Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was a dramatisation of a science fiction short story. Some were written directly for the series, but most were adaptations of already published stories.
The first three years were exclusively science fiction, but that genre was abandoned in the final year in favour of horror/fantasy stories. A number of episodes were wiped during the early 1970s, as was standard procedure at the time. A large number of episodes are still missing but some do turn up from time to time; for instance, Level Seven from series two, originally broadcast on 27 October 1966 was returned to the BBC from the archives of a European broadcaster in January 2006.
A PERSONALLY TRANSCRIBED EXCERPT FROM CHARLES HAZLEWOOD’S TALK. “A fundamental and really viscerally important experience to me in terms of music was my adventures in South Africa—this most dizzingly musical country on the planet, in my view. But, a country which through its musical culture has taught me one fundamental lesson: that through music-making can come deep levels of fundamental, life-giving trust.
“Back in 2000, I had the opportunity to go to South Africa to form a new opera company. So, I went out there, and I auditioned, mainly in rural township locations right around the country, about two thousand singers. Pulled together a company of forty of the most jaw-droppingly amazing young performers the majority of whom were black; but there were a handful of white performers. Now, what emerged early on in the first rehearsal periods was that one of those white performers had in his previous incarnation been a member of the South African police force. And, in the last years of the old regime, he would routinely be detailed to go into the townships to aggress the community.
“You can imagine what this knowledge did to the temperature in the [rehearsal] room, in the general atmosphere. Let’s be under no illusions. In South Africa, the relationship most devoid of trust is that between a white policeman and a black community. How do we recover from that, ladies and gentlemen? Simply through singing. We sang; we sang; we sang. And amazingly, new trust grew and indeed friendships blossomed. That showed me such a fundamental truth that music-making and other forms of creativity can so often go to places where mere words cannot.”