AUD-I-SEE SERIES (1978)

AUD-I-SEE aka AudiSee (1978) – Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the largely forgotten AudiSee series of audiovisual science fiction stories for adolescents. Each episode is roughly 30 minutes long. The audio element consists of voice actors including a narrator. The visual element consists of an illustrated booklet that came with the AudiSee package.

As the story progressed, the tween could read along while listening to sharpen reading skills. A slight beep would indicate that it was time to turn the page. Here in 2026 there are people who have been kind enough to upload the AudiSee series online. The videos eliminate the need for page-turning as the episodes unfold onscreen with color illustrations of each page of the booklet. 

The series was produced by Russ Tamblyn’s younger brother Lawrence from the 1960s musical group the Standells of Dirty Water fame.

The episodes:

THE STAR PRINCE – In the year 2080 A.D. bio-engineering has allowed the human race to become  highly intelligent with 350 as the average I.Q. Interstellar space travel is widely available as are other futuristic gifts. Unfortunately, humanity has also become a snobbish race of conformists.

Our title character is teenager Brand Bradwell, whose I.Q. is 140, which may be superior here in 2026 but to the people of 2080 it makes him a retard. The alleged supergeniuses casually make disparaging remarks about such “retards”. Because they don’t fit in with the rest of the hyper-intellectual jackasses the retards are considered embarrassments and are usually killed off very early in life. 

Dr. Morten Bradwell is an upwardly mobile bio-engineer whose son Brand’s 140 I.Q. makes him a freakish object of scorn among Dr. Bradwell’s professional colleagues. During a party at the Bradwell home one night, Brand “gets out” of his room and embarrasses his father Morten and mother Arlee with his stupidity. 

One guest even tells Morten that he should have had Brand put to death long ago because letting one’s retarded son live is considered such a faux pas in 2080 that Dr. Bradwell is sure to get passed over for promotion the rest of his career. Morten’s wife Arlee is mortified and callously says in front of Brand that she wishes they had had him put down years ago.

(Y’know, maybe it’s the people with IQs of 350 or so who should be put to death. I’m kidding!)

Dr. Bradwell refuses to forsake their son, no matter how much of a strain it puts on his marriage. He arranges transport on a spaceship to take him, Brand and reluctant Arlee to an Earth colony on the planet Randor. It’s made clear that Arlee could have chosen to stay behind on Earth but she let herself be talked into coming along.

At any rate, the spaceship can only take the Bradwells so far since Randor is ostracized because it allows retards to live openly among the supposedly smart set. Our central characters must buy a dilapidated old space vessel which doesn’t even “have it where it counts”. (But hey, even retarded Brand would know that parsecs are a unit of measurement for distance, not time.) 

Their covert purchase made, the Bradwells head for Randor only for their space craft to fail and they crash-land on Eolim, a planet inhabited by pink-skinned humanoids with bald heads, pointy ears and bulging eyes. They’re called Grooks and it turns out they communicate via telepathy. 

The Grooks consider Brand to be their prophesied Star Prince since he has been in telepathic contact with them for years. That telepathic contact was the source of Brand’s stories that he used to annoy his mother with by writing about such a world. She took the stories as further proof of his retardation. 

The Grooks are at the stage that Native Americans were in the late 15th Century so assorted allegorical points are made. Their prophecies make them want to keep their Star Prince and his parents with them forever but various twists and turns result.

Further complications arise from the gigantic subaquatic creatures called Baru which feed on Earthlings and Grooks alike AND are immune to the Boron Rayguns of the Bradwells. I’ll avoid spoilers but I found the ending to be very nice. Raymond F. Jones wrote the script, adapted from his novel The King of Eolim.

Well, that should give you a general idea of the stories in the AudiSee series. Episode Two is titled The Rebels of Emperea and has MUCH more action. There’s a war-torn galactic empire and characters with names like Princess Nola and Emperor Creo.

Episode Three, The Lost Ones, is the only one that may not be for the really young. It involves saving a character from outer space slavers and reminded me of Fantastic Planet with touches of a Heavy Metal magazine story. 

The fourth episode is the first one written by producer Lawrence Tamblyn and is titled Voyage to the Center of the Earth. Nothing to do with Jules Verne’s story, this episode deals with aliens who came to Earth to hunt livestock, subterranean caverns filled with dinosaurs, gigantic spiders and intelligent octopoids called Zarians.   

Episode Five, The Time Machine, is a fairly faithful adaptation of the H.G. Wells story. We get a time traveler, Morlocks, Eloi and the voice of Lawrence’s brother Russ Tamblyn in a dramatic role.

The sixth and final episode is titled The War of the Worlds but is far from Wells. It’s set in the far future and features the weirdest looking tripods imaginable as well as oddities like Android Wives.