''The New People'' is a 1969 American television series on ABC that focused on a group of young college students who were returning from a trip in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...

when their plane crashed on an island in the south

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

. This program is an extremely rare example of a regularly scheduled network television series with 45-minute-long episodes; it aired immediately after '' The Music Scene'', another 45-minute program.

Plot

The crash killed several of the college students, and all but one of the adults, who was badly injured and later died. The surviving students were the only human life remaining on the island. The island was unusual in that it had been built up as a site for a potential above-ground

nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

which never took place, leaving all of the buildings and (improbably) supplies untouched and ready for use by the survivors. The trip to Southeast Asia was a goodwill tour arranged by the State Department showcasing what American youth were like, but it went awry when one of the students disrupted it, feeling that what they were doing was fake and a way to gloss over what was going on in the country and with relations to the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. ''The New People'' reflected the youth-oriented counterculture of the 1960s. All people over 30 were now dead, and it was up to the young people to start a new society on the island. The pilot episode was written by Rod Serling, credited as "John Phillips."

Similar programs

The concept of having all the adults killed off leaving only the young people to survive was not a new one, nor was this to be its last appearance. This concept had also been used in

William Golding Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980 ...

's 1954 novel and subsequent film, ''

Lord of the Flies ''Lord of the Flies'' is a 1954 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. Themes ...

'', and in the 27 October 1966 '' Star Trek'' episode "Miri". In 2004 ABC premiered the hit series '' Lost'' which also featured a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a strange island. Producer

Damon Lindelof Damon Laurence Lindelof (born April 24, 1973) is an American screenwriter, comic book writer, and producer. Among his accolades, he received three Primetime Emmy Awards, from twelve nominations. In 2010, ''Time'' magazine named him one of the ...

later joked that if he had heard of the series, he would have used the name New People for the band of character Charlie Pace.Before there was Lost...
Entertainment Weekly In October 2005,

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

began broadcasting a Saturday morning series with a similar premise, ''

Flight 29 Down ''Flight 29 Down'' is an American adventure comedy-drama television series about a group of teenagers who are stranded on an island. It was produced by Discovery Kids. The show was created by Stan Rogow (''Lizzie McGuire'', ''Darcy's Wild Life'') ...

''.

Episodes

Original paperback novel tie-in

''They Came from the Sea'', an original tie-in novel based on the TV series was published in 1969 by Tempo Books, the young adult paperback imprint of Grosset & Dunlap. The author was the prolific tie-in specialist William Johnston, writing under the pseudonym "Alex Steele."

References

External links

*
Television Obscurities – The New People
{{DEFAULTSORT:New People, The 1969 American television series debuts 1970 American television series endings 1960s American drama television series 1970s American drama television series American Broadcasting Company original programming English-language television shows Television series by CBS Studios Television series created by Aaron Spelling Television series created by Rod Serling Television series set on fictional islands