Destination: Moonbase Alpha (29 page)

Guest Star: Anthony Valentine
(Male Alien)

Guest Artist: Isla Blair
(Female Alien)

Uncredited Cast: Suzanne Roquette
(Tanya Alexander),
Sarah Bullen
(Operative Kate),
Loftus Burton
(Operative Lee Oswald),
Binu Balini
,
Andrew Dempsey
,
Raymond Harris, Maggie Wright
(Main Mission Operatives),
Uffe Neumann
(Main Mission Pilot),
James Fagan
(Eagle Co-Pilot Pete Johnson),
Roy Everson
(Security Guard in corridor),
Judith Hepburn
(Nurse),
Kathy Mallory
(Nurse),
Robert Atiko
(Alphan),
Alan Harris
(Alphan),
Paul Weston
(Alphan sucked into space),
Colin Skeaping
(Alphan sucked into space),
John Clifford
(Injured Alphan)

Plot:
As the Moon nears a planet it is attacked by a fleet of Mark IX Hawk warships. The battle rages and Moonbase Alpha is devastated. Facing an impossible situation and with 128 Alphans dead, John and Helena travel to the alien world to seek asylum for the survivors, but they are unprepared for their alien encounter – Koenig is killed and Helena is indoctrinated into the alien world; a world in which she shares the power to save Koenig and possibly even free herself.

Quotes:

• Paul:
  ‘We ask for mercy to be shown to the survivors of this base.’
  
• Koenig:
  ‘Ever since we were blasted away from Earth we’ve been fighting for survival. We have survived. Now how, I don’t know. There’s no rational explanation, but what I do have is an absolute faith in the strength of the human spirit, and the belief that someone or something is looking after us – God, if you like – and we will survive!’
  
• Victor:
  ‘We are mankind. We came from planet Earth and we built this base called Alpha to learn more about space. But human error blasted this Moon out of the Earth’s orbit, and so we have travelled the universe looking for a place to live. Now, we can no longer live here, and we go to face an uncertain future on the planet that has nearly destroyed us. You, whoever you are, who find this empty vessel of Alpha … come and seek us out – if we still exist. Come and teach us all you know. Because, we have learned many things … But most of all, we have learned that we still have much to learn … Goodbye, Alpha.’
  
• Male Alien:
  ‘You have no future. You carry with you the seeds of your own destruction. You are a contaminating organism, a fatal virus, a plague of fear.’
  
• Male Alien:
  ‘In our world there can be no fear.’
  
• Koenig:
  ‘97 minutes of life and then no oxygen; hallucination; a slow and peaceful drift from dream to real eternity … or just nothing. The ultimate negative – poison and pain and yet more pain, until nothing. This body a piece perhaps for some future archaeologist to fit into an historical puzzle. John Koenig from planet Earth – ninth and last Commander of Moonbase Alpha.’
  
• Helena
  :
  ‘I remember: a world without fear. It was very strange – beautiful … We’ve lost it.’
  

Filming Dates:
Thursday 24 October – Thursday 7 November 1974

Incidental Music:
The score is augmented by the astounding Mike Hankinson library track ‘The Astronauts’ (heard during the opening attack on Alpha), undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of accompanying music in the series. This track was from the Chappell Recorded Music Library.

Commentary:

Martin Landau: ‘
There were a couple [of episodes] that reverberate … “War Games” was one. It was amazing the sets were still standing after that one. I can’t say that was my favorite, but it was one that does reverberate a bit.’

Barbara Bain:
[On her favourite episodes] ‘I don’t know that. It’s really hard. It’s always the one you’re doing at the moment. It just
has
to be. One I liked was “War Games”; that was kind of interesting. There always has to be a combination of [the] premise [and my] role in it. That comes to mind.’

Barry Morse:
‘The “War Games” episode concerned the fears that lead us to destroy each other in wars, and how we can conquer our fears. It’s like George Bernard Shaw said: mankind’s worst destructiveness comes either through anger or from fear. And in most cases the anger and the fear are without foundation. The human race does get itself into terrible states of anger and fear, and thereby into terrible programmes of destruction.’

Zienia Merton:
‘I thought “War Games” was magnificent. I thought it was stunning, and incredibly well put together. We had a theory that Charles Crichton, who directed “War Games”, and was a brilliant and wonderful man, had shares in the Fuller’s Earth company. Fuller’s Earth was the brand name for the dust they would drop onto the set, and Charlie loved it. They had platforms suspended in various places in the Main Mission set, and when you came to a big disaster shot, like in “War Games”, they would drop the Fuller’s Earth. I remember a funny story. We were preparing to film in Main Mission, and I saw all this Fuller’s Earth coming in and I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be dirty!” I thought, “What do I do?” Charlie said, “Would you all be natural. Do what you would do if a plane was coming to crash into Main Mission. Do whatever you have to do.” When it came to the shot, they called “Action” – and I went under a desk! I thought, “This is a good place.” What was funny was that I found [Barry] down there as well! And he gave me a thumbs up and a wink! I looked up and saw Prentis, standing at his Main Mission station hitting all these little knobs
covered
, absolutely. He looked as if he’d fallen into a bag of flour. Actually, there were three cowards – [Clifton] was down there, too. We were all down there pointing and laughing at the idiots up there getting covered in Fuller’s Earth. We were the smartest ones on the Moonbase.

‘It was nice that, for example in “War Games”, when the red alert sounded you had people tumbling out of bed and arriving in Main Mission in their pajamas. It would of course have been nice if one of us had come into an episode halfway through and said, “Hi, I’m back on duty.” Say Prentis and
Clifton were on duty. Just the two of them could have been used much more fully than when we were all present in Main Mission all the time. And again in “Troubled Spirit”, we could have been in a corner saying, “Do you think so-and-so’s gone off his head and has put us in jeopardy?” And at the beginning of that episode at the concert scene, some of us could have said, “God, I can’t stand that music. Let’s go and do something else.” But they came up with the idea of a concert and threw everybody into it. I mean, who was in Main Mission that day? I think only Prentis was absent. He can’t run the shop on his own. Everybody could have been used much more fully. Gladys, the continuity lady, was marvellous – but of course she doesn’t write the scripts.

‘But I adored the beginning of “War Games”. What I loved about “War Games” was that as a group we were in jeopardy, and we all pulled together. I loved Isla Blair – I’ve worked with her about three times and she’s a gorgeous lady, although I didn’t work with her in “War Games”. She is really one of the nicest women you could work with. But in the first ten minutes of “War Games” I felt there was a great cohesion with the characters. And we had Charlie Crichton directing, who was amazingly imaginative.’

Anton Phillips:
[On things that stood out for him in the making of
Space: 1999
] ‘Getting blown through that window [in “War Games”]  stands out [in my mind].’

Julian Glover:
‘My wife, Isla Blair, did one where she had a most extraordinary makeup that was ridiculous. She and Anthony Valentine both had these appliances on. They couldn’t look at themselves without laughing, which is why they did all of their scenes facing away from each other. That’s the glamour of the theatre for you!’

Christopher Penfold:
[Regarding the alien perception of the Alphans as a contaminating virus]
‘It was something that I personally was very horrified about: What were we doing? We were at that time just launching out beyond the envelope of the Earth’s atmosphere. We were doing so in the form of rockets, which were themselves pretty heavily polluting machines. In much of the science fiction, and in the way that the possibility of alternative life forms in space was discussed, I think that the overwhelming response to that possibility was really one of fear and ignorance. It engendered fear. So I was really quite anxious to point out, in the context of an adventure story, that as a species exploring into territories we hadn’t been in before, we carried with us the same kind of responsibilities as the Spaniards brought to the New World when they spread German measles and Smallpox. That there are dangers involved; there are dangers in genetic engineering. It was that kind of feeling that I wanted to introduce into the story.

‘Charles would probably not have thought of himself as a science fiction director until Gerry asked him to do the show. His experience and his devotion to detail and determination to get the scripts right put me on a vertical learning curve, and it was a wonderful working relationship that I look back on with a great deal of affection. Charles Crichton had an enormous influence on the success of the episodes he directed.

‘Charles was actually able to demand the kind of respect from the production department that the script demanded. The kind of producer decisions that have to be taken on a multi-episode series like this one are that, when a story comes up that of its very nature is going to make bigger budgetary demands (like “War Games”), then you do rob Peter to pay Paul.

‘One of my favorite guiding quotations in life has been
from the philosopher Santayana, ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ And when human beings go to war my heart sinks; I just think it’s so damn stupid … I was very much affected by and reading a lot of the French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin at the time … He had this notion of the noosphere in which all the intelligence of people who have lived on Earth and subsequently died is somehow collected. And it was that philosophical idea that I wanted to try to get into the form of popular drama. And I think the reason why [“War Games”] actually worked as well as it did was very much down to Charlie Crichton and the way in which he chose to direct Anthony Valentine and Isla Blair, and then also the way in which it was so successfully intercut. [“War Games”] probably is my favorite episode, actually … Again, if you don’t remember the past you’re condemned to repeat it. And I just think that as a species we swing back and forth, and I think the pendulum has swung in a fairly disastrous direction in the last few years. I’m hoping that it might actually have reached its nadir and start swinging back again. I think all you can do as writers and creative people and communicators is to try and persuade other people of that.’

[Regarding Bergman’s line, ‘We have learned many things … But most of all, we have learned that we still have much to learn.’] ‘The more we know, the more we reali
se we don’t know. Prior to the Renaissance it was achievable for a person to know all there was to know. We know a little more now, but there’s a hell of a lot more we don’t know.

‘I think the one episode that gave me the most satisfaction as being something that I conceived from the beginning myself and followed through in the way I wanted to follow through, was probably “War Games”.’

Bloopers:
Watch for the cardboard cutout Eagle exploding on the launch pad during the Hawk attack.

Observations:
In the initial wave of attacks, Main Mission is hit by severe structural damage. Beams fall from the ceiling and wires drop down. If you watch this in slow motion you will see Bergman, Sandra and Kano all duck for cover underneath desks in Main Mission – as Zienia Merton relates below, in her commentary on this episode.

The alien planet is notable as the only instance in
Space: 1999
of a world orbiting a double-star system. It’s a nice, subtle detail that goes unmentioned in the dialogue, but is shown during the effects sequences of the planet.

The shot of the arrival of the massive alien bomber overhead is mirrored in
Star Wars
, with the underbelly debut of the Star Destroyer.

Review:
‘War Games’ is an immensely complex episode and is considered to be the closest the series ever came to representing literary science fiction on the screen. Some go so far as to say that Christopher Penfold’s script works better on the page than on film. Through astute viewing, the complexities of ‘War Games’ explain themselves. So, here is ‘War Games’, in detail …

Moonbase Alpha is approaching a planet, and the intent of the episode is to show the fears of the Alphans being tested. In a situation like this, what would they fear most? Answer: an unprovoked attack.