SIX SURVIVORS AUDIO boxsets and one Survivors audiobook are all available to buy at significantly discounted prices in Big Finish’s latest temporary warehouse sale.
Price reductions have been applied to the series two and series four through eight full-cast Survivors audio boxsets and the audiobook version of Terry Nation’s 1976 Survivors novel.
The discounts are available through the Big Finish web site until 23:59 (UK time) on 28 July 2022. (Just keep scrolling down the page until the Survivors content loads.)
Read reviews of all of these releases elsewhere on the Survivors: A World Away site.
IAN McCULLOCH (GREG Preston) will appear at a London Film Fair event on 11 September 2022, at which fans will be able to purchase an autograph and a personal photo shoot with the Survivors actor and script writer.
The London Film Fair will take place at the Royal National Hotel, 38-51 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0DG.
Advance tickets (for entrance to the event) can be purchased online, and anyone unable to attend in person can pre-purchase the autographing of an item.
Joining us for the London Film Fair is IAN MCCULLOCH, the event takes place 11th September 2022 at the Royal National Hotel.
Ian appeared in Survivors and Doctor Who. Fans of the zombie genre will also know Ian for his work on Zombie Flesh Eaters, Zombie Holocaust and then the horror film Contamination.
THE SILVER ARCHIVE study of the classic series three Survivors episode Mad Dog is now available to buy through the Lulu platform.
This means that it will be much cheaper for readers in the United States, Canada and continental Europe to purchase print copies of the book.
This is because Lulu has print-on-demand facilities in all of these territories and only has to charge domestic (rather than international) postage rates to ship the book to local customers.
We have print facilities located in Australia, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Your order will be routed to the printer closest to the shipping destination to ensure speedy fulfillment and delivery.
Lulu, Where will my book be printed and shipped from?
The electronic version of the book, and the print version of the book for UK-based customers, can still be purchased direct from the web site of the publisher Obverse Books.
‘Saliva only has to make contact with the skin. Rabies doesn’t even need a scratch. If it’s in the bloodstream, it’s too late.’
Mad Dog (1977) is a standout instalment of the third and final series of the BBC’s post-apocalyptic series Survivors. A touchstone in the series’ switch to a tougher, bleaker sensibility, the episode is rightly remembered for its portrayal of rabies and its gripping chase sequences. But it’s also a story offering fascinating insights into the wider human predicament, which dramatize the tension between optimism and cynicism and between altruism and self-interest. Above all, it’s a story that foregrounds the complex relationship between humanity and the natural world in a fictional post-pandemic Britain.
A BID TO draw up plans to reinstate the rail connection between Bakewell and Buxton – which could have led to trains running across the Monsal Dale viaduct once again – has failed to attract government backing.
The Monsal Dale viaduct, and sites across the Monsal Valley, provided evocative locations for the third series Survivors episode Mad Dog – which was recorded entirely on location by the BBC’s Outside Broadcast (OB) camera in 1977 in Monsal Dale, above the Dovedale Valley near Ilam and on the Severn Valley Railway.
A proposal submitted by MEMRAP (the Manchester and East Midlands Rail Action Partnership) had hoped to win financial support from the Department of Transport’s Restoring Your Railway Fund to pay for a full feasibility study of reinstating what it is calling the ‘Peaks and Dales’ line.
Rail tracks and impacts
MEMRAP had argued that replacing the line, which had been removed during the 1960s as a result of the baleful ‘Beeching Cuts’ which decimated sections of the country’s rail network, would deliver economic and social benefits, and boost ‘greener’ public transport links in the Peak District.
While the Peak District National Park Authority, which is responsible for the area of the national park through which any rail line would run, remains fully committed to a “low-carbon and sustainable future for travel and access for all to the national park”, it does not support MEMRAP’s analysis or its proposal.
Because of the importance of the Monsal Trail as a tourist, leisure and recreational attraction, it insists that MEMRAP has not considered the negative impacts – and the loss of facility – that the return of rail to the Monsal Valley would impose.
The Park Authority also argues that MEMRAP has not met the threshold of proven need and that therefore it does “not accept that the reinstatement of the railway on the route of the Monsal Trail” would deliver the benefits that MEMRAP claims.
Unsuccessful bids
More than 80 proposals had been submitted for the most recent round of awards from the Restoring Your Railway Fund. In late June 2022, Rail minister Wendy Morton announced £15m in funding split between nine potential railway schemes.
MEMRAP’s proposal was unsuccessful and attracted no government support.
The nine approved bids were ones able to demonstrate they would “bring significant socio-economic benefits” and presented “a clear narrative around the proposed services and infrastructure requirements.”
Particularly disheartening for MEMRAP’s supporters was that the ‘Peaks and Dales’ proposal was relegated to the largest group of ‘Unsuccessful bids to the Ideas Fund’ – which is effectively the ‘reject pile’. Backers of a far shorter list of schemes were invited to develop a fuller Business Case for future government consideration.
Alternative funds
A MEMRAP spokesperson appeared on East Midlands Today on 26 June to confirm that the campaign would continue to explore alternative sources of funding. There’s still no disguising that, for supporters of the ‘Peaks and Dales’ rail plan, this news is an enormous blow.
Any hopes of trains running across the Monsal Viaduct at any point in the foreseeable future have suffered a serious setback.
