The New People

It is ironic that the top show on TV in the early 21st century, "Lost" echos greatly the rarely seen 1969 TV series, "The New People'. Like "Lost", "The New People" concerned the survivors of a plane crash in the pacific. "The New People' however was a reflection of the social issues of the day and in the pilot episode it featured the only adult in Richard Kiley. Kiley did a superb job in the clash of generations and made the pilot episode seem like a 1969 episode of The Twilight Zone.

All of the existing episodes of the New People aired only once on US TV and have never been even surfaced on internet tape trading sites. Recently however all of the episodes have been found at the UCLA video library. It would be great, now that "Lost" is such a big hit, to show people....new people, (ahem) what the original plane crash survivor show was like...and issue these episodes as a boxed set....for Christmas....perhaps even track down the original cast for commentary....etc......The New People shouldn't be lost forever.....(ahem)

I will never forget one gripping episode of The New People.It had to do with the budding romance of one of the white guys with the very pretty black female.The person who"tripped"the most over this daring relationship was one of the black males in the stranded group.

The reason I was so struck by this episode was that at the time I was going through some similar"changes"in my own life.I had befriended a couple of black women but also was alarmed and frightened by some of the reactions to these friendships among black men.Some whites were pretty hostile as well but 1969 was the time of Black Power and militancy so that vibe predominated back then.

Ironically,I was a big supporter of black causes(list provided upon request)but on a personal level that fact was often not considered during the heat of the times.

This started off as an excellent, but short-lived series about a group of college-aged students stranded on an island in the Pacific after an airplane crash. The premise was for this group of teenagers and early twenty-somethings to survive and, at the same time, develop some kind social order by learning to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood. The pilot episode was entitled "Day One" and was apparently written by Rod Serling under the pseudonym of John Phillips. The writer, John Phillips is also credited with a "Playhouse 90" episode entitled "The Second Happiest Day". This is interesting because Serling cut his TV teeth on numerous "Playhouse 90" episodes before "Twilight Zone". As I recall, "The New People" aired on ABC in the 1969-70 season with a 45-minute time format. This was one of the odd programming attempts that was done to capture a specific audience, as it came just before another 45-minute show entitled "Music Scene" hosted by David Steinberg. This short-lived series was produced by Aaron Spelling, who brought us "The Mod Squad" a year earlier (1968) and "The Young Rebels" a year later (1970). Of course, Rod Serling went on to host "Night Gallery" from 1970 to 1973.

I loved this show when it was aired in 1969. My Mom didn't allow us to watch it as it was very controversial at that time. I remember the episode in which one girl got pregnant, and then, before I found out what happened, my Mom came downstairs and whooped on me for watching it. She thought it was "filthy". Crazy. It really does have a lot of parallels with Lost. This didn't last, as many good and interesting shows don't. But I would sure love to see it again. It's funny how this one has stuck with me over the years. I agree with many of the other reviewers that this was undertaken as an experiment and was a concept and effort born of the times. What I enjoyed most was the pushing of the envelope of what kinds of social structures are possible in such an isolated environment. I would have liked to see it last longer and explore these ideas even more.

This show was an experiment. It was 45 minutes per episode and it followed David Steinberg who also had a 45 minute time slot. I'm assuming that they expected you to be captivated by Steinberg and then trapped into watching The New People since you were left 15 minutes into everything else that was on. The premise was: "What kind of world would young adults create if they were left to their own devices?" The plot had them stranded on a remote island that was designed to be destroyed by an atomic bomb. It had a complete town constructed to test the effects of said bomb. Sort of a metaphor for the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war. So there they were with a civilization to build while trying to avoid the mistakes of their parents. They even had an episode where the castaway's found a cache of weapons and had to make the decision to keep them or destroy them. (Remember we were in the middle of the Vietnam war). It showed promise, but I'm assuming it didn't work because adults were writing it and they had a hard time thinking like teenagers.