I tend to be fairly critical of continuity errors, leaps in sense or plot holes in drama, but I think we need to adjust our expectations for children's TV.
I agree that the deductive leap the father makes is abrupt and strange. But the audience are kids and kids of the 70s to boot, so the idea that an adult scientist would 'work things out' in this way isn't the sort of dramatic leap we think it is looking back. And in the end the genre is children's fantasy, no explanation is EVER going to actually make sense. Sometimes the least explanation is best, otherwise the writers just start digging holes for themselves. This btw is imo one of the dominant flaws of contemporary scifi: trying to sound scientific and making a a dog's breakfast of it all.
The ending is meant to be intriguing and ambiguous. That your question is being asked nearly 40 years later suggests they succeeded. Seem to me there is some sort of cycle going on, but how or why that works is entirely left to our imaginations.
And if I might be forgiven for briefly transitioning into old codger mode: a respect for the imaginative power of an audience is what separates so much writing a generation ago to what prevails today.
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nerowolfgal
8 years ago
I enjoyed (and agreed with!) all the points you raised.
I think also that the ambiguous ending was very much of the time. The solid certainties of the simple Fifties worldview were giving way to the idea that we perhaps did not know how the universe actually worked. People were beginning to think the tidy systems and neat diagrams they had been taught did not begin to cover the complexity and possibilities of reality.
Extremism is the first choice of the uninformed. Benjamin Whichcote
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