Earthsearch

Earthsearch

Cover art for the original 1993 audio cassette release (Original artwork by Andrew Skilleter)
Running time	30 minutes
Country of origin	UK
Language(s)	English
Home station	BBC Radio 4 Extra
Starring	Sean Arnold Amanda Murray Haydn Wood Kathryn Hurlbutt
Written by	James Follett
Directed by	Glyn Dearman
Original release	6 January 1981 – 10 March 1981 (last repeated September / October 2013)
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	10 per series
Audio format	Stereo

Earthsearch: A Ten-Part Adventure Serial in Time and Space is a science fiction radio series written by James Follett. It consists of ten half-hour episodes. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between January and March 1981. There is also a novelisation by Follett of the same name. The series has been released on cassette and audio CD. Since 2003 it has been re-broadcast, several times in the Seventh Dimension science fiction slot on BBC 7 and its successor BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Earthsearch 2: A New Adventure Serial in Time and Space is a BBC Radio 4 science fiction series written by James Follett, comprising ten half-hour episodes broadcast between January and March 1982. There is also a novelisation by Follett under the title Earthsearch 2: Deathship. The series has been released on cassette and audio CD, and has been rerun several times on BBC Radio 4 Extra beginning in 2003. It is a sequel to Earthsearch I.

Other cast (across the series):

Three crew-generations previously, the Starship Challenger - a vast ten-mile-long survey vessel – was launched from Earth on an interstellar mission to search the universe for an Earth-type planet to colonise. This has been unsuccessful, and the ship’s once enormous crew-count has now been reduced to four. Telson (the ship’s Commander), Sharna, Darv and Astra are the third-generation crew- the only survivors of the disastrous Great Meteoroid Strike which seriously damaged the ship two decades previously, killing the entire second-generation crew and rendering large areas of the ship “uncontrolled” and inaccessible to its electronic systems.

From infancy, the four third-generation crew members (now in their early twenties) have been raised by robots and by the Angels – mysterious unseen beings who run the ship and who only manifest as disembodied voices. Darv, the most skeptical and enquiring of the crew members, suspects that the Angels are merely computers; but the others consider them as “Guardian Angels” and work entirely under their guidance.