Screenwriter Terence Feely returns to the series (having previously contributed the witty ‘New Adam New Eve’) and delivers a well-crafted script with Koenig trying to convince his friends that they are being manipulated, while everybody else believes their Commander has cracked up. It’s all a little high on the melodrama scale, but is earnestly played by the entire cast. It does, though, contain one of the most unfortunate lines of any episode when Tony states, ‘He’s gonna crash. Alan, get over there. Take a couple of nuclear physicists with you, just in case.’ The nuclear physicists just happen to be standing around doing nothing in Command Centre, awaiting the line in the script. It’s blatantly shoddy writing.
The sight of the aliens is effectively surprising as Koenig enters Command Centre and sees them as they truly are: grotesque mounds of glowing, pulsating plasma tentacles and green jelly, with exposed vessels pumping blood. The Bringers of Wonder are clearly the most impressive monster aliens introduced in Year Two: light years beyond the typical men in monster suits that were featured all too often. These protoplasmic jelly monsters rank with the dragon from ‘Dragon’s Domain’ as the most thoroughly ‘alien’ of the physical species Alpha encounters, and hold up respectably to scrutiny decades later.
In ‘The Bringers of Wonder’, nuclear disposal areas are seen on the Moon for the first time since ‘Breakaway’. The design is different, presumably because the areas featured in ‘Breakaway’ were destroyed and viewers are to assume that these are separate ones unaffected by the original explosions that hurled the Moon out of orbit, or perhaps entirely new ones developed for the Alphans to store their own nuclear waste.
Overall, this is an effective and engaging combination of Year Two bravado and extensive character development. The final cliffhanger is excellent, with the ‘Dr Shaw’ Bringer of Wonder attempting to smother Koenig in his Medical Centre bed. When the caption ‘end of part one’ appears, the viewer is definitely intrigued to tune in for Part Two.
Rating: 7.5/10
2.18
THE BRINGERS OF WONDER
Part Two
Screenplay by Terence Feely
Directed by Tom Clegg
Selected Broadcast Dates:
UK LWT:
Date: 22 October 1977. Time: 11.00 am
Granada:
Date: 25 September 1977. Time: 1.15 pm
US KRON (San Francisco):
Date: 26 February 1977. Time: 7.00 pm
Credited Cast: Martin Landau (John Koenig), Barbara Bain (Helena Russell), Catherine Schell (Maya), Tony Anholt (Tony Verdeschi), Nick Tate (Alan Carter), Zienia Merton (Sandra Benes), Jeffery Kissoon (Ben Vincent), Al Lampert (Ken Burdett), Billy J Mitchell (Professor Hunter), Earl Robinson (Sandstrom), Robert Sheedy (Henry), Nicholas Young (Peter Rockwell), Albin Pahernik (Lizard Animal (Maya))
Guest Stars: Toby Robins (Diana Morris), Stuart Damon (Guido Verdeschi), Jeremy Young (Jack Bartlett), Drewe Henley (Joe Ehrlich), Patrick Westwood (Dr Shaw), Cher Cameron (Louisa)
Uncredited Cast: David Jackson (Bringer of Wonder Voice), Nick Hobbs (Clive Kander), Sarah Bullen (Operative Kate), Robert Reeves (Operative Peter Reeves), Quentin Pierre (Security Guard Pierce Quinton), Roy Everson (Security Guard in corridor)
Plot: Maya is freed from the influence of the Bringers of Wonder and discovers their purpose is to deceive the Alphans into blowing up the Nuclear Waste Domes, providing the aliens with the radiation they need to live. But Moonbase Alpha will be destroyed in the resulting explosion!
Quotes:
Helena: ‘There may be no causal effect, but it is a tenable theory.’
Koenig: ‘Maya, when you look you see people from Earth. When I look, I see monsters from a different dimension.’
Maya: ‘They have the minds of geniuses and the instincts of vultures.’
Bringer of Wonder: ‘Isn’t it better to live in a dream of happiness than to face a reality which you hate?’
Koenig: ‘So much for illusions.’
On-screen Date: 2,515 days since leaving Earth orbit.
Filming Dates: Wednesday 25 August – Tuesday 28 September 1976
Commentary:
Zienia Merton: ‘I had another boyfriend in that show, “The Bringers of Wonder”. In fact, I had quite a good sex life! But of course he turned into a jelly, and that seems to be the story of my life … [The Bringers] were rather nasty, because they had a lot of oozing liquid.
‘I am well known as a screamer. Soundmen tremble! Those who’ve worked with me before when I’ve screamed actually get the ear plugs in, because I have such a high-pitched scream.’
Terence Feely: ‘I remember Space: 1999 for a wonderful character called Freddy Freiberger. I thought he was having me on when he introduced himself. He was Story Editor, and he was a great old Hollywood pro – there was nothing he hadn’t seen, nothing he hadn’t heard, no joke you could tell him that he couldn’t give you the punch line to. I adored old Freddy and I got on with him like a house on fire.
‘I had a very good experience with my first episode, “New Adam New Eve”, and on the strength of it Gerry and Freddy asked me to do the two part “The Bringers of Wonder”. I called it “The Globs”, and they liked my script so much they decided to make it a feature-length story and asked me to double the length of it. I did it and they loved it. Then I went away on holiday for a month while it was being shot, and when I came back I said to Gerry, “How did it go?” It was a great script, and he thought it was, too. He said, “Terence, what can I tell you? A lot of very heavy editing went on, I’m afraid, while you were away.” And I said, “Well, Gerry, you weren’t away!” He said, “I know – I don’t want to go into it all, but there was nothing I could do.” We did lose a hell of a lot of good stuff out of that, and I do remember being very annoyed when I saw what they’d done with it.’
Incidental Music: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is featured.
Bloopers: There are numerous mistakes in this episode, apart from a number of inexplicable lapses in logic, which include Helena’s absolute lack of reaction to Maya’s transformation into a Bringer of Wonder.
The number ‘5’ on Alan’s and Erlich’s Moon Buggy is backwards in a couple of the lunar surface scenes (owing to the fact that the footage was reversed).
When Koenig says, ‘This is Eagle One to Alan Carter,’ he is wearing a spacesuit with an ‘Eagle 5’ patch.
During the fight sequence on the Moon between Koenig, Alan and Erlich, support wires can be seen when the stunt men are thrown around. Also, at one point in this fight, Koenig’s glove becomes unattached, exposing his right hand and wrist.
Observations: The entire epilogue was edited out of the later film compilation, Destination Moonbase Alpha. While this successfully served to create a far more serious and thoughtful ending, it was nevertheless regrettable because the epilogue is one of the most genuinely charming of Year Two’s closing moments.
Review: Helena’s opening Status Report re-caps the events of Part One, and brings viewers immediately back into the action with a sense of urgency. The purpose of the Bringers of Wonder is a mystery until Maya transforms into one of them and takes part in an unintentionally hysterical slow-motion chase scene through the halls of Alpha, accompanied of course by Derek Wadsworth’s pulsing musical score. Maya provides a perfect description of the Bringers of Wonder when she states, ‘They look like the plasma that forms on some organic matter when it begins to decompose.’
There is an incredible discrepancy between the dates of the two episodes: Part One is dated at 1,912 days since leaving Earth orbit, while Part Two is dated at 2,515. The surrounding episodes, ‘Space Warp’ and ‘Dorzak’, are respectively dated at 1,807 and 2,009 days since ‘Breakaway’. Obviously, ‘The Bringers of Wonder’ Part Two is wildly out of sequence. The most likely explanation for this is simply that Barbara Bain got the date wrong when recording her voice-over; the script itself is dated just a couple of days after ‘Part One’, as would be expected. The events of this episode obviously
do not take place over a span of 600 days. One way to rationalise this is to assume that, because Helena Russell is under the spell of the Bringers of Wonder at the start of Part Two, when she provides the 2,515 date in her status report, the creatures are deceiving the Alphans not only about where they are and who they are talking to, but also about the date itself. By altering the Alphan perception of time, they could increase their sense of distance from Earth and thus increase their feelings of loss. This would make the Alphans more susceptible to the suggestion that they are finally going home, and more eager to participate in the hallucinatory world the Bringers of Wonder are creating for them.
The hallucinatory sequences portraying Alan, Ehrlich and Bartlett as they believe they are – back on Earth – are entertaining, while the use of a harness to lower Koenig and Maya from their Eagle onto the lunar surface is a new and interesting piece of Alphan ingenuity.
Maya’s transformation into a giant horned Cyclops creature presents another alien she is familiar with that is capable of surviving in the void of space. The other was in ‘Space Warp’. She later identifies this Cyclops creature as a Larren, a natural inhabitant of a moon of Psychon, which had a very thin atmosphere (and was presumably destroyed when Psychon exploded in ‘The Metamorph’). The creature has skin like a space suit and Maya says that it is ‘very strong’ as she picks Tony up by his jacket collar. Of course, the Bringers of Wonder themselves also survive for an extended period of time on the lunar surface, not requiring an atmosphere to breathe.
The last third of the episode is absolutely packed with action, and the final sequence with Koenig confronting the Bringers of Wonder, Alan and Bartlett at the waste domes is the absolute highpoint of the double show. The philosophies and ideas become clear and the lure of their spell is understood. The dream presented by the Bringers of Wonder is obviously tempting, and contains the rather profound statement, ‘“How long?” is a meaningless term, a pygmy’s phrase. Time is relative. A butterfly lives a gloriously full life in a day … a single celled organism in a microsecond. So long as one is fulfilled, time is irrelevant.’ It is a rewarding culmination and resolution, with another classic John Koenig Year Two moral declaration, ‘It’s better to live as your own man, than as a fool in someone else’s dream.’
The most unfortunate aspect of ‘The Bringers of Wonder’ is the way the Alphans and the Bringers act based purely on the perception that the other race is ugly. The Bringers conclude that the Alphans are unworthy of living, while the Alphans’ response seems to be that women should scream and weapons should be fired. That said, the audience is left with some tempting lines of thought to pursue in relation to the Bringers of Wonder. Were they really from a different dimension? With their limited kinetic energy and obvious ability to transport themselves, why did they need a spaceship, and how could they manage to operate it? Where did they go at the end of the episode? With his winning scripts for both ‘New Adam New Eve’ and now ‘The Bringers of Wonder’, it’s a shame that Terence Feely didn’t contribute further to the series. Director Tom Clegg meanwhile proves his adeptness with action sequences, and his work will be seen again on the upcoming episodes ‘Devil’s Planet’ and ‘The Dorcons’.
‘The Bringers of Wonder’ stands as a clear and pure Year Two vision in every way – style, feel, look and moral statements. It is also, due to the two-part length and well-known feature compilation Destination Moonbase Alpha, one of the most significant episodes of the season. But while it is undeniably highly entertaining, ‘The Bringers of Wonder’ ultimately remains a step below the best that the series had already produced, and that it would deliver again.
Rating: 7.5/10
2.19
THE LAMBDA FACTOR
Screenplay by Terrance Dicks
Directed by Charles Crichton
Selected Broadcast Dates:
UK LWT:
Date: 8 October 1977. Time: 11.00 am
Granada:
Date: 20 November 1977. Time: 1.15 pm
US KRON (San Francisco):
Date: 12 February 1977. Time: 7.00 pm
Credited Cast: Martin Landau (John Koenig), Barbara Bain (Helena Russell), Catherine Schell (Maya), Tony Anholt (Tony Verdeschi), Nick Tate (Alan Carter), Zienia Merton (Sandra Benes), Antony Stamboulieh (George Crato), Michael Walker (Carl Renton), Gregory de Polnay (Pete Garforth), Lydia Lisle (Sally Martin), Lucinda Curtis (Tessa), Dallas Adams (Sam)
Guest Stars: Deborah Fallender (Carolyn Powell), Jess Conrad (Mark Sanders)
Uncredited Cast: Robert Reeves (Operative Peter Reeves), Shane Rimmer (Maintenance Section Voice), Glenda Allen (Operative G Allen), Harry Fielder (Command Centre Operative), Jenny Cresswell (Alphan)
Plot: A strange space phenomenon increases the psychic abilities inherent in the Alphans. One woman, Carolyn Powell, is especially vulnerable and uses her new powers to take control of Alpha. The only person with the psychic ability to stop her is John Koenig, but he is in danger of losing his own mind due to the same phenomenon.
Quotes:
Sandra: ‘Minor bugs, Commander. False signals … ghosts.’
Maya: ‘I can only go by my instruments, Commander. I assume they are less fallible in their readouts than humans.’
Alan: ‘Maya – you sure play rough, honey.’
Koenig: ‘How do I command this base if I’m losing my mind?’
Carolyn: ‘Down on your knees, Mr Verdeschi. Now I command Alpha. Call me Commander!’
Helena: ‘Your ghosts hate you. Your ghosts are a creation of your own mind.’
Helena: ‘We were caught in a telepathic web.’
On-screen Date: 2,308 days since leaving Earth orbit.
Filming Dates: Sunday 19 September – Friday 15 October 1976
Commentary:
Zienia Merton: ‘There was a scene with a chimp, where Maya transforms into a chimp in “The Lambda Factor”. Well, I saw it coming, and I’m not a very brave person. Those chimps are quite strong. They weigh about six stone – they’re not little monkeys. The director was Charles Crichton (all the best things always happened with Charlie, he really was a lovely man, absolutely smashing … but so wicked) and he said to me, “Okay, Zienia, we’ll have Catherine leaning here …” I’m always very careful to position myself well away from special effects. This was a sequence where we all had to freeze, and this chimp was wonderful. It sat on my console, and three cameras were shooting this scene to get as much footage as possible. The chimp suddenly thought we were all very funny, because we had all frozen, so he sat there looking at me, and because I didn’t move, he turned upside down, and of course I was dying to giggle, but I had to suppress myself. All those off set were killing themselves laughing and we, in front of the cameras, had to remain frozen. Then the chimp noticed a television screen, started twiddling the knobs, and I was still trying to keep a straight face. And then he suddenly got down and got hold of my leg and got very affectionate, and then finally he crossed the set, as he was supposed to do …
Tony Anholt: [Regarding animals used in the filming] ‘One I recall was a black panther, and they had the whole of the set [made as] a giant cage with the trainer there and the cameraman looking very worried as the beast seemingly leapt at him. They had a chimp, too, in “The Lambda Factor”. It had to climb over my face, and it slobbered all over me – fairly disgusting.’
Terrance Dicks: ‘I wrote a very weird episode for Space: 1999, and the whole experience was very strange. Basically, I heard from my agent that they were making the show in England and were going to take a certain number of scripts from English writers. I went down to Pinewood, where they were making it, and had a very peculiar meeting with Fred Freiberger, who was the American producer and terribly high-powered. He said, “We’re in the middle of discussing our storyline, aren’t we?” I said, “No.” Then he said, “But you’ve read all our material and seen the other films,” and I said, “No.”
‘He told me briefly about the show and said that if I had any ideas
to give him a call. Well, I went away thinking that it was never going to work, but after a while I got a nagging feeling that I really should give it a go. I worked out an idea that was basically about a combination of science fiction and the supernatural. The Moonbase and, in particular, the Martin Landau character were haunted. I phoned up Fred Freiberger and this voice at the other end said, “Okay, shoot.” I told him the story and after a long silence he said, “We have a deal. I’ll call your agent,” and he put the phone down.
‘A contract came through, and I wrote the script, sent it off and after a while the money came through, but I never heard anything more. I never got any feedback or an invitation to the shooting – nothing, not a word! The whole thing faded from my memory until an American Doctor Who fan told me he’d seen “The Lambda Factor”, my Space: 1999 episode. I didn’t even know it had been made! I did eventually see it when it got relegated to 10 o’clock one morning on ITV. There had been minimal tinkering, but it was basically the show as I wrote it. I had one meeting and one phone call and that was it!’
Destination: Moonbase Alpha Page 49
