Iain Petrie | Lost 1st episode of Bleep & Booster (1964) Blue Peter "recovered" & re-animated in colour. Part 1. @IKP1000 | Uploaded November 2022 | Updated October 2024, 16 hours ago.
This is Part 1 of a 2 part story. Part 2 will be added as a link at the end of this episode when it's done, so please come back in a week or two. Or better still, subscribe ;-). It really helps me when you do that...
Made by the wonderfully talented William Timym (Tim) and narrated by the also wonderfully talented Peter Hawkins - voice of the Daleks and the Cybermen in Doctor Who and so much more - Bleep and Booster first aired on BBC's Blue Peter in 1964, and the first story was shown in 4 parts from 03/02/64 to 16/03/64. It was never repeated and has never been seen since, though 2 of the 4 episodes of this first story are said to exist in the BBC archives somewhere.
Following great work over on the Bleep and Booster Facebook group (thank you Geoff and Steven) we now have a brief summary of that very first episode from the Radio Times, 14th September 1964, where the entry for Story 2 has this to say:
“Booster’s adventures began last February when he built a rocket in his back garden and zoomed into orbit. Intercepted by Space Freighter 2000, he made friends with Bleep, a space boy and his father, the captain of the freighter. Together Bleep and Booster explored the mysterious planet Truga and were kidnapped by the wily Trugs. After a dramatic rescue, Booster returned to earth. But the space world was too tempting to leave for long…”
None of the 14 Blue Peter annuals which have Bleep and Booster cartoon strips in them tells the original story of how Bleep and Booster met, but the first Bleep and Booster story book in 1965 does:
'Booster builds a rocket and flies into space. He runs out of fuel and is saved by Bleep, who takes him to Miron, where he meets Bleep’s father the Captain, and they also have an adventure with a Space Dragon'.
This clearly differs significantly from the version outlined in the TV Times, but it seems this is the closest we can get to the original story unless it is ever uncovered in the archives, though after such a long time that seems unlikely.
I've taken the text and the images from the 1965 story book (shown in the thumbnail to this video) and added sound effects from one of the only 2 released TV stories, Solaron, 1968, and produced an "animation" of the story.
"Animation" is in quote marks since, like the original TV episodes, the method used is mainly animatic animation, which consists simply of panning and zooming the camera over still images to give the impression of movement. To make the images match the text, I had to adapt quite a few of them, adding extra elements and cutting out others, so you do get some actual movement in this version, but it can hardly be called animation in the traditional sense!
I'm no Peter Hawkins, as you will hear, but I've tried to capture a little of his rhythms of speech and something of his accent though this is very much a work in progress and I'm planning on doing more of these in the future.
This is Part 1 of a 2 part story. Part 2 will be added as a link at the end of this episode when it's done, so please come back in a week or two. Or better still, subscribe ;-). It really helps me when you do that...
Made by the wonderfully talented William Timym (Tim) and narrated by the also wonderfully talented Peter Hawkins - voice of the Daleks and the Cybermen in Doctor Who and so much more - Bleep and Booster first aired on BBC's Blue Peter in 1964, and the first story was shown in 4 parts from 03/02/64 to 16/03/64. It was never repeated and has never been seen since, though 2 of the 4 episodes of this first story are said to exist in the BBC archives somewhere.
Following great work over on the Bleep and Booster Facebook group (thank you Geoff and Steven) we now have a brief summary of that very first episode from the Radio Times, 14th September 1964, where the entry for Story 2 has this to say:
“Booster’s adventures began last February when he built a rocket in his back garden and zoomed into orbit. Intercepted by Space Freighter 2000, he made friends with Bleep, a space boy and his father, the captain of the freighter. Together Bleep and Booster explored the mysterious planet Truga and were kidnapped by the wily Trugs. After a dramatic rescue, Booster returned to earth. But the space world was too tempting to leave for long…”
None of the 14 Blue Peter annuals which have Bleep and Booster cartoon strips in them tells the original story of how Bleep and Booster met, but the first Bleep and Booster story book in 1965 does:
'Booster builds a rocket and flies into space. He runs out of fuel and is saved by Bleep, who takes him to Miron, where he meets Bleep’s father the Captain, and they also have an adventure with a Space Dragon'.
This clearly differs significantly from the version outlined in the TV Times, but it seems this is the closest we can get to the original story unless it is ever uncovered in the archives, though after such a long time that seems unlikely.
I've taken the text and the images from the 1965 story book (shown in the thumbnail to this video) and added sound effects from one of the only 2 released TV stories, Solaron, 1968, and produced an "animation" of the story.
"Animation" is in quote marks since, like the original TV episodes, the method used is mainly animatic animation, which consists simply of panning and zooming the camera over still images to give the impression of movement. To make the images match the text, I had to adapt quite a few of them, adding extra elements and cutting out others, so you do get some actual movement in this version, but it can hardly be called animation in the traditional sense!
I'm no Peter Hawkins, as you will hear, but I've tried to capture a little of his rhythms of speech and something of his accent though this is very much a work in progress and I'm planning on doing more of these in the future.
