Alien Superstar

Cult '70s TV show Sky is reborn with Big Finish

- WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD

"SKY HAS NEVER LEFT ME," SAYS Gary Russell, writer, director and co-producer of a new Big Finish audio drama that resurrects one of TV's most compellingly otherworldly characters.

“It’s had so much influence on me and everything I’ve done professionally. I look at so much of my writing, and there are always fragments of Sky. There’s always something about ley lines and dragon paths and Stonehenge and weird aliens with sexy eyes!”

Broadcast in 1975, HTV’s Sky was the tale of the boy who fell to Earth, an aloof, psychically empowered extraterrestrial stranded in the wrong time. Rejected as a planetary intruder by nature itself, this uncanny visitor joins with a trio of local youths, including Arby Vennor, who receives the gift of Sky's cosmic power in the serial's closing moments - a tantalising story thread Russell was intrigued to explore.

“I’ve had this story in my head since 1975. What effect does Sky’s power have on an ordinary human being?”

The original seven-part serial was created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, writers of such classic Doctor Who stories as “The Three Doctors”, as well as 1977's equally disquieting HTV West production King Of The Castle. As Russell tells Red Alert, Baker was interested in revisiting Sky before his death in 2021.