AustLit

An Australian-Japanese co-production written by Terry Larsen and directed by Andrew Prowse, Ultraman: Towards the Future was an update of Tsuburaya Productions' Ultraman character, who first appeared in a 1966 television series. The series draws from the Japanese genres of tokusatsu ('superheroes') and kaiju ('strange beasts'/monsters).

Two astronauts, part of the first manned expedition to Mars, witness a battle between the enormous humanoid Ultraman and the slug-like Goudis, during the course of which one of the astronauts is killed. When Ultraman is on the verge of victory, Goudis transforms into a virus and travels to Earth. Needing a human host to survive on Earth, Ultraman melds with the surviving astronaut, Jack Shindo. On Earth, Jack joins the Universal Multipurpose Agency (UMA) to fight Goudis and the other monsters that it has created or awoken.

The program has a strong environmental overtone, with many episodes including environmental themes and the temporal limitations of Ultraman's powers being explained by the Earth's polluted atmosphere.