Luna (TV series)

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Luna was a children's science fiction TV comedy show produced by Central Television for the ITV Network in the UK and which ran for two seasons in 1983 and 1984. The first series was recorded at the former ATV studios at Elstree, the second at their Nottingham facility.

Luna was also the name used by the show's central character, played by a juvenile Patsy Kensit (1st season) and by Joanna Wyatt (2nd season). Luna was co-written by Colin Prockter and Colin Bennett; Bennett also acted in it. The show was created and produced by Micky Dolenz, of the pop group The Monkees.

The show was about the domestic life of an eccentric family group set in the year 2040 - although in the setting, the characters are not in fact biologically related, but assigned to shared living quarters by the bureaucracy. Parts of the setting were decidedly dystopic; in the first episode, Luna is threatened with execution for having lost her citizen's identity card.

A distinctive feature of the show was the language of "techno-talk", used by all of the characters, and described as an alternate version of English that had emerged to make it easier for computers to understand human speech. Techno-talk was characterised by the formation of new words from stems that already existed in regular spoken English. It also had echoes of George Orwell's Newspeak, albeit that it had been created for a different purpose. For example, the characters live in a "habiviron" (from habitat and environment); similarly, school is "eduviron"; a child is a "diminibeing", abbreviated to "dimini"; and "regrets!" and "gratitudes!" replace "sorry" and "thank you".

There is no record of the series having been repeated since its first airing, but it has been confirmed that the entire series has not been wiped and still exists in archive, something which is unusual for children's contemporary shows in the UK.

[edit] Characters

Luna - a female "diminibeing" (actually two different characters - the habiviron is assigned a new diminifemale in season two, but she adopts the same name as her predecessor)
Brat - a geeky male diminibeing
Gramps - an aging punk
Andy - the habiviron's malfunction-prone android
Mother - the habiviron's computer
Jazzmine - Luna's alien pet
80H - the sector bureaubeing
40D - 80H's assistant (1st season)
32C - 80H's assistant (2nd season)