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Luna (TV series)

Luna
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language(s) English
No. of series 2
No. of episodes 12
Production
Location(s) Elstree Studios
Release
Original network ITV
Picture format 4:3
Original release 1983 (1983)

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

Luna was also the name used by the show's central character, played by Patsy Kensit (1st series) and by Jo Wyatt (2nd series). 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 character 80H was played by Roy Macready and U2 by Bob Goody.

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".

The first season was repeated in the weeks immediately prior the broadcast of the second season, but the programme has not been repeated since then. The entire series has not been wiped and still exists in archive, something unusual for older children's shows in the UK.


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