Destination: Moonbase Alpha (45 page)

‘Another example is the plays written in the last century about reversals of time. British writer J B Priestley wrote a whole succession of stage plays in which he examined what the nature of time was and [presented] the theory that [history], instead of being a [linear] thread, is all going on at the same time; that the past, the present and the future could all be taking place at once. We recognise this with the phrase déjà vu – how many of us have had first-hand experiences where we suddenly stumble onto an [event] that somehow seems to chime with something that happened perhaps before we were born? And that’s why I think the realm, the whole genre, of science fiction is so challenging and, if it’s halfway decently done, so rewarding.’

Johnny Byrne explained: ‘The writers, like the Alphans themselves, were voyaging into the unknown. This was reflected in the progression of the first series. The further the Alphans receded from Earth, with all its apparent certainties, the more uncertain and challenging their lot became. They were confronting problems – moral, ethical, human, scientific – they didn’t really understand. Or, if they did, their understanding was never more than superficial. This was a crucial element in the first series – the sense that often there are no set and definite answers. To [find an answer] meant first understanding the question, and often the Alphans didn’t. Frequently they were dealing with matters the nature of which was beyond their Earthly limitations. Wisdom, when it did surface, was an acknowledgement of what they didn’t know, rather than what they did.’

Christopher Penfold recalled the epic qualities in his episodes, such as ‘The Last Sunset’:
‘I guess those epic qualities came from Aristotle and Socrates. I had a classical education and was pretty seriously impressed by the Greeks. It seemed to me that in dealing with what was not a very real circumstance – the idea of a group of human beings being cast adrift without any means of directing their future, beyond survival, in response to the circumstances that they encountered – that that in itself has a mythic quality about it. It really seemed to offer the opportunity of introducing into the context of what was always intended to be a popular drama series, those big questions that people sometimes are possibly a little bit frightened to ask themselves. That was really why a lot of the episodes I wrote had that decidedly mythic quality – it’s something I try to encourage. I do a lot of script editing now, and quite a lot of teaching, and it’s a quality that I try to encourage writers to find in almost all the work that they do. I think there is a mythic dimension even to a private eye series, or a detective story.’

Johnny Byrne again: ‘The humanity [of
Space: 1999
] came in … putting the Alphans into situations wherein, to a large degree, it was their humanity that was being tested. It might have been [that] the heat levels were falling, or the food was running out, or something was about to hit [them]. Essentially in their contact with each other, and in their conflict with aliens and things like this, the Alphans’ humanity was being tested; it was always a question of humanity, rather than straightforward “We take you – you can’t stop us.” So it was moral values more than anything that were being tested … If you look at the episodes in the order in which they were made, you will see that the progression of people who are fairly frightened and fairly clueless reflected the screenwriters’ frightened, clueless attitude as to stepping out into the unknown, too.
We
were out there at the same time. When we became more familiar, our touches became more adept, responses more certain, weariness more pronounced, the further we went out. By episode 48, there wasn’t a situation out there that we couldn’t deal with! But on the way out, we didn’t know where the hell we were or what the hell was happening to us, and that was reflected in the stories. After a few physical disasters, we felt we could cope. There was a huge sigh of relief at the end of the first series. And there was a great regret as well, because we knew that we had done something really special, but we knew that it wasn’t perfect. Not at all.’

Christopher Penfold concurred: ‘We made it up as we went along. I think there was a kind of philosophy behind series one – it evolved – that tended to focus the stories on quite challenging ideas, philosophical ideas, and questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? What’s the future of our universe? All that kind of thing. And during the course of series one, I think there was a gradual building of pressure to shift the focus of the show more in the direction of action-adventure entertainment; monsters-in-space. So I think that the collision of those two philosophies really resulted in the division between series one and series two … At some point, had the series been able to develop, generational change would have been something that we would have taken on board. I suppose that in the context of the first series, we thought that having cast the Moonbase adrift with them looking for or hoping to find some eventual sanctuary, that actual continuation of the species was something that they weren’t particularly concerned about. If series two had continued in the vein of series one, I’m pretty sure that would have been something that we would have made good story material out of.’

In Byrne’s view, ‘The moral of the series often was found in the divergence of man as Technological Man and man as Biological Man. Biological Man is [very] undeveloped in terms of Technological Man, and the conflict and the antagonistic nature of Biological Man are always going to confound the successes and the productions of Technological Man. I think Chris caught that in “War Games” and even in “Black Sun”. The application of metaphysics to science; Technological Man and Biological Man, and the difficulty of reconciling them.

‘It was very important, this whole question of Technological Man and his responsibility for science; scientists and their responsibility for the wonders they produce. Chris had actually formulated this, and he had written another series called
The Brack Report
, which dealt with precisely this theme. We were very concerned about these things.’

Penfold mused: ‘The series philosophy is that we are proud to be a pretty interesting, complex species. That we are cognisant of the possibility that there are much more interesting and complex species out there – of which we may even be a part – but to encounters with which and with whom the adventurous amongst us look forward with great excitement.’

In an otherwise quite bizarre critical piece on
Space: 1999
in a 1975 issue of
Cinefantastique
magazine, the reviewer managed to identify a very central theme: ‘… Isn’t there inherent poetry in the fantastic premise of the moon finally released, spinning through the void, taking a tribe of humans with it? I think so. If this had really happened centuries ago, even minus its human cargo, it would today be a legend of epic proportions. Like Gilgamesh and the Great Flood. It would have variants in all cultures.’
[22]

What that reviewer hit upon is that
Space: 1999
is indeed an origin story of epic proportions. As Johnny Byrne has mentioned over the years, origin stories take on mythical qualities and often incorporate elements that are unexplainable, with mystical, magical or religious undertones. The journey of the Alphans is not necessarily bound by the laws of reality or science, and incredible, unexplainable events happen with surprising frequency. Does this not go far to sum up
Space: 1999
, at least in its first season? Byrne stated: ‘I think you come to a time when questions of identity and purpose are more in tune now than they were then. Indeed, much of the conflict in the world is related to these questions: who are we, and what do we want, and can we allow ourselves to be assimilated? A sense of identity, and a sense of purpose. And we seem to be losing, I think in purely Earth terms, a sense of belonging to the place. There’s a sense of fragmentation. And I always saw
Space: 1999
as a unifying thing; something that would celebrate humanity no matter how strange and threatening, no matter how absurd and outlandish the places it took us to. That we would always hold on to those things and not simply relinquish them – certainly not easily. But also, something that is very important is the concept of an origin story: an origin theme … [The Alphans] were people in the process of writing the history of their origins, their time and their place, their values. The Celts did it, the Jews did it; many other races have done this. We were in the process of seeing this, in the beginning, at the modern stage. I think part of the epic quality of
Space: 1999
was tied up in that concept. It was something larger than the sum of its parts, and that was [the idea of] people searching for a place.’

It’s no wonder that critics, expecting – or hoping – to see another series in the familiar science fiction mold of
Star Trek
were (and some remain to this day) mystified and frustrated by
Space: 1999
, which took its format from the origin stories of human history – such as that of a people like the Hebrews, cast out to roam the desert on a random journey looking for a new home.
Space: 1999
was its own entity, and in that uniqueness lies its strength.

Another review that went far in understanding the series appeared in
Art and Story
in 1976 and stated: ‘While not without its flaws,
Space: 1999
has demonstrated itself to be the finest SF television series ever produced, both in concept and in execution. Oddly, the show was quickly dismissed by the critics, most of whom seemed to miss the point of the programme.
Space: 1999
did not set out to become another
Star Trek
. Rather, the show’s creators used the runaway moon concept as a vantage for observing human behavior in a situation of total disaster, total uncertainty, total helplessness in the face of incomprehensible dangers. Moonbase Alpha is a microcosm of human society on Planet Earth, and the errant moon is in many ways a scale model of our own world – out of control, embattled and wracked by disaster, its inhabitants mercilessly buffeted by forces beyond their comprehension. Some critics complained that the stories were too esoteric, too abstract. But if many episodes seemed to conclude without answers for the questions they raised, if they often seemed to indicate that science is incapable of providing solutions to the overwhelming problems that threaten human existence, if stories were often resolved metaphysically rather than technologically, with the intervention of Something very much like God – perhaps it’s because such conclusions are closer analogues to our real-life (and real-death) situation on Spaceship Earth than the merely technological or heroic solutions proffered by less cerebral, less cogitative programmes such as
Star Trek
.”
[23]

Nick Tate recalled: ‘Towards the end of the first series I was invited to the US to a science fiction convention in Pittsburgh. I was the only person from the series invited. [Year Two producer] Fred Freiberger wasn’t involved at this time, but once Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and Abe Mandell (head of ITC New York) learned what was going on … they suddenly realised there was a lot of mileage to be made from this. They wanted general recognition for the series in the sci-fi world and here was one of the lead actors being invited to a sci-fi con. ITC said I had to stop in New York first and meet the press. So I went to New York first to have what was called Breakfast with the Press. It was like being Paul McCartney for the day. They put me in a beautiful hotel; I turned up at 8.00 in the morning for breakfast and there were ten people sitting around a table, all with notepads and cameras flashing. The New York press were there and they were telling me that I was getting 5,000 fan letters a week, that I was the most popular character in the series, and asking what it was like working with Martin and Barbara. I was getting a lot of fan mail and it was coming in bags, but it wasn’t 5,000 a week, I can assure you. Nonetheless, ITC ran with this idea and said that I was the most popular character in the series. You can understand how I felt strange later on when ITC didn’t know that they should naturally have me back for the second series!’

The impact of the series in the
UK was dulled by its scheduling, as Johnny Byrne remembered: ‘We were unlucky in the scheduling. I never saw an episode. In England, they were on at half past ten, half past 11, six o’clock, five o’clock, and nine o’clock … I thought for a while that it was actually what they called a loss-leader: that they had found a way of laundering some very dodgy money by transforming it into a television programme and putting it out in a way that least disturbed the existing order of things. I would tune in for it at half past ten and not find it, and then when I was going out at half past 12, I’d see it coming on. I think it was some kind of financial deal there – some money was being laundered!’

Barry Morse said: ‘
Space: 1999
has many fans around the world and I think with younger people – people who in some instances weren’t even born when we were actually doing the series – it has a strong impact, because it reminds them of where we’ve been and where we may be going as we reach another millennium. More and more people, especially younger people, are beginning to ruminate and speculate about the future of the human race. It’ll only take the wrong hand on the wrong button at the wrong time for the human species to be completely wiped out, perhaps to leave the care of our planet to such superior species as the lice and the beetles. It’s a sobering thought, an alarming thought, but a very realistic thought. I think that is what has impressed so many people. Those ingredients I think are part of the serious subtext of
Space: 1999
. Those are the sorts of speculative, soul-searching questionings that could and should have played a larger part in the dramatisation, but at least we touched on them some of the time. It’s all too easy with hindsight, which is always infallible, to put your finger on where things went wrong. Well, ultimately, we can’t say that they did go wrong. The series has maintained a very loyal cult following ever since those days more than 35 years ago when it all began. The support the series has maintained has been in many ways, to me, quite amazing.