The Clangers

The Clangers is a gentle, British stop motion animated children's television series made by Smallfilms who were Oliver Postgate (writer and narrator) and Peter Firmin (modelmaker, animator and illustrator). Music (which was often significant in the stories, as well as being theme and incidental music) was by Vernon Elliot.

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. (This last episode has not been seen since its original broadcast, although it reportedly still exists.)

The program featured a number of small creatures living in peace and harmony on - and in - 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 and piglets, though they were pink, wore clothes, and spoke in whistles (of a modulating type: the Clangers' sounds were produced on swanee whistles).

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, including swear-words! 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 felt that the Clangers were speaking their language.

The word "Clanger" is said to derive from the sound made by opening the metal cover of one of the creatures' crater-like burrows (the silence of the vacuum notwithstanding). The covers bear a suspicious resemblance to saucepan lids, and are there to protect the burrows against meteorite impacts.

The principal characters are:

• Major Clanger
• Mother Clanger
• Small Clanger
• The Soup Dragon
• Tiny Clanger
• The Iron Chicken (a "bird" made of scrap metal - actually modelled from Meccano - which lives in an orbiting nest of similar composition)

Trivia

In the Doctor Who serial The Sea Devils, The Master watches an episode of The Clangers on television and pronounces them "a rather interesting extraterrestrial life-form". It is arguable that he is being sarcastic.

Mid-1980s indy-rock band The Soup Dragons were named in honour of the show.

A popular internet parody of moon landing hoax theories employs pictures from the show. It shows photographs purported to be from the Apollo 11 moon landing and points out revealing mistakes such as incorrect shadows, and problems with the stars in the background, ignoring the little creatures who increasingly appear in the photos.

The characters are still very popular. Whistling soft toys of Major, Mother, Small and Tiny Clanger are currently available^[1].

The original series has been released on video and DVD in the UK, and was being repeated on Channel 4 in early 2003.

^[1] It is interesting to note that the Clanger toys' voice-boxes actually play a line "spoken" by Major Clanger on the occasion when the large doors of the main cave jam as they are opening: "Oh sod it! The bloody thing's stuck again!". This line was never actually broadcast as the BBC objected to the bad language, and the script had to be changed. Postgate specifically chose this sentence for the toy as ironic revenge.

External links

• Official web site (http://www.clangers.co.uk/)
• A copy of the moon landing hoax parody (http://www.brainsluice.com/miscellanea/misc/moonlanding.html)
• Link to Clive Banks interview with Oliver Postgate about Election Special (http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/Clangers/Voteforfroglet.htm)

References

BBC interview with Oliver Postgate (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/clangers/interview.shtml)