Interster

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Interster (Afrikaans, Inter-star)(Author Dr Johann Beukes 1949-2007) was a weekly science-fiction puppet television show made for children and shown in South Africa from the late 1970s. South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) children's programming was quite innovative during the late 1970s to early 1980s — the impossibility of purchasing Thunderbirds forced the SABC to produce Interster, but also the technical challenge offered the opportunity to truly flex the SABC's creative muscles.

The main plot involved an undercover planetary defence agency operating from Cape Town under the guise of an interstellar shipping company. The show mirrored the real world political issues of international isolation facing Apartheid South Africa with the Earth being depicted as a galactic pariah of the "Interplanetary League" due to its cold war with the planet "Krokon".

The spaceships used in the show were called Impalas after the South African Air Force aircraft, the locally assembled Italian Aermacchi MB-326. There was a pragmatic reason for calling the aircraft Impalas - the basis of the models were 1/48th scale plastic model kits of the AM326, so that they would be recognisable to South African youth.

[edit] Plot

The main characters were based in the city of Cape Town while enemies were aliens from a distant space system — and were often viewed as representing black protagonists by journalists overseas. The entire series was produced in Afrikaans.

Plot wise, Interster was far removed from any of the Anderson's stories. There was no unified government as seen in either Captain Scarlet or Fireball XL5 - South Africa alone possessed interstellar flight, and alone was in contact with the first aliens to visit earth, who supposedly hailed from Alpha Centauri, the star closest to Earth.

In the stories, the protagonists were concerned only with the defense of South Africa - the rest of the world was more of an abstraction. Interaction with the Centauri's was the primary interaction with South Africa. A number of fascinating concepts were explored - relative to humans, the Centauris are only the size of dolls, and their ships and technology are scaled to match. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the puppeteers are not just the human puppets, but the Centauris - for they were as intricate, but barely 10cm high as compared with the 32cm human puppets for simultaneous shots.

The plot contained some content of interest to South African adults who could see the political connotations to some of the themes like political isolation and attack from outsiders as well as some characters. One character bore a remarkable resemblance to the then South African President PW Botha.

[edit] Production

The same team that produced Interster had cut their teeth in the late 1970s with Liewe Heksie, with the same sophisticated puppetry making its first appearance in the adventures of a well-meaning but absent-minded little witch. The internal-wiring puppeteers made their final work a set of musical crickets that played music for a children's program featuring two more puppets, Sarel Seemonster, a friendly sea monster which could blow steam from his nostrils, and Karel Kraai, a crow which was fully functional to the point of being able to remove his hat, for the children's TV program Wielie Walie, named for the first line of a traditional Afrikaans children's verse version of 'Ring a Ring a Rosie'.

Interster was produced almost 10 years after the last Gerry Anderson television show to use supermarionation techniques (The Secret Service (1969)) and almost 15 years after Thunderbirds and as a result was technically superior:

Puppets were internally wired, and movable in a large range of motion.
Computer programmed and controlled servos (using Apple II personal computer) provided better motion.
Models had a level of intricacy rivaling those from the Star Wars films.^{[citation needed]}
Pyrotechnics were also more impressive, requiring a special permit from the production crew.

The longer story arc and individual plots were also unusually sophisticated for a children's show.