Catherine Schell recalled: ‘Most of the scripts had already been [written]. All the outlines of the scripts had already been [written]. [In that situation,] there’s very little actors can do once they’re playing the parts, to change it. If there’s [going to be] another series, then you can have long discussions of how you want to change, how you conceive something developing, but it was too late by that point … It was a little bit too late to do more with the relationship. I’m not sure that it would have been good had Maya and Tony become lovers. I think it worked much better that they were sort of in love, but they were too frightened to do anything about it. You know that the two feel love for each other. I think that once you’ve taken the other step then it becomes something else – you’re then writing a love story, instead of an adventure story.’
Tony Anholt had some reservations about the stories: ‘I suppose one of the things … that disappoints me somewhat about science fiction is that if you’re going to deal with that subject, the possibilities are so enormous, and all we seem to devise is more and more “goodies” versus “baddies”. I mean, Space: 1999 seemed to me to be a Western in a different set of costumes. Not just Space: 1999, most of what I’ve seen is just “goodies” versus “baddies” and instead of the six-shooter you’ve got a laser gun.’
Johnny Byrne stated: ‘Freddy would say, “Above all, it’s got to have humour.” That’s easily said. You put it in and what it boils down to is a kind of crass line that’s been put in because now we’ve got to be humorous. So what you would try to do was finish a scene on a slightly intriguing sort of humorous thought. They didn’t always come off, but we tried to do those in the first series as well. There were situations with Bergman, where the things he was doing in his confusion were funny … Simply to try to tell the story, that was the first requirement. Second was to try to deepen the characterisation. That was not always interesting. So what you had to do was to put people into interesting situations. We did find sufficient places, like during “Black Sun”, when they’re sitting around drinking, there’s a certain amount of ironic humour in their situation. I can laugh at things that are not [overtly] funny … I don’t like one-liners. They rarely work. You can put [one] in, but by the time it appears on the screen three months later, you wonder why you ever did it. Instead of sounding profound or interesting or amusing, [those types of lines] just sounded glib. And there was a lot of that kind of smart-alec glibness in the second series …
‘And to see these characters – they looked as if they were suffering from food poisoning – having to respond to something that [met the requirement] “Above all, it has to be humorous” … That was a serious problem: it destroyed the credibility of the show.’
Fred Freiberger’s had a different perspective: ‘In the first season they were doing the show as an English show, where there was no story, [and] the people [were] standing around and talking. They had good concepts, they had wonderful characters, but they kept talking about the same thing and there was no plot development. Space: 1999 opened extremely well in the United States and then went right down the tubes. In the first show I did, I stressed action as well as character development, along with strong story content, to prove that Space: 1999 could stand up to the American concept of what an action-adventure show should be. Abe Mandell was pretty nervous, but we were well received by the reviewers. A few of them said, “Gee, this show is vastly improved, but it’s too late to save it.”’
Regarding the scripts, Fred Freiberger said: ‘There were some [episodes] I was going to write, but I talked to Gerry about it and said, “I’m not going to be able to do that because I’m not able to use my name.” It was the law – we had Barbara and Marty and me, and that was the limit of the number of Americans we could have. So Gerry said, “I have a pen name you can use – Charles Woodgrove.” So I wrote [three] shows, for budget reasons … I took the job and was just paid expenses.
‘At the beginning of the season you’re very fussy about scripts, but as the year goes on and you reach 18 or 20 episodes, the stuff that looked terrible to you at the beginning starts to look like pure gold. I would explain to the English writers very carefully – because I was sensitive to their feelings – how the script should be written for the American viewer. They were very co-operative, very creative. There were several English plot structures I came across that I felt weren’t right for us (mostly in terms of character), for an action-type series. As a television series producer, if you do 24 one-hour episodes, and end up with four clinkers, I think you’ve got one hell of an average.’
Nick Tate praised the work of Johnny Byrne: ‘Johnny was a very dear man. He wrote for me in Space: 1999. He was one of the ones who recognised very early on the need and the desirability to write for a character like Alan Carter, and I loved him for that. Johnny was very much a champion of my character and helped Gerry and Sylvia Anderson see qualities in him that they hadn’t initially conceived. We had a mutual respect for one another’s abilities.
‘Fred actually pretended all the time that I was working with him that he did like me … He always tried to befriend me and he always tried to be very friendly to me. But I kind of knew who he was from day one.’
John Hug recalled: ‘Apart from saying, “Eagle One to Moonbase, come in please,” or “Moonbase to Eagle One, come in please,” or “I can’t hold it, Commander,” they would have these lines that one person could say, but it was rather interchangeable. Rather than have somebody new, or that nobody had seen, they would say, “Could John say this? We could have Bill Fraser say this line.” But then it was, “No, what would he be doing there? We can’t have him in the hospital area – he’s not a doctor. Would it matter? Can we move it out of there? No? Okay, well we’d better get someone else to do it.” So some of these things were negotiable.’
Catherine Schell noted: ‘It was a job. I receive a script, I read it and I try to do it to the best of my abilities. The machinations that happen behind the scenes don’t usually affect an actor unless they have a stake within it, so we can make comments about this – “That’s a bit of a silly line,” or “This is a terribly good script; wow, this is a bit deep” – but in the end our input is not, I think, what people imagine our input to be.
‘Some of the scripts I thought were wonderful. Some were exciting, some were challenging, and some were awful. If you do 24 episodes you can’t expect the same quality to remain. And if people are writing to a format anyway, it may tend to become repetitive. Even though ideas might be different, it always ends the same – happy ending.
‘A lot of the dialogue that especially I had to say as the science officer on the Moon was complete gobbledygook. I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just hoping that it came out okay. I just hoped that the rhythm was correct. I’m not scientifically endowed.’
Zienia Merton said: ‘Remember that Moonbase Alpha is virtually Colditz. We can’t get out … so what are we going to do? We’d all be mad on hobbies. We’d all have gone mad otherwise. There are bound to be cases of people not getting on … someone would be bound to be a kleptomaniac! But you did notice that as soon as you got a troublemaker, they died. It was always a guest star, but we would be reacting against each other as well. We tried very hard on series one – I would snap at Paul, and vice versa. You would understand that pressure; you wouldn’t be nice and lovely all the time.’
Merton also observed: ‘I always make a point, if I’m playing foreign, that I don’t contract words. I don’t use contractions. If you’re speaking in a foreign language, you have to be really fluent to say “it’s” and “you’re”. You would usually say “it is” and “you are”. You have to be really comfortable to use contractions. And I always remembered with my dialogue in Space: 1999, I always tried to lengthen it – not to make my part longer, but just to give it that hesitancy that people struggling with a language have.’
Johnny Byrne offered his thoughts on where he would have taken the series in Year Two: ‘I would have tak
en it where there would have been a greater concentration on making the storytelling more effective. Trying to enhance the unique qualities of Space: 1999, which were its epic dimension (that implies its philosophical and metaphysical sides) and its ability to surprise and intrigue and not to go for the easy options. To reflect on knowledge as it truly is – which is something that is never solvable, is never finite, but always infinite. Once you solve, that which you solve is simply a way of asking even more loaded, more important, more extraordinary questions. I think what that series represents is more applicable today and in the conditions that prevail today. We were ahead of our time in 1975. I think today we are with the time. We need to look beyond all these great fragmentations of small nations and coming-togethers in terms of new world orders; people are searching for a purpose over and beyond the idea of nation states and all of that, and it’s only going to cause a lot of problems. If you look at Europe particularly, they are a group of nations in search of an identity. In the UK there’s fragmentation – we’re being told we have to think of ourselves as Europeans, but that is an anomalous, opaque thing. So, the Space: 1999 that I’m talking about is something that I think could create that kind of thing in miniature: a sense of identity; something that people could identify with, provided the stories were good enough and all other things being equal. I think there is merit to that. I think there is no problem in resolving the anomalies between series one and series two because it happened and can be accommodated by some interesting and sympathetic writing.
‘The point of my comments, really, is to say that there is no anomaly. That the arguments, such as they might be, between series one and series two are now redundant and sterile – they don’t matter. You can discuss, we can all discuss, and have a point of view as to what we like. I like some of the things I did and I don’t like some of the things I did. Same for Chris and everybody else connected with the show. That’s democracy, that’s having a point of view and the right and the will to express it, without people taking offence. There is nothing wrong in liking season two to the exclusion of series one. That is something one respects, but to say it’s either this or that is perhaps incorrect, because it stops people thinking of what it might be. I look to the larger picture, the amalgamation of what was best. If anything, season two was a slight step aside, and a step back is easily arranged.’
THE TECHNICAL SIDE
Nick Tate has explained: ‘Space: 1999, because of its great innovation, and being such a technical show – as opposed to a fantasy show – inspired a lot of people and drew a lot of people to it that in later life went into technical careers. They went on to edit films and edit sound … I [sometimes] go to four or five studios a day, working, and I meet all kinds of technicians. Now I’m pretty well known, and it’s not a discovery thing, but in the beginning I’d be going into recording studios and working with people – the producers and the writers – who generally didn’t know me, or they would know me as Nick Tate the actor, now. But the technicians would come up to me afterward and say, “It’s been driving me crazy – when I was a kid I used to watch a series called Space: 1999. Are you that Nick …” and I’d go, “Yeah.” They’d get all excited and say, “Wow, man, I’ve got some things I’ve got to bring in next time – will you sign them?” So time and again that would happen – always from the technical side.
‘I was wonderfully surprised at how well [the show] came together. I would be sitting there just looking at a black screen, in what was just a cutaway Eagle, with none of the rest of the stuff around me. I would look out and I could see all the crew. There were 60 people who worked on that crew. They would be playing cards or punching each other on the arm, or drinking coffee, or whatever. The only people who were really focused right at that given time were the director, the camera operator, the focus puller, the grip that would move the camera, some people that pulled the cables, and the soundman. All the rest of the people were doing other things – probably related to their work, but not necessarily concentrating on what I was doing. So I was having to look out there and see a monster, or see a star, or whatever. We really had to have an incredibly vivid imagination, and also have a great rapport with the director, who would help us understand that. It was later on, at Bray Studios, that they did all the models – I think for about the first four months of the first series none of us had ever seen the models! We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know what we were flying. We could just see drawings. So Zienia, Prentis, Clifton and I all went down to Bray and we looked at the models, and we all saw them. [There were] Eagles of various sizes, and they would fly them through the black studio. It was very interesting, but very slow and very painstaking. Then, when I would see it later on the screen, it was a blast for me – I loved that aspect of it.’
Tony Anholt recalled the difficulties involved with the two-way visual communication used throughout Moonbase Alpha: ‘The one thing that used to take a little while was [scenes involving] those little monitor sets, where we’d press a button and be patched through to somewhere, and it would be a face on the screen. We’d be actually sitting up on some platform at the other side of the studio, and sometimes that went a little crazy and there was a bit of a delay.
‘The thing we had clipped to our belts [i.e. the Commlock] was just a wooden thing, with a painted thing on it. It had no functional parts at all. You just sort of mimed that sort of thing that Martin used to do, slightly give it a shake, and make it look like you’re switching something. When it came to the close-ups that you saw, then they wired you up with the wire up your arm. The same with the laser guns – they were plastic or wood, you just pointed them and they laid the laser beam on afterwards.’
Barbara Bain reflected on the spacesuits: ‘We did have some interesting fittings with the spacesuits … [That was partly] in order to attach the Commlock and gloves to the wrist … They also had these things for the boots, around the ankles. They looked wonderful. They were big, square-edged, plastic objects that smacked the anklebone relentlessly! Their work was to hit the anklebone! Every step, you got a smack – there just wasn’t any way to avoid it.’
Bain also recalled: ‘I loved finding out that there was no point following certain scientific truths, like the fact there would be no sound on the explosions in space. We tried the effects without sounds, but it doesn’t work – the audience is expecting a noise.’
Gerry Anderson has said: ‘Whatever I did, my mental pictures cost a fortune to put onto film. It’s a fault of mine: every show I make is desperately expensive.’
FILMING
Discussing the filming of the series, Martin Landau said: ‘On any given day I might have six pages of dialogue, and another scene immediately after that where I have to run down the hall 40 times, followed by a hugely emotional scene where I have to break down and cry. That is a heavy day! At the end of the day, you have to go back and learn ten pages of dialogue. The following day they pick you up at 6.30 and you’ve got the lines in your head, or halfway in your head. While the guy is driving to the studio, you’re sitting in the back – and it’s so nice to sit in the back of a Rolls Royce. Well, if I were driving, I wouldn’t have known anything! You’re looking at the cows and sheep outside.’
John Hug stated: ‘We did it until we got it right, or felt it to be right. Sometimes the actors messed up, sometimes the camera messed up, or something … and we had to go for several takes. By the time I got in there, most of the team that were filming were used to each other. They’d all been together and done a season, and most of them stayed on for the second season – the camera crews. There were several of them; different teams, but they all knew what they were doing. And everybody else, apart from me – well, virtually – had been in it before. They were quite happy with the set up. They knew where they were on Moonbase Alpha. Nobody worried about, “What’s my motivation?” They got on with it. Martin, Barbara, Zienia, Nick – they all portrayed characters they were at home with.’
Nick Tate remembe
red: ‘Strangely enough, while we were shooting Space: 1999 in England, the English casting people and producers denied that Space: 1999 had anything to do with the British industry – they really saw it as an American implant. They didn’t like it – it was not embraced by the British industry at all. I remember that my agent had tried to encourage some people (when I’d finished the series) to meet with me. I remember one casting director’s response to my agent was, “Well, yes, I’ve seen him in that show, but can he act?” She said, “Well, what do you mean? You’ve seen him in the show.” He said, “Yes, but he’s just being himself.” That’s actually a backhanded compliment, because it is actually very hard to appear on screen just being yourself. It’s hard to appear relaxed on television.’
Alibe Parsons said: ‘It was a bit scary at first, coming on to Space: 1999 … not only because everybody had been working as a team on the series for so long before I arrived, but also because nobody knew what was going to happen with the series. It was a bit daunting, but everybody made me very welcome, so it was easier than I had anticipated. I was really taking over Zienia Merton’s role, because she was going off to make a film. So the role had already been established in the sense that there was a communications officer, but on a base that big it was obvious that they would have more than one communications officer, so I was just another one …
Destination: Moonbase Alpha Page 56
