Destination: Moonbase Alpha (20 page)

US
              KRON (San Francisco):

             
Date: 4 October 1975.               Time: 7.00 pm

             
WPIX (New York):

             
Date: 18 October 1975.               Time: 7.00 pm

Credited Cast: Martin Landau
(John Koenig),
Barbara Bain
(Helena Russell),
Barry Morse
(Victor Bergman),
Prentis Hancock
(Paul Morrow),
Clifton Jones
(David Kano),
Zienia Merton
(Sandra Benes),
Anton Phillips
(Bob Mathias),
Nick Tate
(Alan Carter),
John Hamill
(Mark Dominix),
Eva Rueber-Staier
(Jane – Solarium Girl)

Guest Star: Ian McShane
(Anton Zoref)

Guest Artist: Gay Hamilton
(Eva Zoref)

Uncredited Cast: Suzanne Roquette
(Tanya Alexander),
Barbara Kelly
(Voice of Computer),
Lea Dregorn
(Hilary Preston),
June Bolton
(Operative June),
Sarah Bullen
(Operative Kate),
Loftus Burton
(Operative Lee Oswald),
John
Clifford, Andrew
Dempsey
,
Raymond Harris
,
Robert Phillips
,
Maggie Wright
(Main Mission Operatives),
Tony Allyn
(Security Guard Tony Allan),
Quentin Pierre
(Security Guard Pierce Quinton),
Vincent Wong
(Medic),
Maureen Tan
(Nurse),
Michael Stevens
(Alphan in corridor),
Alan Harris
(Alphan)

Previously Titled:
‘Force of Evil’

Plot:
An alien life force is drawn to Alpha and possesses technician Anton Zoref, who develops an uncontrollable need to absorb heat. While horrified by his plight, Zoref succumbs, and makes his way towards the ultimate source of heat and energy on the Moon – Alpha’s nuclear generators.

Quotes:

• Victor:
  ‘And this alien force is here – right now – somewhere on Alpha.’
  
• Koenig:
  ‘Well, Victor, we can speculate forever – but that’s not our problem. What we’ve got to do is destroy that force while it’s still relatively weak.’
  
• Helena
  :
  ‘Don’t worry. He can’t get out of there, and I’m certainly not going in.’
  
• Victor:
  ‘Some sort of creative evolution. A stage in its development; perhaps the beginnings … A birth.’
  

Filming Dates:
Wednesday 29 May – Friday 7 June 1974

Monday 1 July –
Friday 5 July 1974

Incidental Music:
Swings from bizarre, chilling and disorientating electronic cacophony (‘Cosmic Sounds No. 1’ and ‘Cosmic Sounds No. 3’ by Georges Teperino and ‘Videotronics No. 3’ by Cecil Leuter) to lounge music (‘The Latest Fashion’ by Giampiero Boneschi, heard during the Solarium sequence). All of these tracks were from the Chappell Recorded Music Library.

Commentary:

Zienia Merton:
‘Everyone was always seen in Main Mission … Some of us should have been seen eating. One of the only times in series one they showed a bedroom [in “Force of Life”], we all had hysterics. We thought, “What? A bedroom! People actually sharing a bed … Husband and wife they might be … but is this possible on Moonbase Alpha?”’

Nick Tate:
‘Another actor I liked very much was Ian McShane. He’s a clever actor, and a good guy – a real man’s man.’

Johnny Byrne:
‘“Force of Life” was previously [entitled] “Force of Evil”. I was going to make it a much more malevolent force but, in fact, I reconsidered and then in talks with Gerry … I decided it was much better that this creature had no sort of actual human malevolence, that its actions should be [dictated by] what it was; without good, without evil, simply doing its thing.

‘I wanted to get away from the notion of good and evil. You know, the nasty, mad alien and the cowering Earthlings. That’s a valid form of story, and we’d seen it
ad nauseam
on
Star Trek
, and I think too much of it came in later on into
Space: 1999
. In “Force of Life”, [we had the idea that] to many forms of life out in space, intelligent Earth life means bugger-all. It means as much as a wisp of gas up in space. And here I had the kind of mindless evolutionary imperative at work. We picked up a random force going through a kind of chrysalis stage in space. Its decision to latch itself onto Zoref was purely arbitrary. He happened to be in the right place at the right time and, of course, there was something about him that attracted the creature. But it hadn’t any kind of intelligence in the sense we understand intelligence. It had an imperative, a kind of instinctive thing driving it. Of course, these things have to be visualised in terms of science fiction for the screen, so the way I found [the means] was to turn him into a heat junkie. He was just like an addict. The thing inside him would need a fix every so often, and we had him going through these spasms where he’d draw heat out of any object including coffee, including people, including anything finally – again I applied to the tail end the technique of the first story, where you look at the situation and see what’s the inescapable logic and try to build on it. This force had been ripping its way as part of its evolutionary imperative through the base, and the effects it has on human rituals are very simple.

‘Now, at the end of the day, our people ask what the hell has happened. They can work out a pattern to the thing and can make a guess at what it might be, but they don’t really know. Someone, I think, forced me to put in the notion that it was a star in the making. I think that this was a foolish notion, because it was better to say that we simply didn’t know what it was. If you want to draw a comparison, it’s the caterpillar and the butterfly, but in some impossibly difficult and imponderable circumstances. It was one of those situations where not knowing the answer was where the drama lay. Knowing would have killed the drama.

‘I think David [Tomblin] [directed] it very well … I worked very closely with David and he made a tremendous contribution to the scripts. Not so much to “Another Time, Another Place”, but more so to this … We didn’t sit down and say, “Let us make this a thriller.” We had essentially a story, and we wanted to keep the story fairly simple. We wanted to make it different in the sense that it didn’t have a kind of [standard] “heavy”. It had a force effecting people. The force had its own reasons for doing what it did, and they were perfectly understandable in terms of itself. But it had a kind of unthinking, devastating effect on people. I thought the use of camera angles, pace and effects were quite stunning … David Tomblin got a tremendous sense of pace with Ian McShane striding through those corridors, which are usually the most boring of shots, but somehow David could invest them with tremendous energy and drama. David could communicate that sense of urgency – you would actually get off from watching somebody walking down the corridor.

‘Given the nature of the relentless need for story in these things, it was often very difficult to develop aspects of character. There were a huge number of balancing acts and trade-offs that one had to incorporate into these stories: anything that walks in from outer space or outside Moonbase Alpha has to be explained whereas, in contemporary drama, anything that walks in off the street doesn’t need any explanation; the story needs to be kept moving very fast because people are assumed to have the attention span of a gnat and [be unable] really to comprehend anything in the way of difficulty in terms of drama and ideas; and also [the need to achieve a] distribution of roles between the leading actors and those brought in for the episode. These things didn’t always work, but I think that this [episode] perhaps worked better than most in terms of the directorial flare that David brought to it. I was very pleased with “Force of Life”.

‘I think “Force of Life” embodied the notion that here were people in an environment that could be hostile, indeed that was invariably hostile, encountering things about which they had not the faintest idea. Here, they encountered an emblem of the life that they had left behind: chrysalides that turn into caterpillars and caterpillars that turn into butterflies – these are part of the natural rhythms of our lives. Well, it seemed to me to be perfectly reasonable to suppose that this process was universal and that it could happen in the most extraordinary, interesting and completely mind-boggling way without understanding what made it work. And that’s what “Force of Life” was about.

‘What I particularly like about “Force of Life” myself, as someone watching it, is it concerned a villain, if you like, that was not present, was never seen … and that we never understood. I think it’s the quintessence of
Space: 1999
– these ordinary people, these Earth people, were dealing with situations and responding to situations that they didn’t understand. It was their responses that were important, more than the incident that had caused them. I think that story exemplified it very, very well.’

Bloopers:
Not a blooper so much as a mistake in the writing – Mathias shouldn’t have been fixing the burned out monitor in Medical himself – Technical should have been called to do it. One of Alpha’s finest medical minds has better things to do than change light bulbs or power cells.

Observations:
Sequences featuring the horribly disfigured, mutated Zoref with his glowing white eyes were edited from broadcasts in Germany, marking the first time
Space: 1999
was subjected to censorship. These same sequences caused complaints when they were shown in Denmark. The series would encounter similar problems with further graphic content in upcoming episodes.

Interestingly, the door to the Observation Room in Medical Centre opens conventionally, with a handle and manual push-button locking system, in contrast to the usual Commlock-operated sliding doors.

Review:
Space: 1999
excelled at depicting glowing balls of light, and ‘Force of Life’ provides the ultimate – an alien presence in the form of a ball of blue light that doesn’t register on any sensors but proceeds to invade technician Anton Zoref, transforming him into an energy consuming monster. Visually, and artistically, the use of the colour blue for the alien life force signifies that it is cold, and is a subtle indicator that the entity is being drawn toward Alpha seeking warmth. Appropriately, as the alien absorbs energy, its glow shifts towards the warmer range of the colour spectrum and becomes purple.

Not a favourite of Eagle fans, this entirely Alpha-bound episode marks the introduction of another impressive and huge Keith Wilson set, Nuclear Generating Area Three. ‘Force of Life’ also features visually dynamic direction by David Tomblin, which adds to the style of the episode and heightens the inherent claustrophobia, tension and fear within the base. A prime example is the presentation of the death of medical orderly Hillary Preston, including dramatic slow motion and subordinated sound, coupled with a strange cacophonous score. It is a treatment that helps turn this episode into a horror classic, arguably unique amongst outer space science fiction television programmes. This pioneering horror-science fiction combination would later be used with great success in films including
Alien
. Without doubt, ‘Force of Life’ is a horror story, progressing to more and more frightening events as Zoref becomes less and less human.

‘Force of Life’ was the second episode to be helmed by Tomblin – the first was ‘Another Time, Another Place’ – and he was paired in both cases with screenwriter Johnny Byrne. Tomblin is likely the most cinematic of the
Space: 1999
directors. Here his remarkable visuals, dynamic lighting, jump cuts, askew camera angles and use of slow motion combine to utmost effect with the diverse score to effectively magnify the terror of the episode. Tomblin’s flair for artistic visuals is in no greater evidence than during the opening sequence and the symbolic shot that rotates Zoref (and his life, as well as the lives of everyone on Alpha) upside down.

Ian McShane delivers a thoroughly convincing and engrossing performance as Zoref. The character is horrified at what is happening to him, while at the same time succumbing to his progressive, almost addictive, need to consume heat. The use of an eerie purple glow as Zoref consumes energy is successful in conveying the power of the alien force within him. And, considering that Zoref consumes heat and freezes everything he touches, it’s appropriate that his name is an anagram of ‘froze’.

The viewer’s understanding of the scope of Moonbase Alpha, and the pattern of daily life on the base, is increased greatly by this episode. Alphans are depicted at home, at work, and relaxing off-duty in the Solarium. Anton and Eva Zoref are also the first married couple depicted on the base.