''The Big Pull'' (1962) is a BBC science-fiction series concerning an alien invasion of Earth. The events occur during early space exploration. Earth came under attack by an invisible force, which took over humans in pairs; one disappears, one dies. The disappeared one emerges under alien control, and his face is now that of the one who died. The fear grows palpable when it is realised that the number of victims is growing exponentially; the time between each attack halves each time, and the number of victims doubles. The hero, Sir Robert Nailer, realised this trend when he was following a van sporting the advertisement for a typewriter which read, "Twice the output in half the time". It was realised that the aliens were exerting their power through the Radio Telescope facility, where all the deaths had taken place, and the only way to stop them was to destroy the base before the next attack, when the number of affected humans would exceed the number of staff there. Unfortunately, the bombing aircraft was late. Again, unusually for the genre, the series ends with widespread panic as it is realised that every effort has failed, the scientists are dead, that the whole population of the Earth will be gone within hours, and there is nothing that can be done. The series ran over six episodes, during the time that the first ventures into space by Russian and American

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

s were taking place. The series was screened in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

in 1964. As of 2017, however, no episodes exist in the archives.

External links

Episode Guide
* BBC Television shows 1960s British science fiction television series 1962 British television series debuts British science fiction television shows English-language television shows Alien invasions in television {{sf-tv-stub