The science fiction Counterstrike, made by the BBC, had a long journey to birth and a short life Broadcast in the autumn of 1969, it’s been largely forgotten.
It was originally conceived by Tony Williamson (who had been involved in The Avengers and Adam Adamant Lives! and was also working on The Champions). The premise was that an alien invasion of Earth was being planned and was being fought a man called Simon Cain. The BBBC liked the idea and commissioned 13 episodes : Williamson began writing some of them and also commissioned episodes from well-known writers such as Malcolm Hulke, John Lucarotti and Antony Skene. A pilot episode “Mark of Cain” was filmed in December 1966 with Barry Ingham as Cain and Jennifer Daniel as Dr Martha Scott, while the theme tune was composed by Delia Derbyshire. ( It was never broadcast and is missing presumed wiped).
But then the BBC pulled the plug on further development because ATV has started broadcasting the American series The Invaders – created by Larry Cohen – which had a very similar plot to Counterstrike. Roy Thinnes starred as David Vincent who has become aware that the Earth is under threat from alien invaders who look like humans, and tries to alert humanity to its danger It ran for two seasons.
In 1968 the BBC reactivated development of Counterstrike, purchasing the series idea from Williamson who played no further part in the series. The main character was renamed Simon King, now played by Jon Finch, an alien “‘observer” sent to Earth to protect it, while Sarah Brackett played Mary, a medical researcher. Only ten episodes were made – of which nine were transmitted Of these four have survived which I have been able to watch.
The opening titles began with shots of space, stars and galaxies with an ominous voiceover: A distant star. A dying planet. A race of desperate men seeking another home, another world to take over. One man is trying to stop them. A man not of this world… You can watch this here
King is then shown driving a sportscar at speed (accompanied by an upbeat soundtrack which reminds me of Tomorrow’s World along roads and a beach, promising that this was going to be a fast, action-filled series in the spirit of The Avengers, The Saint and Adam Adamant Lives! It did not quite turn out that way…(You can watch the titles here )
‘King’s Gambit’ broadcast 8 September 1969
This was written by Patrick Alexander and directed by Vere Lorimer. The cast included Noel Johnson, Clive Merrison and Tom Kempinski.
King investigates what is going on at an electronic factory in Penfield, Sussex where UFOs have been reported in the area. Before he arrives there is accident in the research lab where electronic devices are being assembled, caused by Evans who is sacked. A man called Jeffries is injured, but is not taken to hospital but to the sick bay. When the staff threaten to walk out Scaife, one of two men running the firm, operates a futuristic device which freezes the staff. He makes a speech to the immobile humans: I realise you are upset about Jeffries. That’s perfectly natural, we all are. But I can assure you he is having the best possible treatment..there is no cause for alarm. But there is a great deal of work to be done. We are are the critical phase of a world marketing operation which cannot be delayed..I am going to ask you to work even harder than before but even more carefully. He then unfreezes the staff and they return to work.
Posing as a science journalist King interviews Skate and his colleague Baldock who show him their new product; a small transister radio but with no transisters, run instead by a crystal and a radioactive cell., which will be sold worldwide. But when King asks about the accident (which he heard about from Evans on the way in) they freeze him also with Baldock instructing him: I suggest you forget any gossip you overheard. His reaction to the ultrasonic pulse puzzles them and they investigate his background although this only reveals he studied science at university. They remain suspicious…
King tracks down Evans to a club where he pays him money for a drawing of what he saw in the research lab, which was very large crystals. Jeffries is there, fully recovered already. Scaife has followed King and orders Armstrong to shoot him when the lights out, but King can see in the dark and is only wounded.
In hospital he is looked after by a locum, Mary, who takes a blood sample which turns out to be non-human. Scaife and Baldock arrive at the hospital prepared to finish him off but he has already left through a window. King makes it back to his very modern house, though still suffering from his wound.
Via video he contacts his superior – Control – a woman who instructs him on how to repair his injured shoulder using the advanced technology in the house. But Mary has followed him and sees what is happening: she panics and faints.
When she recovers King, now completely healed, explains his mission on Earth which is to protect it from the Centaurans, one of whose planets is threatened with extinction. They’re using up their atmosphere faster than it can replaced. Their scientists are trying to find a way to reverse this process. But meanwhile they’re looking for another home. But all the planets capable of supporting life are already occupied, so they decided to invade one of the more backward planets, wipe out the natives and takeover….You.
King represents an interplanetary organisation, led by Cygnus, who have assumed the special responsibility for the Earth and who sent observers here to prevent alien interference…We stopped them openly invading but we cannot stop them infiltrating.
Mary is sceptical – and resentful: And your lot are trying to save us because we are just a poor little backward world and you love us. Is that what you’re saying?
King tells her that the Centaurans plan to use their transister radios to transmit ultrasonic waves to paralyse humans. He is not allowed to kill but with Mary now convinced that he is telling the truth they go to the factory, stopping off en route at an electricity substation where King plants a device of some kind. Expecting King, Scaife and Baldock have summoned the police and play chess while they wait
King breaks into the lab and steals the crystals, but then the police burst in. At a signal from him Mary triggers an explosion at the electricity substation, plunging the building into darkness, and they make their escape. King reports to Control who tells him that no further action is needed against Scaife and Baldock: They will be dealt with by their own people.
“Joker One” broadcast on 15 September 1969
This was written by Ray Jenkins and directed by Henri Safran. The cast included Robert Beatty, Barbara Shelley and Alexis Chesnakov.
King and Control receives an urgent message from Peter, an Observer in the USA
. I am going to die. Rockvale, Pennylee. An accident has been arranged. Can you hear? Is anyone there? Control tells King that Peter has been attending a think tank meeting in New York and orders King to attend, though warning him that it may well be a trap. Mary goes too, although she travels separately. On the flight she meets a general from East Europe. On going into the flat used by the Observers she finds a dead man who looks exactly like King
Terrified, she phones King who comes over immediately. He tells her that the dead man is Peter, and that many of the observers look alike, adding that the Centaurans left the body there : no doubt their subtle way of letting us know that they know about this place. It clears up one problem. They are expecting us.
Masquerading as Dr Westhoff King joins the international Think Tank at Pennylee, an underground bunker, its members coming from industry, business, universities, colleges etc. The participants sit in a circle, silhouetted, and debate how to reduce the world’s population perhaps by war As a system of population control it is foolproof, King suggests. Specific wars solve specific problems.
Afterwards King and Mary driving back to the flat. En route they see the army officer she met previously, standing in the road, but do not stop and run him over. Mary goes into shock back at the flat: I’m not used to running people down, but King tells her that he was expendable. Why, out all the thousand of miles of road here, he had to pick the one we were on coming back from Pennylee?
King receives an invitation at the flat to a drinks party given by Professor and Madame Pinot. Pinot was one of the attendees at the Think Tank. Suspicious, before going in, King and Mary meet up with Martin, the third Observer in the USA, (who also looks like King). He remains outside to keep watch. Pinot, who wears dark glasses and appears to be blind, takes King into a back office filled with electronic equipment where they spar verbally, with King repeatedly asking: Why am I here? It’s clear that Pinot is a Centauran and knows who King is.
Finally, he reveals their plan. They have polluted the fuel system of a nuclear bomber, which they intend to substitute for another bomber, and crash on Berlin, leading to a nuclear war. The blame will be pinned on King. Outside Martin sees the army general Paston, run over earlier, very much alive and follows him to the office being used by King where he prepares to use a radio to give coded instructions to the nuclear bomber airbase. Mary gets into the room with King and Pinot who is triumphant: We have prepared the standby aircraft thanks to my tame paranoid general. One word from us to control base Joker One, the regular flight is withdrawn and our own Sarajevo bullet takes off. .. You will be found dead in an office at the end of trail of messages that sent the aircraft off with filters that clogged…We needed a fall-guy. Your fit the part perfectly
But Martin holds Paston at gunpoint, smashes the radio and orders him phone Pinot. Paston tells Pinot that Westcott is there with him. Their plan stymied, Pinot activates electronic frequencies in an attempt to kill King but these only succeed in killing his wife while he is shot dead by a maddened guest.
“On Ice” 22 September 1969
This was written by Max Maquis and directed by Malcolm Taylor. The cast included David Jason, Donald Pelmear and David Jackson.
In the opening scene Garvin, caught in a snowstorm, is frantically calling on his radio to Aurora Base: For God’s sake someone come in. Listen, someone put a timebomb on our sledge. A timebomb. We all saw it and found it just before it went off. Which of you would want to do this to us? Why Why? The message is being taped but someone is seen erasing the tape. Later someone sets fire to the radio shack.
Posing as lost travellers caught in an electrical storm King and Mary arrive at Aurora, a remote Arctic base, where the sledging party has gone missing.
They have come because King and Control picked up a message directed at Centaurus, and an Observer was lost on the sledging party. Among the party of scientists are two Centaurans (although their identities are concealed in their scenes) who suspect King of being an Observer
. Mary finds a mysterious container in the stores and conceals it in her room, but when she shows it to King later, it has gone. An attempt is made to kill Mary when she is drugged and the window in her room opened to let in sub-zero temperatures whilst she is sleeping, but she is saved by King.
The Centaurans, now certain that King is an Observer, plan to kill him. Meanwhile King goes outside, risking his life as his race is more susceptible to cold than humans, in an effort to find out what the Centaurans are planning. He discovers they have been cultivating a black micro-organic fungus which only survives in polar temperatures. If released, it will stop the polar ice reflecting the sun’s rays and lead to worldwide floods
Against Sarah’s protests King goes out again, ostensibly to send a message from their aircraft. The two Centaurans, revealed to be Cross and Sadler, pretend to go to King’s assistance to rescue him after Sarah alerts the scientists, but in reality are going out to kill him.
However they perish in the cold to which they too are vulnerable.
King returns,alive, just, having been hiding in the burnt-out radio shack. He tells Sarah that his journey had been a bluff to entice the Centaurans outside, but had not told her of his plan because he wanted her appeals for help from the others to be convincing.
Nocturne, 29th September 1969
This was written by Anthony Skene and directed by Cyrol Coke. The cast included Kevin Stoney, Maria Aitken and Jenny McCracken.
In the opening scene two Centaurans confer, one recently arrived who explains that he has come for two reasons: There is the possibility of a breakthrough, a human breakthrough.. Our planet will die long before the previous estimate showed it would..We cannot afford a human breakthrough, least of all now. Mental engineering. We want them to stay as mad as they are. His other reason for coming is to eliminate King. Once and for all
Falling into “a dreamless sleep” is a cliche beloved of romantic novelists as they depict the travails of their heroine/hero as she/he slumps exhausted onto their four posted feather bed. In fact, we all dream every night, as our unconscious churns over our day, our fears and desires, and much else besides. And when we awake our dreams usually vanish, like early morning mist under the rays of the rising sun. Usually.
Of course Haber doesn’t believe George, but is eventually convinced when he witnesses the changes for himself. Using hypnotism and an electronic device called the Accelerator (a dream machine, if you like) he takes control of George’s dreaming, ordering him what to dream. And the dreams come true. At first Haber makes small changes in the world around them – a new flat for George, a research institute for himself – but then he he grows more ambitious, instructing George to make drastic changes in the wider world . But the Law of Unintended Consequences makes itself known, and the results are not what Haber envisaged.
George has dreamt of a Plague which has killed billions of people. He is appalled, but unable to stop Haber from misusing his dreams. Still, Haber is not a power-hungry monster, as George admits to himself:
Ursula Le Guin is one of the most important science fiction writers of the twentieth century, whose works such The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossesed continue to be very influential. Ursula was an activist in the USA in the campaign against the Vietnam War, and The Word for World Is Forest clearly emerged from that experience. Much of the war was fought in forests between the Americans, who had vast military techonology, and the guerilla army of the Vietcong, who had no such weaponry, but were armed instead with an unrelenting desire to be free.
Selver co-ordinates attacks from thousands of Athsheans on the Earth settlements, killing many men and women, and setting fire to the buildings. His friend Lyubov dies in one of the attacks. Selver pens the survivors into a compound and negotiates a truce. This is broken by Davidson who organises attacks on the Athshean cities in the forest. Finally, Selver captures him alive, and tells him:
Pauline Ashwell was the pseudonym of Pauline Whitby (1928-2015), who wrote a number of science fiction short stories and just two science fiction novels, Unwillingly to Earth (1992) and Project Farcry (1995), both published by Tor. So far as I know neither has been reprinted since , which is a great pity.
She went reluctantly, her face strained and set. When she reached the panel, she stood there, a terminal a few inches from each side of her head., and the lights began flashing faster. The room was full of the hum of the computer’s equipment. Slowly, without being told , she put her hands up towards. the plates… As the girl’s hands touched the metal plates, she shivered. She stood with her face blank, as if entranced, and then she let go and swayed unsteadily….”It speaks to me,” said the girl. “It knows about me.”
Fantasies of Possibility 