Martians originated on a planet where the asteroid belt now is, but it was destroyed by Jupiter’s gravity, with the House of Gold all that remains. The aliens colonised Mars and visited Earth in the past, where they ruled Egypt. Whenever the House of Gold asteroid would be in a favourable position in its orbit to enable travel to Earth, the Martians would recover the bodies of their dead ancestors for burial on the asteroid — this explains why so many Egyptian tombs are empty. Saxon decides to pursue Meriankha and Nofret to Mars, in order to obtain the sunstone technology. On arrival back at the pyramid on Mars, Saxon is greeted by a crowd of servants, who assume he has returned from the dead. The servants reveal Meriankha and Nofret have left for Earth. Returning to Earth on board the Space Force, the crew lead archaeologists to the boat-grave, inside the step pyramid in Egypt. Unfortunately, the Department of Antiquities will not allow any examination of the sun boats, so the crew return to Mars, where they find the step pyramid in ruins. The crew set off for Ceres, in the asteroid belt, and receive a message from Earth informing them that the bodies of Meriankha and Nofret have been found in the boat-grave. The message also states that the bodies have been determined to be three thousand years old. The crew speculate that they have been affected by some sort of time warp.
The crew witness the execution of three servants, who attempted to escape their fate by running away. Later, they attend the burial ceremonies of the king, where they board the sun boat, along with numerous servants, and take off for the underworld. Meriankha fights off a serpent, which Nofret claims is trying to devour the Sun, but the crew can see nothing but Meriankha shadow-fighting. The sun boat heads out into space, and after thirteen days reaches an asteroid known as the House of Gold, which the crew is told is the burial place of all the God-Kings. The crew are told they have a choice of taking poison or waiting for death to come to them, but realising Meriankha and Nofret are returning to Mars, they head for the boat dock, only to find the sun boat gone.
Lodderick repairs the God-King’s sun boat spacecraft and as a reward the crew are given exalted positions in the king’s court. Lodderick and Saxon speculate that the Martians do not know how the sun boat works, and consider it magic. They conclude it was built by someone else. Nofret explains that the God-King is about to celebrate his jubilee, where he must perform a number of tasks correctly, or be put to death and replaced with a new king. Chipper accidentally blinds himself with a sunstone ankh whilst recharging some solar batteries, and Saxon devises a plan to escape during the jubilee celebrations. The God-King fails one of the tasks and dies, scuppering Saxon’s plan to escape, and the crew realise that, as exalted court officials, they too must be put to death, to serve the king in the afterlife.
Regaining their sight, but losing contact with Saxon and Lodderick, Carter and Chipper set out to search for them. They find the rock where Saxon was last heard from and conclude it is a weathered step pyramid. Discovering an entrance, Carter and Chipper venture inside, but again are blinded by the light, and are trapped when the door locks behind them. With only half an hour of air left, the pair are released by animal-headed humanoids, who lead them further into the pyramid, where they are reunited with Saxon and Lodderick. No longer requiring their spacesuits, as the air is breathable, the crew are prepared by handmaidens to meet the God-King Ra. Following an audience with Ra, where the crew were questioned about their knowledge of the sunstone, which powers the Martian’s sun boat, the crew are visited by Meriankha and Nofret, who inform them they will all become honoured servants of Ra, to serve him until death and beyond.
The stowaways are transferred to the Space Force. They claim to be Meriankha and Nofret, inhabitants of Mars, who journeyed to Earth in their sun boat spacecraft to retrieve the bodies of their ancestors from Egypt. They claim their ancestors came to Earth thousands of years ago and posed as Egyptian Pharaohs. They explain that their sun boat was the meteor which the crew saw, and that it has malfunctioned, leading them to stowaway on the freighter as a means to return to Mars. The Space Force lands on Mars, with the freighters continuing on to the asteroid belt. The crew awake to watch the Martian sunrise and discover Meriankha and Nofret are missing. Taking a land vehicle to explore the surrounding area, Saxon spots a large, pyramid-shaped weathered rock. A lightning-like discharge blinds the crew.