Overview

Luna is a British television series made for ITV in the early eighties. It's set in the year 2040 in the Efficiecity, a completely enclosed bureacratic city sealed off from the polluted and abandoned outside world. The series focuses on the dimini female (teenage girl) 72 Batch 19Y, and the misfit family she lives with. Officially, names are obsolete and everyone is known by batch codes, but 72 is given the name Luna because she was batched on the moon. She lives with Gramps, an old punk who grew up in the 1980s, and listens to "classical" music such as Human League; Brat, a dimini male from the same batch; and the robot Andy. The sector bureaubeing 80H is constantly embarrassed by the nonconformity of Luna's unit group.

The second season began with the rest of the habiviron group missing the original Luna who had moved out (possibly on some kind of scholarship?), and a new dimini female being assigned to replace her in the habiviron group. Naturally, despite a shaky start the others fully accept the new dimini female by the end of the episode, and grant her the name Luna as well.

The people of the Efficiecity are grown artificially, and have batch days instead of birth days. Egothenticity cards are required as identification, and robots have taken over many roles. Their technology is highly advanced; for example, to clean themselves and their clothes they simply stand in special alcoves in the wall and press a button. Contact has been made with a number of alien species.

The most distinctive element of the series is the language used. Technotalk, an abbreviated language designed to be easier for computers to process, has officially replaced modern english in the future world of the series. Time is measured in ticks, tocks, and tacks, and many currently common words are replaced by more obscure ones (or variations thereof). Hybrid words such as "habiviron" from "habitable" and "environment" are also used.

The show was made by Central Production, the production wing of Central Indpendent Television Plc, the ITV franchise for the English Midlands. Season one was produced in 1982, though it didn't air till early 1983. The second, final season was shown a year later in 1984 (the George Orwell novel of that name depicts a future not entirely dissimilar to that of Luna, though much bleaker). Mickey Dolenz created and produced the series, while the scripts were written by Colin Bennett (who also played Andy) and Colin Prockter. A 14 year old Patsy Kensit starred as Luna in the first season, but did not return for the second which introduced a new lead character played by Joanna Wyatt.