ZZAAP AND THE WORD MASTER STORY DETAILS

ZZAAP AND THE WORD MASTER

• Index     > Introduction     > Episode Listings     > Cast and Crew     > Theme Tune (download!)     > Notes     > Links     > Picture Gallery

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ON TV:	Mondays from 6th November 2006 on BBC Two
ON VIDEO:	Video Plus Pack about £45 from the BBC DVD Plus Pack about £55 from the BBC
> More information on the official BBC Schools Programme Guide

Introduction

A thoroughly modern kids' drama, made deliberately without any separate teaching bits, or any songs whatsoever. Relevant bits of vocabulary do pop up on screen from time to time though, like in Captain Crimson, and the whole thrust of the storyline is jolly didactic in itself, with plenty of vocabulary and word puzzles to solve throughout. The story involves two kids, Josie and Peter, who have a go on an educational computer game in school, but get physically sucked in to the computer because the game's been hijacked by the malign Victor Virus, who wants to be unleashed onto the internet so he can take over the world. The kids then have to work their way through the levels of the game, facing various challenges - sometimes physical but mostly educational - along the way. They are helped from the real world by the school's computer technician, Simon, and Frances, another pupil.
The story is framed by scenes of the author, Berlie Doherty, actually writing it on her computer. She has a personalised Office Assistant, a blue bug called Zzaap, which comes to life and participates in the story, trying to help the children, though at first Victor persuades the kids that Zzaap is really the virus so they zap him.
The story is told in five episodes, then there's a sixth one which is all grammar and no story, just Zzaap reviewing all of the language points that we might have learned during the previous episodes - a sort of big long in-between bit. This final episode is something extra and not essential to enjoying the series, so it is often left out from repeat runs of just the story.

EXTRA: Download the Zzaap and the Word Master games website


Episode Listings

1.	Into The Crystal Caverns
	In this new drama series two children travel through a mystery underground world and solve word clues to move up a level.
2.	The Castle of Gloom
	Things look bleak as Josie and Peter run into Sir Clifford Clank.
3.	The Glen of the Green Man
	Zzaap recovers - but now he is green instead of blue. Hamish struggles with adverbs. Victor Virus appears in disguise.
4.	No Hope Valley
	The Snow Queen provides a way through. Zzaap and Victor Virus face up to each other in a shoot-out.
5.	The Word Master
	Passing through Grendel's cave, Josie and Peter meet the Scarecrow and help him to sort out compound words before they reach the Word Master's study.
6.	Zzaap Looks Back
	A revision programme looking back over adverbs, adjectives, rhymes, spelling, punctuation, plot and suspense.

Cast and Crew

Written by Executive producer Producer Director	Berlie Doherty Moira Scott Karen Johnson Michael Kerrigan
Starring with	Neil Morrissey as the voice of Zzaap Jamie Gill as Frances Amanda Riley as Josie Kieran Hardcastle as Peter Stephen Mapes as Victor Virus Deborah Steele as Miss Wordsworth Tom Mullion as Simon Michael Windsor as Rock Face, Skinless and Grendel Lawrie McNichol as the Carved Heads Roy Barraclough as Sir Clifford Clank Miriam Acharki as Scheherezade Paul Sharma as the Green Man James Bryce as Lord Hamish Sarah Patterson as the Snow Queen Nick Ball as Scarecrow Philip Bird as the Word Master Berlie Doherty

Theme Tune

The Zzaap and the Word Master theme tune was an all-instrumental job.

music by Gregor Philip, no lyrics
MP3 file: 28 seconds, 340 kb

> CLICK HERE for the Downloads section, including this and several other theme tunes.

Notes

The story was previewed in the BBC Primary Catalogue for 2000-2001:

Berlie Doherty has written Word Master especially for Look and Read, and there's a double bonus in this new, six-part unit. Not only will the programme bring you an exciting drama, full of suspense and cliffhanger endings, but each one has an opening and closing sequence which shows Berlie at work on the drama. She shares her thoughts on character, setting, plot and dialogue with Zzap [sic], her desktop companion - a soft, bug-like toy. The final programme of the unit pulls together all the literacy elements woven into the drama. Use it to reinforce or recap the main teaching points. (...)

This is the first time an author has appeared in their Look and Read story since Leonard Kingston played a minor character in Episode 5 of Len and the River Mob in 1968 and Richard Carpenter introduced Cloud Burst in 1974.

The story was originally known as CyberScape, and was also known simply as Word Master for a long time before its first transmission and has previously been billed on this site as such.

This story was shown in WIDESCREEN.

Here is a list of all of the broadcasts of this story on the BBC. Unless your teachers managed to get the video recorder to work, this is when you would have seen it in school. See the Air Dates section for precise dates and times.
      Spring 2001, BBC2
      Spring 2002, BBC2
      Summer 2002, CBBC (three times!)
      Autumn 2002, CBBC (twice)
      Spring 2003, BBC2
      Spring 2003, CBBC
      Spring 2004, BBC2
      Spring 2004, CBBC
      Spring 2005, BBC2
      Spring 2005, CBBC
      Spring 2006, BBC2
      Spring 2006, CBBC




Links

• The BBC website
The BBC had a great website to support this story - a lovely animated educational game using all the locations from the story, with several different games to play in each, then a final challenge to reach the Word Master's study. The site was launched in February 2001, shortly after the first broadcast of the story, though they forgot to activate the TV-advertised shortcut www.bbc.co.uk/wordmaster for a while, and the only way to get on the site was via the main BBC Look and Read page.
Unfortunately it proved very difficult to update the site, which was done almost entirely in Flash, so for instance when you finally managed to finish the last game, it told you to enter a write-in competition. The competition was closed during the first year of the site's life, but they couldn't alter the game to remove the references. So eventually, in August 2003, the site was taken down and is no longer available. All that's on the BBC site now is a goodbye message.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/zzaap/

Luckily a copy of the site has been saved, so you can still play it online courtesy of the English department of a French school.
http://www.discip.crdp.ac-caen.fr/anglais/documents/cottenceau/Zzaap/index.htm

Or you can now download an archive of the whole site from this very website.
/downloads/sites.html#master

• Click this link to Berlie Doherty's official website, then select Zzaap and the Wordmaster from the drop-down menu (sorry I can't do a deeper link without breaking the frameset). It has a write-up of the story by the author herself, and some lovely details of the filming (which took place in Autumn 2000, I believe) including where all the locations were and how the effects were done, and even a behind-the-scenes photo of Sir Clifford Clank on set. Also if you look around a bit there's a picture of her farmhouse home where the author sequences from Zzaap were genuinely shot.
http://www.berliedoherty.com/storyf.html

> CLICK HERE for more general links about Look And Read and schools TV.

Picture Gallery

The screen lit up with coloured flashes and sparks. Josie and Peter felt themselves being lifted up, spinning round, and then - they disappeared.	Zzaap buzzed down the tunnels, lighting the way for Peter. 'Crouch, not ouch!' Then he lit the way for Josie. 'Crouch and touch!'	'Break-time!' Miss Wordsworth called. 'I see Josie and Peter have gone out to play already.' And she leaned over and switched off the computer.

Victor Virus flicked his power pen and changed out of his Help outfit into a gleaming suit of black armour.	The figure's cloak sizzled and flashed with lightning. It was the Word Master himself.	The Word Master clapped his hands and a shower of letters as bright as fireworks shimmered round him. He juggled them into words.

		> See every Look & Read book cover in the Trivia section > Get complete books from the Downloads section (but not this one)
Zzaap zizzed round like a turbo-bug. 'Zip zap zeeeeee!'	The story book

Zzaap & the Word Master continuity slide	And a newer one.

Look And Read commits TWO spelling mistakes! See the Secret Codes page for details of exactly what's wrong.

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