SPACE: FLYING VISITS is a little ten-minute filler programme on BBC2 (Tue, 9.50pm) which allows them to play around with presentation and formats, CGI, cartoons, talking heads at thumbnail size next to a multicoloured diagram, in ways they never do with grown-up full-length documentaries… actually it looks a bit like one of the fact-files Jody or whoever pull out of the Enterprise’s databanks, all 3-D cutaways turning through 360′, with Sam Neill doing the voiceover. Last night’s (no link that I can find) was about what will happen to the Earth when the sun becomes a Red Giant = move to Mars, then off into the cosmos in a fleet of vast, gleaming space lifeboats. The most curious thing was the music: not present-day electronica or spacebeatz or this month’s Wire coverstar, but a seamless medley of mainstream pop and rock, almost all from the 60s and 70s, chosen mostly for the comment-value of a single line of a song. And it’s true, presentation aside, the very idea of the discussion of Earth’s longterm future, practical address thereof, seems old-fashioned, nostalgic even. “Memories of the Space Age,” as Ballard called it.