Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s SF series Sky is getting a sequel at Big Finish, beginning in August 2025.

First broadcast in 1975, the ITV children’s series followed a time-travelling alien with solid blue eyes and psychic powers, who found himself on Earth in the wrong period of history. When three human children befriended Sky, they were tasked with helping him find his way home – and fending off the attacks of the mysterious Goodchild, created when Earth’s immune system rejected Sky’s presence.

In the year of the show’s fiftieth anniversary, Sky returns as a full-cast audio drama from Big Finish Productions.

Fifty years later, 2026, Sky has been reborn. But why now? And what does Sky want with the old man living in the sheltered accommodation who used to fight to save planet Earth from destroying itself…

The audio revival stars Cloud Quinn as Sky and Edwin Flay as Arby Vennor (originally played on TV by Marc Harrison and Stuart Lock respectively). Jessica Hayles and Samuel Morgan-Davies play new characters Bex Briggs and Kyle Braddock.

Writer, director and co-producer Gary Russell said: “There’s a golden decade of kids’ TV between 1972 and 1982, much of it produced by HTV and Patrick Dromgoole, often written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin. One of those gems was Sky, a show that displayed an intelligence and sophistication that many other ITV companies tried to emulate, but rarely did.

“The ultimate outsider, Sky was neither good nor evil, neither a hero nor a villain. The same goes for the other characters around him: Arby, Goodchild, the Briggs family – there are marvellous moral ambiguities about all of them. To a child, that offered a story of such depth and emotion and ethical shades of grey, it was impossible not to love.

“To be asked to find out what happened next, and the effect Sky’s parting gift to Arby might have on a human, was too good an offer to say no to.  I love these characters passionately and it’s a joy to be able to tell these latest chapters in their lives – the first audio serial I’ve ever written for Big Finish.”

Russell exclusively added for SFB,  “Oneof the things that really excited me as a kid watching Sky was that it introduced me to the existence of things like Glastonbury Tor and Stonehenge which then opened up an obsession for learning more about other such things as ley lines and white horses and stuff.  No one at school shared this passion/insanity but it’s formed a basis for so much of my own writing over the years.”

His co-producer Dominic G. Martin noted: “The tale of Sky is an absolute belter of a story! I was born long after it aired, and despite growing up on a lot of classic TV, I only learned about Sky from Gary Russell. Hearing that Bob Baker and Dave Martin were the original serial’s writers made me instantly excited to get involved.

“It’s a such a fascinating concept that you could pull off in any era with all its mysteries and dynamic characters. The whole cast was magnificent in the recordings – they were such a delight to work with, and I would love to think that the new series is not only a loving tribute to the work of Baker and Martin, but also builds on that grand story that they set up back in the 1970s, while keeping it accessible for a whole new generation to get immersed in.”