I have finally got around to answering more of Andrew’s questions!!
-Would the fact that Jenny/Silverthorn etc would have aged (admittedly by days/weeks) then be returned to their times at uncorresponding points in 1990 or 2500 not have bothered the scientists in the year 3000? e.g Jenny might actually have been aged 14 and 7 weeks at a point when she would have only just been 14 and 3 weeks? Or is that meant to have been part of what the whole issue then was?
I had to think about this question for a while as it’s a complex one!
Definitely, the scientists wouldn’t have worried about this problem when they started the Time Travel experiment, as they had not anticipated anyone from the past travelling to the future.
The plan was for Tulista to spend a month in 2500 then return, and any health issues she may have suffered as a result of being exposed to the pollution or radiation could easily be remedied by the healers in the year 3000.
It wouldn’t matter Tulista being biologically one month older when she returned because she was in the present time (from the perspective of it being 3000), and the future hadn’t happened yet, so it would not be altered by Tulista being slightly older.
And, for some reason, up until the moment that Lorien and Bruno witnessed the newspaper headlines from the 1990s having altered after Alana’s time journey, Bruno had held the belief that past events could not be altered!!
The scientists did not forsee Silverthorn hijacking the Capsule and coming back with Tulista to their time, removing himself from his original timeline, and then taking Alana with him to 1990, causing changes to the timeline even further back.
Then, although Alana (having sworn a Healer’s Oath) had a moral duty to bring Jenny and Silverthorn back to 3000 to heal their injuries and save their lives, this act also would have caused changes to past timelines.
Before they made the realisation that their experiments were changing history, the scientists only concern about their visitors from the past was to return them back to their timelines as close as possible to the moment they’d left (so that Jenny’s family would be spared worry.) But as soon as they became aware of the history changes, they were much more vigilant about time travel damage limitation!!
But as you pointed out, there would still be inevitable, irreversible changes made to the characters lives and their original timelines.
Regarding the age thing, I guess it wouldn’t make a lot of difference if a character was just weeks older, as their lifespan when they returned would not be much shorter, but who knows, if they died a month earlier than they were originally supposed to, then they might not have said or done some important things in that month’s time that they would have done in their original timeline.
And your question made me think about the health effects of the time journeys on the various characters which could have made a lot more difference to their lifespan than them simply being a month/weeks/days older!
When the force field exploded, Jenny suffered massive injuries that she wouldn’t have had if Alana had never come to 1990. So that could have shortened her original lifespan… but she then had a complete physical regeneration in the year 3000, which for all I know may have left her body in a healthier condition than before she was injured, lengthening her lifespan. But then Jenny spent a few days in 2500, without a mask, being exposed to all kinds of dangerous, potentially carcinogenic toxins, and getting a chemically infected wound at the waste dump!
And as for Silverthorn, this question becomes even more complicated…
If he had never met Tulista and had remained in 2500 for the rest of his life, then his brain tumour wouldn’t have been cured. The pills he was taking could keep it under control, but they couldn’t get rid of it -it was inoperable even in 2500, and he still suffered from frequent seizures and headaches despite being on medication. So I think if there had been no time travel, then Silverthorn would either have eventually died from his brain tumour, or from other health problems caused by living in a toxic environment.
Or he could have been captured and moddied, which in the long term is a death sentence, because moddies were forced to work with hazardous chemicals without any protective gear. OR he could have met a violent end, lasered by a Globecop or by someone from a rival gang.
And, had Silverthorn not been removed from his original timeline, he also may have killed or injured people who he didn’t kill or injure because he ended up stranded in the past, causing other changes to history in the 26th century!
Also, I’m sure that when Silverthorn was in 3000 being treated for his head injury, the healers would have given him a full body scan and reversed any remaining potentially cancerous damage caused by a lifetime of radiation, pollution and of having to eat bad quality, synthetic food. Which would have increased his lifespan had he returned to 2500 and stayed there.
-That strange line in the dialogue between Draco and Vance about not knowing about being a child (can't quite remember what it was). Was it meant to have been a joke or perhaps a hint that childhood is different in the future?
I was really curious about this, too!!
Vance asked Draco “What’s a Mum?”, and Draco answered that he had no idea.
It could indicate that family structures were different in the year 2500 (they were certainly very different by the year 3000, where children were brought up by guardians and not their biological parents- Alana’s parents lived on Titan and she hadn’t seen them for years, and I don’t know if they even kept in touch with each other!!). Or it could simply just be that the term “Mum” had fallen out of use a long time ago, and children in 2500 used other words to refer to their mothers.
Personally I’m more inclined to think it was simply a language thing, because Nik had a traditional family relationship with his grandmother (and the term “Grandma” was still in use in his time). Also, it was explained in the book version that Nik was raised by his biological parents before they were moddied by Globecorp.
There is a scene in the book where Jenny sees a hologram recording of Nik’s parents playing with Nik as a baby. So at least for ordinary people in 2500, I believe that family structures were similar to how they are today, although I have no idea what childhood was like for members of the Globecorp elite like Draco.
I would have been very interested to have found out more about society in their time, but I guess there wasn’t enough time for it to be delved into more deeply within the time limitations of a 12 episode series.
By the way, I still laugh every time I watch the scene in the first series when Jenny introduces Irene to Alana for the first time and Alana says to Irene “Hello, Mum!” (Believing that “Mum” was Irene’s name).
How many scenes in 2500 were actually filmed as exteriors?
I think it was just the outdoor scene where Silverthorn’s gang set up the TimeGate and then got arrested.
There was another scene that appeared as if it might have been shot outdoors- when Draco met Silverthorn and told him his plan to take over Globecorp, but I’m not sure. It may have been shot inside the giant warehouse set and been made to APPEAR as if it was outdoors when actually it wasn’t. I originally assumed the waste dump scene (where Jenny cut her leg) was filmed outdoors, but then in the background I saw parts of the indoor set (like the Globecorp poster) and I realised it had been filmed inside the warehouse set.
Has anyone got or seen the (in my opinion) horrendously truncated telemovie/omnibus DVDs? I bought one of Tomorrow's End in Sydney in 2007 and was horrified to discover on watching it that it was am omnibus edition. Other than being an interesting curio, I hated the pacing and the way it had to cut about 60% of the material out.
I saw them on YouTube on the Twisted Lunchbox channel and I agree with you 100% that the editors absolutely butchered the series!! I also know for a fact that both the writer Mark Shirrefs and the actor John Howard were appalled by the telemovie versions, and I doubt anyone else involved in the making of the show approved of them. It must have been painful to see their hard work chopped up and patched back together like a Frankenstein’s monster!!
I also feel very sorry for the viewers who only saw the telemovie versions and didn’t get to experience the full series because they missed out on so much!!
However, I have one -ONE!!
-positive comment about the telemovie version of the first series, which made sitting through it worthwhile, and that was seeing that it included a scene and lines that were cut from the final episode of the complete series. It showed Jenny and Alana inside the Capsule just after it had returned to the year 3000, and Alana was reassuring Jenny “It’s alright”. So that was a nice surprise for me, to see a cut scene that I never knew existed for the first time.
but if anyone thinks my feelings were over the top, I also remember that in the 1990s, hundreds of teenage girls were in tears and too upset to go to school after Take That split up, and there was even a hotline set up in the U.K. at the time to help those girls cope with their grief!! 
Once a week? 
I’m glad that I have found other TGFT fans on the internet that I can share my thoughts with who are interested to read them, even though we are currently a very small community here.
