British Sci-Fi Shows -18 - Journey to the Centre of the Earth


(4.5 stars; 8 reviews)

British Sci-Fi Shows No 18 features an eight-part radio serial produced for BBC Radio 4 by Howard Jones in 1963. This adaptation of Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, stars Bernard Horsfall and Jeffrey Banks.

The story follows Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an eccentric German scientist who believes in volcanic tubes that lead to the center of the Earth. Accompanied by his nephew Axel and their Icelandic guide Hans, they embark on a perilous journey into the inactive volcano Snæfellsjökull, facing numerous dangers including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and prehistoric creatures.


This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.

Reviews

Old-timey Adventure


(3 stars)

The age and genre of this classic definitely show, as a kind of imagined ideal of the serial adventure genre at the tail end of the age of exploration and Victorian scientific optimism about man's greatness in the form of boldness, pluck and intelligence. It's a kind of variant on the theme of man vs nature, with the premise being one of the wildest that it almost verges on the fantastical and even whimsical. The characters are stock and flat, but the voice readers for the BBC give them plenty of vivacity, though the accent and tone is very much of the time, which lends once again the vibe of having discovered an old record or dusty forgotten book, which may have been popular in its day but is now more of a curiosity out of time.