Clangers

"Soup Dragon" redirects here. For the Scottish alternative rock band, see The Soup Dragons.

Clangers
Format	Children's television
Created by	Oliver Postgate
Narrated by	Oliver Postgate
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	26 (plus one special)
Production
Running time	10 minutes per episode
Production company(s)	Smallfilms
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC1
Original run	16 November 1969 (1969-11-16) – 10 October 1974 (1974-10-10)

Clangers is a popular British stop motion animated children's television series of short stories about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and in, a small blue planet (quite similar to, but not intended to be, the Moon). They speak in whistles, and eat green soup supplied by the Soup Dragon. The programmes were originally broadcast by the BBC from 1969-1972.

The series was made by Smallfilms, the company set up by Oliver Postgate (writer and narrator) and Peter Firmin (modelmaker, animator and illustrator). Firmin designed the characters and his wife knitted and 'dressed' the Clangers. Music – which was often part of the story – was by Vernon Elliott.

Background

The Clangers originated in a series of children's books which originated from another Smallfilms production, Noggin the Nog. Publishers Kay and Ward created a series of books from each of the Noggin the Nog episodes, which were then extended into the series called Noggin First Reader, a series aimed at learn to read and initial reading skills.^[1]

In the 1967 published story Noggin and the Moon Mouse, a new horse-trough was put up in the middle of the town in the North-Lands. A spacecraft hurtled down and splashed into it, and the top unscrewed and out came a largish, mouse-like character in a duffel coat, who wanted fuel for his spacecraft. He showed Nooka and the children that what he needed was vinegar and soap-flakes… so they filled up the various tanks up in this little spherical ship and took off in a dreadful cloud smelling of vinegar and soap-flakes, covering the town with bubbles.^[1]

Storyline

In 1969, the BBC asked Smallfilms to produce a new series for colour television, but did not specify any particular storyline. Postgate concluded that in light of space exploration being topical, the new series had to be set in space. Postgate adapted the Moonmouse from the earlier story, removing their tails as Postgate explained "because it kept getting into the soup, and wore armour against the space debris that kept falling onto the planet lost from other places, like television sets and bits of an Iron Chicken."^[1]

Effectively a sitcom, Postgate described the Clangers as basically a family set in space. The Clangers were small creatures living in peace and harmony on - and inside - a small, hollow planet, far far away, nourished by Blue String Pudding, and Green Soup harvested from the planet's volcanic soup wells by the Soup Dragon. The Clangers looked similar to mice, anteaters and, from their pink colour, pigs. They wore clothes reminiscent of Roman armour and spoke in whistles. The word "Clanger" is said to derive from the sound made by opening the metal cover of one of the creatures' crater-like burrows. Each of these is covered with a door made from an old metal dustbin lid, which is there to protect against meteorite impacts.

During production, the Clangers grew in size from the first to the last episode, to allow Firmin to use an Action man model figure in "The Rock Collector."^[1]

Production

The first episode was broadcast by the BBC on November 16, 1969 and a further twenty-five episodes were made. The twenty sixth episode was broadcast on November 10, 1972 and the final Clangers programme was a four minute election special on October 10, 1974. The election special has not been seen since its original broadcast, although it still exists in the BBC archive. A short clip is available at the BBC's website.^[2]

The original Mother Clanger puppet was stolen in 1972.^[3]

Major Clanger and the second Mother Clanger are on display at the Rupert Bear Museum.^[4]

Characters

The principal characters are:

Clangers

• Granny Clanger
• Major Clanger
• Mother Clanger
• Small Clanger
• Tiny Clanger

Other inhabitants

• The Soup Dragon – A benign creature with a penchant for Green Soup
• Baby Soup Dragon – The Soup Dragon's child
• Froglets – Small orange aliens with black stalk-like legs and large eyes who travel around in a top hat.
• The Cloud - A cotton wool cloud which floats over the surface of the planet. It has musical rain drops.

Visitors

These appeared in only one or two episodes each.

• The Iron Chicken – A "bird" made of scrap metal (modelled from Meccano), which lives in an orbiting nest made of metallic junk. (The pieces were found around the Smallfilms studio.)
• Hoots – Small horn-like creatures with three legs, that speak like trumpets.
• A Spaceman – An astronaut, who arrives to collect rock samples.

Music and sound effects

One of the most noted aspects of the programme was its use of sound effects, and a score composed by Vernon Elliott under instructions from Postgate. Although the series was scripted, most of the music used over the two series was written in translation by Postgate in the form of "musical sketches" or graphs which he drew for Elliott who would then convert the drawings into musical score. The music would then be recorded by the two along with other musicians, dubbed the Clangers ensemble, in a village hall where they would often leave the windows open leading to the sounds of birds outside being heard on some recordings. Much of the score was performed on Elliott's bassoon and also included the sounds of harps, clarinet, glockenspiel and bells.

The distinctive whistles made by the Clangers, performed on swanee whistles, have become as identifiable as the characters themselves and are much imitated amongst viewers of the programme. The series creators have said that the Clangers, living in vacuum, did not actually communicate by sound, but rather by a type of nuclear magnetic resonance, which was translated to audible whistles for the human audience. These whistles followed the rhythm and intonation of a script in the English language. The action was also narrated by a separate voice-over from Postgate, however the series was shown without narration to a group of overseas students, who each felt that the Clangers were speaking their own language.

The song "No Smokes" by psychedelic rock band One in a Million was used in the episode "The Visitor".

Swearing

The non-worded but scored script seemed to allow the Clangers to say almost anything, including swear words in the basic script.^[1] As part of the production, Smallfilms had to send the scripts to the BBC, but on reading the script for episode three, they asked Postgate to remove some "Clanger-speak," explaining that although whistled: "you can’t say that on children’s television, you know, I mean you just can’t.” At the opening of the episode, after the opening where a rocket shoots down the Iron Chicken, Major Clanger kicks a door to make it work and his first words are "oh, sod it, the bloody thing’s stuck again.” Postgate replied that viewers wouldn't recognise what was said, but the BBC said “but people will know!” The offending Clanger-talk remained in the episode, and after the series became a commercial success and the Golden Bear Company became responsible for merchandising, the Clanger-talk they got for the talking-squeezable model was the same phrase.^[1]

Episode listing

Series One (1969-1970)

#	Title	Summary
1	Flying	Major Clanger builds a flying machine.
2	The Visitor	The Clangers find a television set.
3	Chicken	The Clangers build some fireworks, one of which hits a passing Iron Chicken.
4	Music	Tiny Clanger discovers music.
5	The Intruder	A lunar exploration rover lands.
6	Visiting Friends	Tiny Clanger builds a helicopter to visit the Iron Chicken.
7	Fishing	The Clangers build a music boat.
8	The Top Hat	The Clangers find some Froglets in a top hat.
9	The Egg	The Soup Dragon gets broody.
10	The Hoot	A noisy metal creature is retrieved from space, disturbing the Clangers' peace.
11	The Meeting	More hoots arrive, and seem upset that the first hoot has changed.
12	Treasure	Tiny Clanger finds a bag of gold coins while fishing in space.
13	Goods	A machine that makes plastic items is assembled, but cannot be turned off.

Series Two (1971-1972)

#	Title	Summary
14	The Tablecloth	The Clangers try various materials to keep some Froglets warm.
15	The Rock Collector	An astronaut arrives to collect rocks, but falls in the soup when Tiny Clanger startles him.
16	Glow-Honey	Small Clanger wanders off into some caves, looking for glow-honey, and gets lost.
17	The Teapot	A teapot fished from space is less useful than the Clangers thought it would be.
18	The Cloud	The Cloud is invited to Mother Clanger's birthday party, and rains on the Froglets.
19	The Egg	The Iron Chicken lays an egg, and the Clangers try to look after it.
20	The Noise Machine	The Clangers assemble a machine they find in space, and the iron chick gets into trouble.
21	The Seed	The Clangers tend a seed and soon their planet is covered with vegetation.
22	Pride	Small Clanger finds a mirror, and vanity almost costs him his supper.
23	Bags	A Gladstone bag appears on the Clangers' planet - a strange, new life-form.
24	The Blow-Fruit	Small Clanger and Baby Soup Dragon cause trouble playing with jet-propelled fruit.
25	Pipe Organ	When the soup-trolley breaks down, Major Clanger tries to make a soup-pump.
26	The Music of the Spheres	Tiny Clanger is accidentally hoisted away into space by the Hoot planet.

There was also an election special produced in 1974 entitled "Vote for Froglet." Inspired by what Postgate refers to as the "Winter of Discontent" (usually used to refer to the Winter of 1978-79) and his recollection of post-war Germany,^[1] the episode was broadcast on the night of the second election in 1974.^[2]

Other countries

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation showed the series in 1970 and again in 1982. It was narrated by Ingebrigt Davik, a popular children's book author, and the title for the series was Romlingane. It was also shown on Swedish Television in the late sixties and early seventies under the Swedish name Rymdlarna.

Soundtrack Album

Clangers: Original Television Music
Soundtrack album by Vernon Elliott & Oliver Postgate
Released	2001
Recorded	1969 - 1971
Genre	Classical, Children's music
Length	47:00
Label	Trunk Records

In 2001, a selection of the series' music and sound effects was compiled by Jonny Trunk from 128 musical cues held by Oliver Postgate who contributed act one, "The Iron Chicken and the Music Trees", of A Clangers Opera, with libretto, which he had personally compiled.

Track listing

1. Intro Music and Dialogue from "Episode One"
2. The Start Of "Music"
3. From "Visiting Friends"
4. "Clangers running around the planet!"
5. From "Fishing"
6. From "Treasure"
7. "Some Musical Sequences"
8. From "Goods" (This was used when the machine in the episode "Goods" went into continual production of various plastic objects)
9. "An End Title"
10. "Tiny Clangers Radio Hat"
11. "Some Of Oliver's Special Clangers Effects including the Froglets"
12. From "The Rock Collector"
13. From "Glowhoney"
14. From "Teapot"
15. From "Cloud"
16. From "The Seed"
17. From "The Bags"
18. From "Blow Fruit"
19. From "The Pipe Organ"
20. From "The Music of the Spheres"
21. "A short, silent interval"
22. "A Clangers Opera, Act One" "The Iron Chicken and the Music Trees" (Compiled by Oliver Postgate)

Legacy

The Soup Dragons, a Scottish alternative rock band of the late 1980s and early 1990s, took their name from the Clangers character.^[5]

In the Doctor Who story The Sea Devils, The Master watches the Clangers episode The Rock Collector.^[6]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} "An interview with Oliver Postgate". Clive Banks. March 2005. http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/Oliverpostgateinterview.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-09. 
2. ^ ^{a b} BBC - Classic TV - Clangers Video
3. ^ The Sun - Clangers are back
4. ^ "Postgate's genius lives on at museum". Canterbury City Council. 16 December 2008. http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=4324. Retrieved 20 October 2010. 
5. ^ Buckley, Peter (2003). The rough guide to rock. Rough Guides. ISBN 978-1-84353-105-0. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=haEfq-nKqjgC&dq=the+rough+guide+to+rock&source=gbs_navlinks_s. 
6. ^ BBC - Doctor Who Classic Series Episode Guide - The Sea Devils

External links

• Clangers at BBC Online
• A copy of the moon landing hoax parody
• Link to Clive Banks interview with Oliver Postgate about Election Special
• British Film Institute Screen Online
• Knit your own Clanger
• A short clip from Vote for Froglet at BBC Online
• Clangers at the Internet Movie Database
• Clangers at TV.com
• Link to BunnyEars.tv, complete Clangers episodes for viewers in North America