REVISITING THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF ARTHUR C CLARKE
Over the course of 13 short episodes first broadcast in 1980, The Mysterious World of Arthur C Clarke took teatime viewers of ITV through the case files of the celebrated science fiction writer – also solemnly identified as the “inventor of the communications satellite” in case we doubted his authority. 1
With only 25 minutes for each instalment, Clarke – “now in retreat in Sri Lanka after a lifetime of science, space and writing, he ponders the riddles of this and other worlds” – flitted from subject to subject in a brief, distracted, almost jarring fashion. The feeling was of leafing through a fortean scrapbook or a collage of nightmares: “Does an ape man walk the uncharted forests of America’s Northwest? What unknown monster of the sea grappled with this US Navy Frigate in South American waters? Why did people raise up this enormous circle of stones on Orkney 4,000 years ago? Who drew this giant, the largest figure in the world, on Chile’s loneliest mountain? And whose hands fashioned the Skull of Doom? Does it bring death?”
The programme was scheduled in an early evening slot guaranteed to traumatise children; my mother quickly learnt to switch off the TV as soon as the glowing Mitchell-Hedges skull appeared in the title sequence. Her swift action only added to my sense of the forbidden, and of a world much vaster and stranger than any I had yet experienced.
Viewing Mysterious World again after all these years, it’s easy to appreciate the show’s original appeal: Gordon Honeycombe’s ominous voice-over; the grainy archive footage; Alan Hawkshaw’s sinister synthetic soundtrack. But that mysterious world now feels hemmed in by the claustrophobic, boxlike aspect ratio of early Eighties television, and many of the so-called ‘mysteries’ have not fared well over time.
THE FEELING WAS OF LEAFING THROUGH A FORTEAN SCRAPBOOK OR A COLLAGE OF NIGHTMARES
Here, then, is my episode-by-episode reappraisal of this seminal series and the subjects it explored, including what – if anything – we have managed to learn since then.
Episode 1: The Journey Begins
We start our adventure with a ludicrously fast kaleidoscopic overview of the coming series, over which Clarke introduces
