TV Times

TV Times

‘Bawathra’ takes an alien turn
A teledrama on ‘Aliens’ will be something that interests the TV audience who are usually accustomed to the hackneyed themes of middle class family conflicts and melodramatic love stories.

Directed by experienced producer of ‘Weda Hamine’ and ‘Dadubasnamanaya’ fame, Sunil Ratnayake presents the miniplay ‘Bawathra’ revolving around the adventures that extra terrestrial beings face when their spaceship accidentally lands on earth.

The teledrama produced using high tech digital technology of international standards. Bawathra is telecast every Tuesday at 8.30 pm from May 10 on Rupavahini channel.

Highly intelligent and technically advanced beings inhabit “Bhawathra” a planet in a galaxy situated three galaxies away from earth and the Milky way. When Bawathra inhabitants come to know that their planet will be destroyed within 50 to 100 years, they begin an intensive search for a dead planet or one with inhabitant for them to live.

A space ship driven at an incredible speed crash lands due to a technical fault on the hills of Kendaliyadda, a remote village in Sri Lanka. At this time the villagers are perfoming a Yaga to get rid of a disaster caused due to natural cause. The villagers think the crash landing of the spaceship is a direct result of their ritual. At the end of the Yaga ceremony, villagers take the wooden structure or Thattuwa to the cemetery. Meanwhile the aliens repair the spaceship and take off. However, the spaceship is destroyed within minutes.

Satta, an alien scientist who survives on the village safely on some vegetation starts looking for something to eat. He discovers that the bark of a certain tree and the milk from a cow gives him adequate bodily strength to survive on earth.

Andiris, a poor villager, who ikes out a living by selling firewood suffers from an incurable skin disease. although he takes treatment from a native physician he does not recover. Once he brushes his back against a tree and finds he is partially cured. When he conveys the good news to his wife she hesitates to believe him.

On the following day he is completely cured and Andiris goes in search of the physician to thank him. The physician, who is a cunning man finds out the particular tree and begins to use its bark to cure other patients. Soon he becomes a famous dermatologist.

Satta after regaining his physical energy continues his search. He reads books and finds out everything about the village. Taking a human form he settles down in the village temple.

Meanwhile, a young science teacher (Samadhi) who is interested in astronomy and comes from the city stays at Physician’s house while going to school. He starts a love affair with the physicians daughter Dinithi.

Samadhi writes an article to a newspaper explaning the explosion of the alien spaceship dismissing the popular fallacy of the villagers. Prof. Ruwanwella who is an expert on extra terrestrical beings comes to Kendaliyadda to meet Samadhi. Meanwhile, another person comes to meet him with a Black Box. He is Solamon who witnessed the explosian from a different location.

Satta continues to do his research. He also learns Biology, Physics, Medicine, Political Science, Culture, and history. At this time many strange happenings take place. An authority is established to study aliens or extra terrestrial beings. This finally leads Prof. Ruwanwella to identify the alien.

With the help of Soloman’s Black Box Satta develops contacts with his planet and leaves the earth with the idea of returning to it one day. Speaking about the teledrama the director Sunil Ratnayake says that this was a really a strenuous job as they had to create an original alien which was different to aliens we have seen in other films. “We made the alien mechanically and technologically using computers. It took three and half months to do the modelling, texture and to develop its movement”, said Mr. Ratnayake.

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