Look and Read: Earth Warp
Earth Warp is a unit of the BBC schools TV series Look and Read from the 1990s, covering Language and Reading for primary school pupils.
This page about the Look and Read story Earth Warp is not yet finished.
But you can still read my old web pages about the story at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on this link:
Look and Read.myby.co.uk - Earth Warp
Remember how everyone was all hung up on pollution and stuff in the early 90s? Well here's Look and Read reaction to that - a story involving a funny alien boy coming to Earth and helping some kids from a seaside town to put a stop to the bad pollution coming from an evil factory.
This story somewhat of an epilogue to Weeks-era Look and Read: Charles Collingwood's gone but Derek Griffiths is still around, singing and playing a Wordy-esque "language probe" in the in-between bits, which are set in a local newspaper office. There's still the old song lyrics, but the music has been altered to remove all traces of a tune and the animations have been replaced with live action cartoony sequences: they've even got an actor playing Bill the Brickie!
It's very possible that writer David Angus was a long-term Look and Read fan and purposefully hid references to earlier stories in Earth Warp... For instance, when the children first meet Ollie, a boy from space, he talks in funny beeping noises just like Peep-Peep out of The Boy From Space; the learning bits are based in a newspaper office, as were the learning bits to The King's Dragon; and one episode of the radio spin-off Space Warp revolves around a giant weather computer that could come right out of Cloud Burst (actually it couldn't - there was no weather computer in Cloud Burst, but many people seem to have the impression that there was).
The Story
A hundred years ago an alien race sent a pollution-monitoring probe to the planet Earth. In the present day the probe surfaces from the sea near Southbeach, detects the terrible pollution coming from a nearby chemical factory owned by the local fatcat Mr Belcher, and sends out a distress signal. This calls one of the aliens down to earth to investigate. He is befriended by three local children - Martin, Jenny and Amina - and reveals that Earth's atmosphere makes things from his planet be clumsy (i.e. malfunction), so he keeps falling over and the probe is going to explode and blow Southbeach up. The alien boy talks in strange beeping noises, but is able to translate his speech into English, revealing that his name is Ollie.</
In brief then: Southbeach is suffering from an outbreak of a mystery illness which is turning away clients from Martin's mum's hotel; a national newspaper journalist called Joe Lowin is investigating the illness and hears about the landing of Ollie's spaceship and sets out on his trail; the kids investigate the pollution on the beach resulting in Amina and Belcher's daughter Claire being hospitalised; Ollie has a magic glowing ball thing that he uses to revive Amina and Claire; Lowin persaudes Martin to rat-out Ollie with the promise of money to save the hotel; Martin discovers that business is actually picking up on the back of the UFO trade and repents; Ollie gets away and everybody chases him leading to a final standoff on the beach; Belcher finally realises the harm his factory's done and wrestles with Lowin and the police long enough for Ollie to deactivate the probe; everything's alright again
Episodes
Quick episode list
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | It Came From Outer Space | 11 Jan 1994 |
| 2. | An Uninvited Guest | 18 Jan 1994 |
| 3. | Whoops! | 25 Jan 1994 |
| 4. | Code Name Charley | 1 Feb 1994 |
| 5. | Mystifying Magic | 8 Feb 1994 |
| 6. | Monster Mayhem | 22 Feb 1994 |
| 7. | Doctor Miracle | 1 Mar 1994 |
| 8. | Betrayed | 8 Mar 1994 |
| 9. | Hunt The Alien | 15 Mar 1994 |
| 10. | The Final Countdown | 22 Mar 1994 |
Episode listings from the Radio Times and other official published schedules.
| Num | Title | Broadcast | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | It Came From Outer Space | 11 Jan 1994 | |
| Nobody believes Martin when he claims to have seen a spaceship land in the sea at Southbeach, especially his friends Amina or Jenny. But at the dead of night a small creature creeps onto the shore of the little seaside town. | |||
| 2. | An Uninvited Guest | 18 Jan 1994 | |
| 3. | Whoops! | 25 Jan 1994 | |
| Martin, Amina and Jenny find Ollie the Alien on the beach. He has come from the planet Gia to rescue Southbeach from a terrible fate. | |||
| 4. | Code Name Charley | 1 Feb 1994 | |
| The search for Ollie the Alien's malfunctioning space probe 'Charley' continues. Is Mr Belcher's chemical factory causing pollution? | |||
| 5. | Mystifying Magic | 8 Feb 1994 | |
| The children have to cover up for Ollie the Alien, who causes all sorts of problems with his special powers. | |||
| 6. | Monster Mayhem | 22 Feb 1994 | |
| Mr Belcher's factory continues to pollute the water at Southbeach, and his daughter is taken ill. Is it the fault of the pollution? | |||
| 7. | Doctor Miracle | 1 Mar 1994 | |
| Amina and Mr Belcher's daughter are in hospital with a mystery illness - but Ollie the Alien can cure them. | |||
| 8. | Betrayed | 8 Mar 1994 | |
| A newspaper discovers Ollie the Alien and scents a scoop. Amina and Jenny blame Martin. | |||
| 9. | Hunt The Alien | 15 Mar 1994 | |
| Ollie disappears - to escape the press, but his search for the missing space probe makes him weaker and weaker. Meanwhile, time is running out for Southbeach. | |||
| 10. | The Final Countdown | 22 Mar 1994 | |
| Ollie recovers just in time to defuse the probe and save Southbeach. | |||
Credits
| Starring | David Cooper as Martin Rowlands Rachna Kapur as Amina Patel |
| Singers | Derek Griffiths |
| Written by | David Angus |
| Music by | Roger Limb |
| Designer | Alan Spalding |
| Executive producer | Frank Flynn |
| Drama director | Peter Rose |
| Producer | Ronald Smedley |
| Lyrics by | Gordon Snell |
| Zot animation | Sheila Dunn of CAL Ltd |
| Song animation | Baxter, Hobbins, Sides Ltd |
| Reading consultancy and teaching section by | Mary Hoffman |
| Production manager | Peter Miller |
| Production assistant | Maggie Elliott |
| Assistant floor manager | Angela Scott |
| Production secretary | Sarah Harrell |
| Properties buyer | Francis Smith |
| Videotape editors | Nick Peto Mark Wybourn |
| Make-up designers | Jan Musgrove Carole Bernard |
| Costume designer | Pat Godfrey |
| Video effects designer | Dave Jervis |
| Visual effects designer | Melvyn Friend |
| Lighting cameraman | John Howarth |
| Sound | Richard Manton |
Broadcasts
Here is a list of all of the broadcasts of this story on the BBC. Unless your teachers managed to get the video recorder to work, this is when you would have seen it in school. See the Schedules section for precise dates and times.
- Summer 2002, CBBC (twice)
- Autumn 2002, CBBC (twice)
- Spring 2003, CBBC
- Summer 2003, CBBC
- Spring 2004, CBBC
- Spring 2005, CBBC
- Autumn 2005, CBBC
- Summer 2007, CBBC
Related programmes
Links
- BBC Programmes page for Earth Warp
- Earth Warp on the Internet Movie Database
- Earth Warp on Wikipedia
More
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More Programmes
Some random programmes for age 7-9 from the 1990s
| Write Away (radio) | |
| BBC Schools Radio | |
| 1997 | |
| English |
| Y Byd yn ein Dwylo | |
| BBC Schools Radio | |
| 1996 | |
| Religion |
| Movable Feasts | |
| BBC Schools TV | |
| 1992-1996 | |
| Religion |
| The Enterprise Zone | |
| Channel 4 Schools | |
| 1997-1998 | |
| Citizenship |