The Girl from Tomorrow (TV series)

[Roja]

Oh great! Thank you!

The Fortunecity is available via the Wayback Machine.

This is the first time I have been able to view AC’s Tomorrow’s End website, as by the time I first discovered his TGFT website in the early 2000s, the Tomorrow’s End website was no longer online.

Andrew, I was wondering where you got your information from for the ages on the character profiles? You had Silverthorn down as being in his early 30s, but he was meant to be much older. Silverthorn’s actual age was never revealed, but in the TGFT book it was implied he was significantly older than James Rooney when James attempted to imitate “the older man’s deeper voice” over the phone.

James I am assuming was in his mid-late 30s because he went to school with Mark Johnson, who said that he was 36. I don’t know if they were in the same year though. Then later on, Silverthorn pretended to be the father of Eddie (who was in his early 20s) as well as of Alana, so based on this I estimated Silverthorn to be in his early 40s. However, the actor John Howard was born in 1952 and was in his late 30s at the time of filming, so he was a bit younger than his character. So I can understand you thinking that Silverthorn was younger.

[Yoshimura]

We're going back 25 years at this point, but I believe they were conversations I had with writer Mark Sheriffs at the time. There were loose character bios floating around as well (in paper form) and educational material so I doubt I would've plucked the age out of thin air. I seem to vaguely remember that the TGFT videos I used to borrow from the local Woden library had a paper explanation to plot in then as well

[Roja]

We're going back 25 years at this point, but I believe they were conversations I had with writer Mark Sheriffs at the time. There were loose character bios floating around as well (in paper form) and educational material so I doubt I would've plucked the age out of thin air. I seem to vaguely remember that the TGFT videos I used to borrow from the local Woden library had a paper explanation to plot in then as well

It would be wonderful if you could find the bios if you still have them- but obviously no rush as I know you are currently injured!! ‍🩹

I would love to see them, and I’m sure I’d find them very interesting!

I don’t think TGFT or TE were ever released on VHS in Britain. I have seen images online of the VHS box of the first series, but I don’t know what was written inside the boxes. However I do have the DVD sets of both series which were released much later.

On the TGFT DVD box, and on the promotional posters that Mark Shirrefs posted to me, it is written that Alana is 13, but she says herself in the show that she is 14, and she is 14 in the books. So I believe that someone else wrote the text on the promotional posters and DVDs (their writing style is different to Mark’s too) and made an error.

Could it be that the paper bios or the text from the VHS boxes were not written by Mark, and that’s why there’s an inconsistency regarding Silverthorn’s age?

Or it could be that Mark Shirrefs himself simply made an oversight, despite being a fantastic writer?

I have an enormous respect for Mark and will always be grateful to him for creating my favourite show, but if he told me that Silverthorn was only in his early 30s then I would (very respectfully and politely!! ) say that it couldn’t be possible, because the maths of Silverthorn’s age in relation to James Rooney and in pretending to be Eddie’s father literally would not add up. If Silverthorn was that young, then he would be claiming to have fathered Eddie before he was old enough to grow facial hair!!

Even the best writers can make small continuity errors as they have a lot of different threads of their story to think about and lots of subplots going on with different characters at the same time. Usually these little errors go by unnoticed except by ultra observant people, OR by hardcore fans like me who have re-watched their favourite show several times and suddenly notice them many years later.

For example the name of Jenny’s school changed from Eastlake (first series, when the children phoned the school and used PJ to imitate Irene’s voice) to Eastwood (second series, when James was at the police station) and finally Eastern (written on the equipment cases when James and Irene pretended to be film makers). I would be amazed if there was any TV show or film in existence in which zero mistakes were made at all!!

I thought it was amazing how many different subplots and different alternate universes Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson had going on all at once when they wrote Spellbinder: Land Of The Dragon Lord. Usually when there are that many characters and subplots (for example, in a soap opera) there are a whole team of writers working on the various storylines. But somehow Mark and John were able to keep track and pull it off, and I didn’t notice any errors in Dragon Lord, although I have only watched that series once, whereas I have lost count of how many times I have watched TGFT and TE over the years.

Another possible explanation could be that Mark wrote the bios at a very early stage, possibly before writing the script and prior to the casting and production of the show?

Perhaps he originally intended for Silverthorn to be younger, before coming up with the plot device of Eddie pretending to be Alana’s brother at the Children’s Home, a moment that in my view was comedy gold during an otherwise very scary scene, the way Eddie popped up with a big grin and said “Hello sis!!”

If Silverthorn was in his early 30s then he could convincingly claim to be Alana’s father but not Eddie’s, but since the actor cast as Silverthorn was closer to 40, I could imagine Mark Shirrefs thinking “Hmmm, actually he could get away with claiming Eddie was his son too, that could be funny…”

Incidentally, I think that Silverthorn’s plan and fake story to abduct Alana was one of the most clever and creative ideas Silverthorn came up with. It was absolutely foolproof, unlike some of his other more reckless and impulsive ideas.

I guess this was because at that point in the story, Silverthorn was in such a dire situation, having run out of medication and needing to capture Alana so that she could heal him. It was a matter of life and death, so he couldn’t afford to f**k it up, or allow Eddie to f**k it up (apologies to the Admin if we aren’t allowed to swear on this forum!! ). And he had to carefully think through every detail.

He knew that Alana would be terrified upon seeing him and would freak out and try and escape, so he invented an elaborate backstory about her being mentally ill. A story that would be much more convincing to people in 1990 than Alana’s claims that she and Silverthorn were from the future, which were of course 100% true, but would sound like paranoid delusions to everybody else.

He also wanted to get Alana out of there as quickly as possible without the staff becoming suspicious, but having his chauffeur Eddie grab and physically drag Alana out of the building would be an inappropriate and disturbing sight. But if Alana’s big brother was to turn up and physically restrain Alana under the guise of giving her a big hug… that would be perfect.

This writing was a perfect example of the writers putting themselves inside a character’s head and vividly imagining how the character would be thinking in a situation!

[Yoshimura]

Another error that bugged me is in tomorrow's end with the punk rock tickets being for February 17th 2pm. Alana just went back a few days or at most a few weeks before. Now she was there for a month and in Australia between Christmas and 31st January is ALWAYS summer holidays in Australia and Alana went to school, so that always kinda bugged me, even though it's such a slight thing.

[Roja]

Oh wow, I never thought about the school holidays thing in the show!! I guess because I live in the Northern Hemisphere where the seasons are the opposite way around.

I DID, however, wonder about what time of the year Tomorrow’s End (set in February 1990) was filmed, when I re-watched one of the episodes earlier this year. It was the episode when Petey pretended he was going to bed early but then sneaked out and rode to Silverthorn’s mansion on his bike. When Petey told Jenny he was tired and was going to bed, Jenny said that it was only 7pm. But when Petey went out immediately after this, it was already pitch black dark outside. And it suddenly occurred to me “Hey, it’s supposed to be summer, why is it dark that early?!” And also, I think in the same episode, during a couple of the scenes at night I noticed Eddie’s nose was running from the cold!!

Another thing I thought was maybe a possible inconsistency was when Nik read out the date on the concert ticket you mentioned above, despite him not being able to read well enough to be able to read the title of a record in his collection when he first met Jenny. He said he couldn’t read much, so Jenny had to read it out for him. HOWEVER, it also occurred to me that Nik may have learned to read important things like the months of the year and in that case, it isn’t a writing inconsistency.

[Roja]

A continuity error that took me decades to notice, but once I spotted it, I couldn’t unsee it…

This isn’t a writers mistake, but something that occurred on set when the scenes were being shot: The TimeGate parts suddenly appearing in the Moddie Chamber in the final episode of Tomorrow’s End.

When Petey pretends to be a moddie, tricks the technician, locks her in the cage and leaves her there, the TimeGate parts aren’t in the room. Then when Draco and Silverthorn enter the Moddie Chamber and the technician is still there shouting for help, the parts are in there, propped against the wall.

There’s also an editing error, where the scene of Hoffman reprimanding Draco for not launching the supply ships on time was put into episode 11 of TE when in fact it was supposed to be Draco’s very first scene, much earlier in the series. In the book, the scenes are in the correct order.

And a small error that occurred in the script was Vance saying that the ships would be launched in an hour and then in a later scene, he says “Launch will be in 2 hours”.

[Roja]

There’s only one error in TGFT and TE that bugs me to the point of finding it annoying, and it might not be as big as some other errors, but as a very visually minded person, an artist, a tattooed person AND a Silverthorn fan, it really bugs me personally…

All the inconsistencies with Alana’s and Silverthorn’s tattoos!!

This was due to the fact that there were different makeup artists, and clearly no-one had bothered to take photos of the fake tattoos to maintain continuity between applications. A common practice on TV shows at the time was for the makeup artists to take a Polaroid of the finished makeup so that other makeup artists could replicate it as accurately as possible for subsequent shoots, but this wasn’t done on TGFT, which was a pity, as in other ways so much attention was paid to detail and the quality of production was amazing considering the budget limitations.

Anyway, as a result, Alana’s facial tattoos migrated from her cheek to higher up the side of her face between the first and second series, and with Silverthorn’s ID tattoos there were several mistakes…

In the first episode, the sequence of numbers and letters on one of his arms is completely different to in the rest of the series.

For the rest of the show, the letters and numbers remained consistent… however, in the scene where he climbed through Jenny’s bedroom window, the ID code for his right arm was painted/drawn onto his left arm, and vice versa.

And for Tomorrow’s End, his ID tattoos were much, much smaller than in the first series.

And, when Silverthorn dived into the sea dressed in white clothes to save the drowning boy, his sleeves became transparent when wet… and you could clearly see that the makeup artists hadn’t bothered to do his tattoos for that scene.

It’s something that I try my best in my head to correct when I watch the scenes, imagining Alana and Silverthorn’s tattoos staying the same through the show! And when I’ve done fan art of the characters, I’ve done my best to keep their tattoos looking consistent in my drawings.

[Roja]

I think that Fanat is going to be very excited to see this…

AC aka Yoshimura has sent me some photos he took of the filming location of the Science Dome in the year 3000, which in real life is called The Shine Dome and is home to the Australian Academy Of Science. I had assumed that all the TGFT filming locations were in Sydney, but the Shine Dome is in Canberra!! I had no idea!!








Location coordinates:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZadWLLkMKvt7DJhC7

At the very beginning of this thread, Fanat was trying to locate the garden in the first episode of TGFT. It must also be in Canberra, near the Shine Dome!!

Anyway, there are lots more pictures of The Shine Dome on the internet. It looks very pretty lit up at night! I was also shocked to discover how old the building was- it looks very futuristic, but it was built in 1959, before Yuri Gagarin was the first human to fly into space and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon!! 🫨

Definitely the architect was ahead of their time!! It looks much more futuristic than London’s Millenium Dome, which was built much later in the late 1990s.

Shine Dome Official Website:

https://shinedome.org.au/

[Fanat]

Andrew Yoshimura and Roja, thank you very much for taking pictures of this dome and posting them here! I've been keen on Australia since I watched Spellbinder for the first time in my life in 2000 and I know really, really much about this amazing country, in particular about its major cities and their landmarks, but I've never heard of this dome.

However, I'm not convinced this is TGFT dome. The main reason of my doubt is that TGFT dome looks like it's not a real building but an image. Its surface color and shades are pretty smooth, without any noise:



Secondly, TGFT dome curvature is not exactly the same as the Shine Dome curvature. When approaching its edge, TGFT dome roof goes towards the ground slightly faster than the Shine Dome roof:


Australian Academy of Science - The Shine Dome
Bidgee, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Are there any clues to prove that the Shine Dome in Canberra was used in TGFT? Perhaps Mark or Nick confirmed that?

[Roja]

Apologies Fanat, I now realise that I made a mistake in my last post!!

I assumed that the scenes were filmed in Canberra and that the special effects department superimposed the shiny white finish onto the Shine Dome, along with adding those tall crystal energy generators and the tunnel entrance to the scene. But AC has now messaged me to say that the Science Dome was completely computer generated, and its look was just BASED ON the Shine Dome in Canberra.

I had assumed I had solved the mystery about the Swains Gardens location, because the Shine Dome is in Gordon Street and the gardens were in a place called Gordon! Oh well!!