My wife Elaine once RAN UP the Post Office Tower (as it was known) way back, in 1979. Took her about 11 and a half minutes!
Hard to imagine.

Does any of it make any sense? Even they aren't sure...

I'd never heard (or read) Terrance Dicks' 2013 foreward to the re-published "Shakedown" novel. An affectionate, plausible impersonation of his voice by Nev Fountain. One cannot quote Terrance without doing the voice! (This also applies to Gary Leigh and Ken Campbell.) ...Thanks, guys.

I imagine this was one of the smaller class of Frogstar Scouts, not the bigger, heavy-duty battle machine which Marvin faced off against. That would be more like a tank. (There's a fan animation of that scene online somewhere.)

If you see this, quote with a robot that isn’t from “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Doctor Who,” or “Transformers".

Thanks, I wondered if that was it. (Don’t want to be that guy correcting people online all the time, but a I have my own chronology of archive telly which I try to update with new info - like yours about the Q story.) As I remember it, ITV had just come back after the long strike.

Your w/c date query... Quatermass ("The Conclusion") started on ITV on Weds 24 Oct 1979, so the 25th was a Thursday. Did TV Times begin their week's listings on Thursdays?

From my family's collection - our Ferguson TV set, in around April 1964. I remember the sound the channel changer dial (on the right side) made as it clunked around. Sadly, an unsteady hand meant a blurred exposure. I wonder what was on at the time? Dig the very 50s wallpaper though!

(Rod got his second BAFTA for some of the background animation and graphics in the Max H pilot film. He did use a computer for most of that.)

The style was set by my boss Rod Lord, who won the BAFTA for his work. He got another later on for his contributions to graphics in Max Headroom.

Ha ha! Thanks. I did animation for 13 years then made a lot of documentaries for 30. I art-directed "The Illustrated Hitchhiker...", a big silver book for Douglas in 1994, if you ever saw that?

Yep. The only difference... is that it wasn't funny. ☹️
(Lots of people - authors and crowd-funding supporters lost a LOT of money.)

There's a lot in the TV scripts which didn't appear elsewhere. I've been preparing a book of the annotated and illustrated TV scripts, but the publisher (who did my "42" book) went bust this year... twice! The project will resurface at a new company... eventually.

Episodes 1, 2 and 5 (MIlliways) were recorded in TC1.
The BBC Blu-Ray release in 2018 wasn't perfect, but it did have a third disc of extras, including new HD transfers of the existing animation film. The original DVD of 2002 was only 2-discs.

Yes, the two poems (Grunthos' "Armpit Putty" and Paula's "Dead Swans") were supplied by Douglas Adams, separately from the main script. We gleefully added them to the animation.

The schedule became more punishing towards the end. The early eps were being broadcast as we finished animation for eps 5 & 6. I’m writing a book about it all.

Later eps became a bit more ragged, with several pieces delivered as ungraded one-light prints, fresh from the film labs straight to the gallery edit session….
(by myself on a couple of occasions).

(Cont..)