Tomorrows world is axed

Think you'll find many of us oldies with Science degrees owe a lot to the 70s and 80s Tomorrow's World teams for getting us enthusiastic about science and engineering as school children.

I started really watching during the "zoom into 3d Brain" era - with the breathy "aaah" music (where the studio was all burned out whites), and stayed watching during the mid-80s trumpets series with the blue cyc with white columns (opening titles based on a blue sphere that unfolded), followed by the drum-heavy early 90s version. I think that was the last truly watchable incarnation - even though I think by then it had moved to pre-recording.

The "baby underwater" titles spelled the end really - though the films were still good - the fun and spark had gone. It was just worthy...

Depends what region you're in. I haven't seen a BBC2 South West ident pre-news for years.

Yeah, I remember getting to watch Judith Hann rehearse in the old blue & white columns set when I got to tour TV Centre as a kid. She had to pretend that an apple was the invention because it hadn't arrived yet(!) And I remember that early 90's set was really impressive (in an early 90's kind of way!). It was great live TV (all those times the gadgets went wrong..!) and there were all sorts of nice features, like that old inventor guy who'd show all sorts of weird inventions in his garage from time to time.

When there was the big relaunch with Carol Vorderman replacing the old presenting team, a little videowall replacing the huge set and the baby title sequence, it seemed to lose it's magic. Eventually every story was some kind of medical breakthrough or enviromental thingumy, and it became sort of the same every week.

It just got blanded down, and I guess sadly the end was inevitable.

What continues to annoy me about the BBC is their reason for giving it the axe: falling ratings.

You can fully understand a commercial broadcaster for doing this, but the BBC is a public service broadcaster and it may just be that a smaller percentage of people are interested in science and technology now.

If the BBC and government are going to insist that we are going to continue to have to pay our telly license I think they should look beyond popular culture and yoof.

I've always tried to watch tomorrows world but it's last series i personally thought was dire. Peter & Phillippa brought an 'air' to the programme, seemed interested and interviewed the guests well. The last series however seemed more biology based with less 'inventions' and gadgety stuff but more hard science which is what the future will be but not Tomorrows World. The last series did try by bringing back the well known pre-baby title music but did remove the bbc.co.uk/tw website and just promote bbc.co.uk/science. TW needs to return with more physics/gadget stuff like the Sinclair C5 and the CD to grab it's viewers back (pending if there are the inventions out there).

Gareth

If they replace Tomorrow's World with yet another reality TV show or a soap, I will blow up my television set!

I am from today launching a crusade against dumbed-down television!!

As far as the BBC is concerned, it's a crusade that you're destine to loose, Kat.

Thank God for the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Civilisation, Discovery Sci-Trek, BBC News 24, Discovery Health, the Biography Channel, UCB Bible, Radio 4 on Sky and Discovery Wings eh?

Aye, indeed, but it's a shame they show so many bloody repeats!

Aye indeed, indeed!! Still, you're guaranteed a repeat if you forget to see it when you originally intended!!

I think Reality TV is going slowly out of fashion at last... Thank goodness. The Beeb seem to be writing off their old favourites like Vets in Practise etc.