Out of The Unknown - Series Two

Series Two

Further information: List of series two episodes

In parallel with preparing for the second series of Out of the Unknown, Shubik was tasked with producing another anthology series – Thirteen Against Fate, adaptations of short stories by Maigret creator Georges Simenon. To assist her, Shubik was assigned a script editor – initially Rodney Gedye and then, when Gedye left following clashes with Shubik, Micheal Imison. As with series one, finding suitable stories for adaptation remained a problem. On her annual visit to New York, Shubik placed an advertisement looking for stories in the Science Fiction Writers Association Bulletin. One author who answered the advertisement was Larry Eisenberg, whose stories The Fastest Draw and Too Many Cooks were commissioned. Two further adaptations, of E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (dramatised as “Level Seven”), were scripts that had been offered, without success, to film studios for some years. Another script, adapting Colin Kapp’s Lambda 1, had been commissioned for series one but shelved due to technical considerations about how it could be realised; when special effects designer Jack Kine indicated that he had a solution to the technical challenges the script was brought back into production for series two. Five further adaptations were commissioned - John Rankine’s The World in Silence, Henry Kuttner’s The Eye, Frederik Pohl’s Tunnel Under the World and Isaac Asimov’s Satisfaction Guaranteed and Reason (dramatised as “The Prophet”). Three original stories – “Frankenstein Mark II” by Hugh Whitemore, “Second Childhood” by Hugh Leonard and “Walk's End” by William Trevor – were also commissioned.

In response to Kenneth Tynan’s use of the word “fuck” on the satirical programme BBC-3, Sydney Newman issued directives to his producers regarding language and content. In the case of Out of the Unknown, this led to particular attention being paid to the scripts for “Second Childhood” (about reawakening of sexual desire when an elderly man undergoes a rejuvenation process) and “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (about a woman taking a robot as a lover).

Series two was broadcast on Thursday nights at 9:30pm, beginning on 6 October 1966 with the episode, “The Machine Stops”. The new series was promoted in listings magazine Radio Times with a front cover of “The Machine Stops”’ star Yvonne Mitchell and an article previewing the upcoming episodes, written by Michael Imison. The two most notable productions of the series were “The Machine Stops” and “Level Seven”. “The Machine Stops”, directed by Philip Saville, was a particularly challenging production – later described by Shubik as “the most complex and technically demanding script I have ever had in my hands ” – requiring large and complex sets (including construction of one with a working monorail). However the effort paid off as the adaptation was met with good reviews (“A haunting film – and a deeply disturbing one” - The Times) and was awarded first prize at the Fifth Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza (International Science Fiction Film Festival) in Trieste on 17 July 1967. “Level Seven” was adapted by J. B. Priestley and directed by Rudolph Cartier. Priestley’s script had begun life as a potential screenplay for a feature film and condensing it down to Out of the Unknown’s standard running time of fifty minutes proved impossible. In the end, Shubik convinced the management of the BBC to allow “Level Seven” to run to sixty minutes as a once-off exceptional measure. Reviewing “Level Seven” in The Listener, J.C. Trewin said, “the tension was inescapable, the excitement incontestable, more so, undoubtedly, than other thrusts into the future”. The robot costumes created for “The Prophet” were later reused in the Doctor Who serial “The Mind Robber”.

Series two of Out of the Unknown had built on the success of the first series. However, as Irene Shubik and Michel Imison began work on the third series, major changes were implemented.