It’s nice to see that we’ve been recognised in Parliament, even if there are a couple of small errors. (The 650th programme was in January, and the anniversary programmes will be broadcast usual on the 1st Sunday of the month).
I don’t know if this is general knowledge, but Patrick and I aren’t the people with the last word on the programme. It gets whisked into editing, from whence it emerges usually hugely improved. I was therefore *slightly* nervous about what tonight had in store, but as it turns out I needn’t have worried. Everyone did an excellent job (although I might need to have a word about one or two graphics!) and I feel we did the Sky at Night proud. I hope you did too. If you haven’t seen it, tomorrow night on BBC4 is your next chance.
Enough of the pictures, especially as I can’t always get them to resize. Tomorrow’s program is the end result of more than a year’s hard work by a cast of thousands (well, it’s felt like thousands by normal Sky at Night standards). We did an ‘archive’ programme for BBC4 (hopefully this will be reshown at some point) about a year ago, and wanted to do something different for the 50th anniversary.
Patrick wrote the first script, and for once we completely ignored him as it handed over to me and others about five minutes in. Typically generous, but just not on! Eventually, between us we came up with the idea of looking at astronomy 50 years ago compared to that 50 years in the future. At which point we got a little ambitious.
Those of you who are regular viewers will suspect that we’re rather proud of the low-budget Sky at Night effects. Our masterstroke, I think, was explaining the period of transits of Venus using a couple of hoops and a lemon (don’t mock, it got us our only newspaper review to date as the Independent said it made more sense than any amount of computer graphics). For this, though, we’ve been a little more ambitious and the second half of the program will be presented by a computerized Patrick. For anyone roughly the same age as me, the effect is rather similar to Gamesmaster. The script was worked out by talking to the interviewees - Brian May (on Mars), John Zarnecki (on the ISS) and Bob Nichol (on the Moon). The only constraint was that we’ve been deliberately optimistic - this side of a few pints I don’t really think we’ll be on Mars in 2057, but it is possible.
This left 1957 to deal with. My original idea was to use the (few) surviving archive clips and reconstruct an interview between 2007 Patrick and his older self. The only problem was that the clips are a fairly random selection and it was difficult to get anything coherent together. At which point, Jane Fletcher, our long-suffering producer, had an incredible, mind-blowing idea, and we recruited this man. Jon Culshaw, impressionist and amateur astronomer. Suddenly (budget out of the window) we were reconstructing the 1950s set in the studio, recruiting owners of vintage cameras and bringing the two Patricks face to face.
It sounds like a gimmick, but take my word for it (for the next 36 hours at least) it’s wonderful. It’s stunning to be reminded how little we knew a relatively short time ago, and hopefully that will come across along with the fun. It’s what the Sky at Night has always done - enjoyed ourselves while being deadly serious - and it’s a powerful combination. Here’s to the next 50, hope you enjoy the program. 11.30pm Sunday night, 8.30pm Monday night BBC4, Saturday 7th 12.45pm on BBC2.
P.S. I want to say thanks to everyone involved for an amazing ride, but particularly to Patrick and Jane (mentioned above), the indefatigable Dirk Maggs (the man who introduced Brian and Patrick) for his help with the script and our researcher Phil Rosenberg.
This Sunday’s Sky at Night, at the (for us) earlier time of 11.30, will be worth watching. It’ll be a full half hour long, and will be the first half of the 50th anniversary celebrations. More details later in the week.
Update : See the photo below for now…
We were running around at the weekend, recording the last of the interviews for the 50th anniversary programme and enjoying the lunar eclipse. Spectacular, wasn’t it?
Anyway, with only one more bout of filming to go and the rushes looking fantastic, time for another photo.
I think out of everything we do, I most enjoy talking about Mars and Saturn. The missions to both have brought back amazing pictures over the last few years, and it’s great that for the last program of the first 50 years of the Sky at Night, we’re going to back to Saturn. The latest results from Cassini are incredible and in John Zarnecki and Michele Dougherty we have two of our best interviewees.
It’s on Sunday night, on BBC2 at 23.45, followed by the extended edition on BBC 4 on Monday evening at 7pm (repeated at 00:50 in the early hours of Tuesday).
Off filming again for the 50th anniversary programme today. In the meantime, here’s a very interesting photograph for you - more to follow.
I’ve had a couple of requests for the text Brian used as part of his speech on Saturday. It’s taken from the first in the series of Sky at Night books, and was written not by Patrick but by the first producer, Paul Johnstone. He writes
It has always seemed to me that television is above all a means of communication to a mass audience. That does not mean it should debase subjects or avoid difficult or so-called minority ones. But it is not like a book, where you can re-read a difficult sentence. Nor can it ever replace books as permanent sources of wisdom or knowledge. On the other hand, the combination of immediacy, personality and illustration can impart information more vividly to a wide audience than any book or magazine, provided always that this essential clarity and simplicity is kept.
and I don’t think much has changed since then. Mind you, he also said
One must also mention the dancing girls. We claim happily to be the only serious scientific programme on television which regularly employs dancing girls.
so maybe some things do change!
Apologies for being a day or two late with this, but I now feel the run-up to the 50th anniversary has begun; the royal mail stamp issue is out. Have a look here - I think they’re rather good, even if they did miss the chance to have the Queen’s head wearing a monocle!
Meanwhile, Brian let slip at Astrofest that he was going to be our Mars correspondent for the 50th anniversary show, and I can reveal that we’ll be filming in a studio (YES! A proper studio!) at the weekend. More details soon, and hopefully a behind the scenes shot or two.
Let me tell you the story of this weekend’s program. The first few months of my time on the Sky at Night were dominated by thoughts of Mars. Looking back at the list of programs, it appears that we didn’t do as much as I thought we had to cover the arrival of Mars Express, Spirit and Opportunity at the planet but they were much in our mind throughout.
One of the first questions Patrick asked in our February 2004 program was ‘why only a 90 day mission’ for Spirit and Opportunity, and at the time we’d agreed that we’d do another Mars program once their mission had ended. Eventually, we gave up and this month’s program is, as I’ve already said, a double length special about missions to Mars.
I went up to Birmingam on Thursday to record the last of the voiceover, and - thanks to the hard work of the producer and (small) team - it’s looking good. There are so many incredible images around that it’s easy to make a beautiful program. Enjoy!
