| The Living Skins | |
|---|---|
 Bubble-aliens arrive on Earth | |
| Episode Information | |
| Series | Original Series |
| Season # | 7 |
| Episode # | 3 |
| Number of Parts | 2 |
| Original Airdate(s) | 6 Nov. 1978 – 11 Nov. 1978 |
| Writer(s) | Roger Price |
| Director | Vic Hughes |
| Previous | "Achilles Heel " |
| Next | "War of the Empires" |
"The Living Skins" is the third story of season seven of The Tomorrow People Original Series.
A new fashion craze to wear skintight jumpsuits is sweeping the world. The Tomorrow People realise it is not a harmless craze but an insidious plot to take over the world. They must find a way to evict the aliens from the planet before it is too late.[1]
Plot Summary[]
Part One: A Harmless Fashion (6 November 1978)
Elizabeth, Mike and Hsui Tai take Andrew to a clothing shop to get him a new outfit. He dismisses the clothes he tries on, but Mike and Hsui Tai buy bubble-skin jumpsuits, a new fashion craze. Shop owner Wilton goes into the basement and reports to a bubble-like alien, who orders him to go to "the landing place."
Elizabeth, Mike, Hsui Tai and Andrew jaunt back to the The Lab. Mike shows John (who has a cold) the bubble-skins, but he isn't impressed.
Wilton takes a truck to an empty field, where another group of bubble aliens arrive from space and get into the truck.
Mike and Hsui Tai put on their bubble-skin jumpsuits and start acting strangely. After trying (and failing) to convince the others to also wear the suits, they jaunt away. At the shop, Wilton asks the bubble master to make more suits.
John analyzes the fabric of Elizabeth's bubble-skin suit. He finds that it has properties of living matter and plastic. It turns out that the suit is able repair itself when cut.
Mike and Hsui Tai return to the shop, buy another bubble-skin jumpsuit for John, then jaunt back to the Lab. John refuses to wear the suit. Elizabeth orders Mike and Hsui Tai to take off their suits, but they refuse and get on the jaunting pad. John stuns them to prevent them from leaving. In the shop basement, the bubble aliens become agitated, sensing the attack.
John and Elizabeth try to remove the jumpsuits from Mike and Hsui Tai, but discover that the bubble-skins have merged with their human skins. Mike is placed in the medical couch, where TIM stimulates Mike's antibodies to attack and reject the alien skin. They try the same with Hsui Tai, but the bubble aliens in the shop command Hsui Tai's bubble-suit to resist. TIM increases his efforts and finally manages to destroy the skin.
John and Elizabeth go to the shop to investigate, leaving Andrew behind. Wilton takes John and Elizabeth to the basement and forces them into the bubble aliens. In the Lab, the two bubble-skin jumpsuits come alive and attack TIM and Andrew.
Part 2: Cold War (11 November 1978)
Mike awakens and pulls the skin off Andrew, who stuns the skin. The second skin begins to control Mike, forcing Andrew to stun that skin as well. TIM says that the skins seem to need a living host.
At the shop, John and Elizabeth have been taken over and are wearing bubble-skin suits. They return to the Lab and try to force Andrew to wear a skin, but Mike stuns them. Elizabeth's suit has already merged with her skin, but John's suit comes off easily.
When John recovers, he hypothesizes that his cold has given him some immunity to the bubble-skin; he infects Elizabeth with his cold virus, causing her bubble-skin to come off.
The bubble aliens come out into the open and start taking over people. TIM receives information from the Galactic Trig that the bubble-aliens are called ballboids, alien parasites that eventually digest all life-forms on the worlds they encounter.
Mike and John jaunt to a warehouse and steal pressure canisters, which they fill with cold virus. They jaunt into space and attach the canisters to Skylab and various other space objects, with the plan being to disperse the virus all over the world.
The plan works, with everyone on the planet becoming infected. The ballboids detach from their human hosts and flee back into outer space.
Guest Cast[]
- Wilton - Ralph Lawford
- Girl - Judith Fielding
- Guard - David Carter