The Girl from Tomorrow (TV series)

[brunogt1]

Thank you Roja and Yoshimura. I took the liberty of redoing the photo and adding the title of the series in French for my collection. Incredible, Yoshimura, you are the 'first fan,' in a way. 1998 was the year I first got internet access at school... it was all new back then.

[Roja]

That looks really great, Bruno! You really improved the image quality!

[andrewd1984]

I’m back again to answer the rest of Andrew’s questions. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, but at the same time, I’m glad that I took the time to answer them in detail because I love talking about the show!

What was the reason behind introducing the Time Gate? Aside from the fact it's slightly implausible they'd make the big time machine discovery (which presumably took lots of time!) only to develop a follow-up mere weeks later, why did the writers/production team introduce it? A cool new thing for the second series? It was cheaper to film (cheaper FX)? Or it helped facilitate the vast amount of time travel needed in Tomorrow's End - and they thought multiple Time Capsules would be boring/confusing? Maybe it was to facilitate the entire plot point around transporting the weapons from 1990 to 2500?

You’ve asked a lot of questions in one so I’ll try to answer each point

About Bruno inventing the Time Gate, my personal theory is that he was working on both inventions at the same time.

I haven’t seen a lot of sci fi aside from TGFT (although I did enjoy the sci fi comedy Red Dwarf in the 90s) but a friend who is very into sci fi once explained to me that time travel is only possible if a time machine can travel faster than the speed of light. So it would require an EXTREME amount of power to be capable of reaching that speed. And it was mentioned in TGFT/TE many times how much power the Capsule needed.

In the first episode, Tulista said that they needed to divert power from an orbiting power station to operate the Capsule. And in TE, the Capsule ran out of power after just a few time journeys.

With this in mind, I believe it’s plausible that at the same time Bruno was working on the Capsule- which I imagine took years, because as well as being a time machine, the Capsule also had a complex built in computer with an extensive memory bank of historical information, and was equipped with technology that could synthesise water and protein- he was wishing there was a simpler way to travel through time, and had his plans for the TimeGate in development.

The TimeGate required much less power to operate because it wasn’t a vehicle that physically left one time zone and exploded into another. The TimeGate physically remained in the time zone where it was plugged in, and it was just the energy field that appeared in the destination time zone (this was why it couldn’t be shut down from the other side).

But inventing a simple doorway capable of generating a massively powerful energy field was a difficult challenge! Remember when Silverthorn asked Macro if they could build their own TimeGate and Macro replied “I’m not sure… we’ll either have a time machine or an energy field that’ll fry most of Sydney”? So by the time the Capsule was ready to make its first journey with a human, Bruno was on the way to making a breakthrough with the TimeGate, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

Also, Bruno had only completed the TimeGate DESIGN at the beginning of the second series-he had not yet built it and tested whether it worked. We know that the Time Capsule was first safety tested with rats and monkeys before Tulista was allowed to use it, so I imagine that the scientists would have tested the TimeGate on animals too… but Silverthorn was much hastier with the TimeGate he built, and took the ultimate risk of testing it on himself!!

As a plot device, I thought that having two different time machines, each with their own pros and cons, made the show much more exciting because there were so many possibilities and so MANY time journeys (because the TimeGate didn’t require recharging, they just plugged it in).

I thought the idea of Silverthorn stealing the TimeGate plans was great writing because it meant that the bad guys had their own Time Machine (having failed to steal the Capsule), which gave them a huge and frightening advantage for a long time. And the simpler design of the TimeGate meant that the gang were able to build it very quickly, which they wouldn’t have been able to if Silverthorn had stolen the plans for a Time Capsule. Plus, I don’t think the technology in 2500 was up to the level of building a Capsule!!

And also, as you already pointed out, the nuclear weapons were too big to be transported to 2500 in a Time Capsule.

Having an energy doorway also allowed Silverthorn’s gang to pump cast quantities of water through it- as well as Jenny and Petey to be sucked into 2500 without being noticed!! So the writers had to come up with a different kind of Time Machine to allow them to have a story where all those things could happen.

I have no idea which time machine’s special FX were cheaper to film.

An interesting bit of info about the TimeGate was that originally (in the book version) it was supposed to be an oval shaped portal, and looked very different to the design in the show:


And this was Alana’s opinion of Macro and Silverthorn’s craftsmanship:


Personally I think describing it as an “artless metal doorway” was very harsh, and I thought the TimeGate that the gang built (at least, what we saw in the show) was quite beautiful. I was really impressed that they were skilled enough to manage to build a TimeGate with 26th century components!! And, I also thought that Silverthorn was VERY clever in the first series managing to build functional force field generators from 31st century plans using components from A THOUSAND YEARS earlier!!

Anyway, back to the questions…

Is it addressed at other points what the purpose of the scientists/time capsule lab was other than for the time travel experiment? Or was that the entire purpose of the set-up/their lives' work?

In the first episode when Alana is trying to get into the Time Lab and PJ shows her a map of the Science Dome, it’s a large building and the Time Lab room is right at the top. So I think that there were lots of scientists using the building for many different purposes, and time travel was just one of them. Although I imagine that time travel in 3000 was the newest thing and the height of technology, like space travel was in the later half of the 20th century, and a lot of wealth and resources were invested in it (although in Alana’s time, they didn’t use actual money any more). So it makes sense why the Temporal scientists would have the plushest room in the Science dome!

I imagine that the Time Lab had existed for many years while the research into time travel and the technology was being developed. And that Temporal Science would have been a specialist field/career that people chose to do. In Alana’s time, children trained from an early age for the role in society they would have- everyone had their “area of specialisation”.

With the Time Capsule, other than specifying a year, how was a specific date and time keyed into the co-ordinates?

The Capsule had some kind of keypad or sensors in its ceiling which I saw Tulista and Lorien activating with their fingers to key in the coordinates. But the Capsule could also be voice activated, like when Nik -who had never previously operated it-told it to travel to 2pm on February 27th, 1990.

Reuniting at least Melissa and Katharine sounds like a no-brainer! Has anyone attempted to do this - they're both on Facebook? Obviously John Howard would be up for it too. Would love to hear from anyone connected to the show!

I’m not on Facebook but I know that John Howard is on it.

I think that if a cast reunion is ever to happen, for logistical reasons it would be better if it was organised by fans in Australia.

Also, organising an in person reunion might be too complicated or expensive, and in that case Zoom may be a better option. Australia (as you already know, Andrew) is such a massive country, and the cast could be living thousands of km apart by now. Plus because people in the entertainment industry have such varied schedules (someone could be getting up at 4am to work on a film set, while someone else could be doing evening performances at a theatre) it can be very difficult to get them together.

I’m not saying all this to be negative, though!! It was just something that occurred to me after the production designer Nick McCallum told me about how he hadn’t been in touch with other people who he worked with on TGFT or Spellbinder for many years. Because even though they had a very enjoyable working relationship, after those shows were finished, they all went their separate ways to work on other projects and didn’t get to see each other again.

Nick wrote:

As we work freelance in our industry we all go on to other projects and people become unavailable between productions - which is more the shame sometimes.

But if anyone wants to try to organise a reunion,then please, go for it!!

Thanks for much for your replies to this and greatly appreciated!

Someone HAS to try and organise a Zoom/Teams reunion call with whoever they can get - Katharine, Melissa, John, Helen, Peter etc. I would love to hear what they're all doing now, what the series meant to them, just what it was like in general behind the scenes (John at least paints a positive picture of what it was actually like, so hopefully it wasn't too big an ordeal for any of them to not want to talk about!).

[Yoshimura]

Oh yeah, I think someone here was asking about Swain Gardens (incorrectly called Swains Garden, Gordon in the credits)
But it's still there and you can visit for free. I've been there before, it's actually in a suburb called Killara. My grandmother lived nearby in Epping so I went as a kid (before I knew TGFT) and was totally bored out of my brain. It was a popular spot for wedding photography. It was a private garden that was bequeathed to the local council after the dude who created it died. I believe the national trust looks after it now?? It's fairly prime real estate in Sydney these days (but was way out of the way back in the day).

If I go past there again, I'll check in to see if I can photo match the area. I'm sure my wife and daughter won't mind a stop to a nice park

https://escapeandexplore.com.au/experie ... n-gardens/

[Fanat]

someone here was asking about Swain Gardens

Actually, I have tried to find any pictures of TGFT locations in Swain Gardens. There are some detailed video tours of that place on YouTube. I watched them but I didn't find anything related to TGFT. It's probably because (a) I was watching the videos inattentively and missed TGFT locations, or (b) video tours don't cover these locations, or (c) the garden was changed significantly over the years, or (d) TGFT was not shot there.

Yoshimura, if you visit this wonderful garden and find TGFT locations, please tell us about that here!

[Yoshimura]

It was indeed changed over the years, I think some of it would've been changed and fixed up for safety and age reasons, but I'm 100% sure that at least a few shots were done there though. I'm sure I'll head out that way in the few years, I'll take pictures when I go. It's actually quite big, or at least long, so I doubt it would be all in one video.

[Roja]

Thanks for the information about the gardens, both of you!!

But to be honest, in the recent photos, I can’t recognise the areas where the scenes were filmed. I think this could be because

1) Swain Gardens is huge, and maybe the filming locations weren’t shown in the recent photos

and

2) Gardens can change a LOT in appearance over the years with different plants growing, in fact they can change a lot in appearance from season to season in the course of just one year!! (I know this because my mother maintains a small garden.)

Also certain details, like the table Tulista and Alana were sitting at, would have been added just for the show.

Hopefully when Yoshimura goes there in person, some areas will be recognisable even if it has changed a lot, like the garden outside Clifton House (aka Silverthorn’s Mansion) which had a new swimming pool etc. I noticed some of the walkways in the photos of Swain Gardens looked as if they were built very recently, so there have definitely been alterations to the land over the years.

[Fanat]

Here you can see some nice pictures of Clifton Mansion, including the interior ones. The entrance hall and the staircase are very recognisable, they were shown in TGFT.

[Roja]

Thank you Fanat, what a great find!!

Yes, I remember the stained glass in the doorway very well, from the episode where Jenny and Alana sneaked inside the mansion (not realising Silverthorn was at home at the time!).

It was nice to see inside the rest of the house too- I had often wondered what the other rooms in Silverthorn’s house looked like- the bathrooms, the bedrooms, etc. On TGFT, we only saw inside a few rooms of what is a very large house! And sometimes I would daydream about what I imagined the rest of the house and garden to look like.

And I always suspected that Silverthorn had his own personal gym at home, which would have enabled him to stay so fit despite eating so much junk food in 1990!!

Seriously, if I ever get to Australia, I HAVE to visit Clifton House!! It’s by the sea too, and it has a spa, so to me it would be like visiting paradise while immersing myself in childhood nostalgia all at the same time.

One big difference that occurred to me when I watched the video was how the indoor scenes in the show were usually very dimly lit, especially the scenes in the Library and the Work Room, but in the video the curtains were open and the daylight streamed into the rooms. Maybe the scenes inside Silverthorn’s house were shot with the curtains closed during the daytime to create a more menacing atmosphere?

It also occurred to me that bright sunlight may have been painful for Silverthorn when he had the brain tumour, so the curtains might have been closed for that reason. And also, in 2500, the pollution and tall buildings blocked out much of the sunlight, so adjusting to the bright sunlight in 1990 might have taken Silverthorn a while to get used to. It could have been that he was recreating the darkness of 2500 in his new home?

[Fanat]

I think all the reasons you mention why it is dark inside in TGFT are correct. In terms of artistic means of expression, I'd say that the darkness in the rooms underlines a dark side of Silverthorn's personality.

As for a visit, I'm not sure if it could be easily arranged. The mansion is apparently not open for regular visitors. It is not even clear how to contact the owners or managers.