If you should listen Space Force, written by Charles Chiltern for BBC Radio and broadcast in 1984 (a second series followed in 1985) you might be forgiven for thinking it has a slight 1950’s vintage about it. At least, that’s what I thought when I listened to this series last week. But then I remembered Charles Chilton did indeed write a very seminal science-fiction series for BBC Radio, back in the 1950’s and that Space Force was intended to be a sequel.
Chiltern’s Journey to Space series was perhaps the hardest, most earnest piece of science fiction to ever hit the airwaves. The hard science of Space Force and the character-driven plot are very much in keeping with that earlier series, but instead of a sequel to those 1950’s space serials, we get a group of similar set characters, setting off on a 5 year mission to Jupiter.
It was quite common for science fiction stories of the 1950’s to confine themselves to Earth’s solar system. In this way, they could almost be considered semi-educational and Space Force is a good example of this. Listeners may come away from this series feeling entertained and armed with more information about Jupiter than they had at the beginning.
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