History Series / TomorrowsWorld

''Tomorrow's World'' was a long-running Creator/{{BBC}} science and technology show that was aired between 1965 and 2003. It was born as the BBC's contribution to the mid-1960's "We're Backing Britain!" campaign, a government drive that sought to reverse Britain's decline as a manufacturing and industrial power by highlighting the very best of British ingenuity, talent, skill and ability to be at the leading edge in all aspects of cutting-edge tech. It also sat well with then Prime Minister UsefulNotes/HaroldWilson making "a new Britain, forged out of the white heat of technology" a keystone of his leadership. As so often happens, the show vastly outlived the reasons for its creation, and it was still a fixture of BBC programming in the very early 2000's. By then the white heat of British technology had had its fires damped somewhat by UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and others, but there were still enough glowing embers left to sustain a weekly digest of exciting technological developments.

* MusicalEpisode: For such a staid show, TW had a tangential role in pop and rock music: in TheSixties, in order to demonstrate new advances in electronics that powered guitars and keyboards, a brand new group called The Tremeloes made their first appearance on British TV. And in TheSeventies, a bizarre left-field German band called Music/{{Kraftwerk}} made its first-even appearance on British TV, performing a strange electronic piece about The Autobahn, so as to demonstrate the great strides being made in electronic and computerised music. [[note]]Advances made by ''British'' computer scientists, naturally. As so often before the fiendish Germans, [[SarcasmMode who as everybody knows lack imagination and are utterly incapable of innovation]], were stealing a British idea and pretending it was theirs.[[/note]]

* MusicalEpisode: For such a staid show, TW had a tangential role in pop and rock music: in TheSixties, in order to demonstrate new advances in electronics that powered guitars and keyboards, a brand new group called Music/TheTremeloes made their first appearance on British TV. And in TheSeventies, a bizarre left-field German band called Music/{{Kraftwerk}} made its first-even appearance on British TV, performing a strange electronic piece about The Autobahn, so as to demonstrate the great strides being made in electronic and computerised music. [[note]]Advances made by ''British'' computer scientists, naturally. As so often before the fiendish Germans, [[SarcasmMode who as everybody knows lack imagination and are utterly incapable of innovation]], were stealing a British idea and pretending it was theirs.[[/note]]

* {{Zeerust}}: Twice over. The studio setting and presenting format looked excitingly cutting edge in the late TheSixties, but never really changed much in the following decades. By TheNineties it all looked... well, fossilised in a 1970's version of what TheNineties would look like, which nobody had bothered overmuch to update. And the show's visions of the future were as often as not overtaken by events - some of the futuristic cutting-edge developments, especially in computing, seemed to become obselescent even before first transmission.

* MusicalEpisode: For such a staid show, TW had a tangential role in pop and rock music: in TheSixties, in order to demonstrate new advances in electronics that powered guitars and keyboards, a brand new group called Music/TheTremeloes made their first appearance on British TV. And in TheSeventies, a bizarre left-field German band called Music/{{Kraftwerk}} made its first-even appearance on British TV, performing a strange electronic piece about The Autobahn, so as to demonstrate the great strides being made in electronic and computerised music. [[note]]advances made by ''British'' computer scientists, naturally. As so often before the fiendish Germans, [[SarcasmMode who as everybody knows lack imagination and are utterly incapable of innovation]], were stealing a British idea and pretending it was theirs. [[/note]].

''Tomorrow's World'' was a long-running Creator/{{BBC}} science and technology show that was aired between 1965 and 2003. It was born as the BBC's contribution to the mid-1960's "We're Backing Britain!" campaign, a government drive that sought to reverse Britain's decline as a manufacturing and industrial power by highlighting the very best of British ingenuity, talent, skill and ability to be at the leading edge in all aspects of cutting-edge tech. It also sat well with then Prime Minister UsefulNotes/HaroldWilson making "a new Britain, forged out of the white heat of technology" a keystone of his leadership. As so often happens, the show vastly outlived the reasons for its creation, and it was still a fixture of BBC programming in the very early 2000's. By then the white heat of British technology had had its fired damped somewhat by UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher and others, but there were still enough glowing embers left to sustain a weekly digest of exciting technological developments.

* AcePilot: the previous life of presenter Raymond Baxter, a decorated wartime RAF pilot; the RAF recognised this and in 1976, allowed him to fly in what was then the brand new Jaguar fighter jet plane and try it out for the show, a coup for the BBC and a delight for the then [[BadassGrandpa fifty-four year old]] Baxter. His flying skills and experience made him the BBC's go-to man for aircraft-related stories.

Initially presented by a team headed by former RAF pilot Raymond Baxter, the show was a manifestation of the BBC's original charter commitment to educate as well as to entertain, and earnestly sought to break down the underlying scientific mysteries into small easily understandable sound-bites. it came from very much the same place and from the same underlying broadcast philosophy as ''Series/BluePeter'', and even diehard nostalgic fans will admit it came over as ''Blue Peter'' for grown-ups. in its thirty-eight years on screen with much the same unchanging format, it became a British broadcast institution, and even earnt the accolade of getting its own dedicated parody show: ''Series/LookAroundYou'' became (in its second series) a blatant ShoutOut, maybe even {{Homage}}, to TW.

!!Tropes demonstrated and explained on this show by the earnest presentation team may include, twenty or thirty years into our future, the following: