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.

Related Topics:
British - Stop motion - Animated - Children's television series - Smallfilms - Oliver Postgate - Peter Firmin - Vernon Elliot

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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.)

Related Topics:
BBC - November 16 - 1969 - November 10 - 1972 - October 10 - 1974

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The programme 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).

Related Topics:
Soup - Dragon - Mice - Piglet - Swanee whistle

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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.

Related Topics:
Vacuum - Nuclear magnetic resonance

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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). More likely given the "Oh sod it! The bloody thing's stuck again!" detailed below it's from the ( army ? ) slang phrase "dropping a ( Major ) Clanger". The covers bear a suspicious resemblance to saucepan lids, and are there to protect the burrows against meteorite impacts.

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The principal characters are:

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• 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)
 
The Clangers: Trivia ►