Destination: Moonbase Alpha (61 page)

Unforgivably, this episode also completely forgets the single most important purpose – apart from basic survival – in the lives of the Alphans, which is finding a new world to live on. In Year One, the Alphans contemplated living on the frozen Ultima Thule, and later in Year Two they will give thought to the idea of colonising an asteroid field – clear illustrations of their occasional desperation and willingness not to rule out any possibilities. But here, with friendly aliens possessing an impressive spaceship and an unknown wealth of information about diverse worlds that might be able to support the denizens of Moonbase Alpha, not a single mention is made of their search. Not one thought is given to asking these compassionate aliens for help. It is inexcusable for the writers and producers to have abandoned the prime focus of the series simply because they found it expedient to do so.

The planet Crom II is mentioned, and apparently the Alphans have been there, but this has never been shown in any of the episodes. While not technically a blooper, since the Alphans could have had other adventures unseen on screen, this is another case of the scriptwriter resorting to an easy contrivance to provide the Alphans with knowledge they otherwise couldn’t have. While some might consider this to be a welcome expansion of the scope of Alpha’s past encounters, it can also easily be looked upon as lazy writing.

Watching Michael Gallagher portray Etrec is wearisome. Nearly every action he takes is agonisingly unconvincing, and his voice has been dubbed (badly) in much the same manner as that of Cantar in ‘The Exiles’. And, unfortunately, he’s not the only unconvincing actor in the episode. Never before, and never again, would Nick Tate be so wildly broad in his portrayal of Alan Carter, or be fed so much drivel by a script. This was an attempt, seemingly, to make Carter more likeable; but why? He
is
likeable. He has
always
been likeable. Here he is transformed into a stereotype of an Australian, tossing a football and throwing around words like ‘cobber’. He becomes a caricature, rather than a character. His arbitrary and unconvincing friendship with Etrec and subsequent trips down the corridor for hamburgers should have been avoided at all costs. If anyone involved in the production had bothered to look back to Year One, they could have seen how comfortably and touchingly Carter had shown his paternal side and bonded with young Jackie Crawford in ‘Alpha Child’. That was a well-portrayed relationship; this is embarrassing to all involved. Tate is an exceptional actor who certainly should have been used more effectively throughout the series. This was not the way to do it.

Actors John Alkin and Anthony Forrest, as Johnson and Carson, appear to be in a contest to see which one of them can produce the most stilted delivery of dialogue – it appears to be a draw. However, as English actor John Alkin has been dubbed in this part, it’s difficult to judge him fairly. Actress Veronica Lang is the most impressive of the guest performers in her part as Lyra/Maurna. Watch for her dress to re-appear on Yesta (actress Kathryn Leigh Scott) in the later episode ‘Dorzak’ – perhaps both ladies purchased their gowns from the same intergalactic fashion designer?

The revolving door of secondary doctors on Alpha continues to spin. This time around it’s Dr Raul Nunez, played quite capably by Raul Newney (who is wrongly credited as ‘Raul Newey’). While it does begin to strain credibility to have so many doctors (Russell, Mathias, Vincent, Nunez and later Spencer) as well as countless nurses, all servicing a population that is now under three hundred, Alpha was undoubtedly serving as a medical research facility while still in orbit around Earth and many of these doctors might have been there conducting experiments rather than actively taking care of patients.

Director Charles Crichton faced an impossible task with this script, and failed through no fault of his own. To borrow a phrase from actor Barry Morse, it was almost as if he were being asked to construct the Taj Mahal out of chicken droppings.

The concept of an alien race of peace-bringers who can’t kill, but are threatened by a ‘killing sickness’ that turns them into mass murderers, certainly has potential. Perhaps if it had been treated with the chilling approach of an episode like ‘End of Eternity’ it would have been more successful As it is, the jokes evoke winces, and moments like Pasc’s strangling of Carter and Etrec’s near-strangling of a dove (strangling the symbol of peace – no sign of subtlety in this episode!) shoot completely off the melodrama scale.

‘The Mark of Archanon’ is an absolute embarrassment to the series.

Rating:
3.5/10

2.9

BRIAN THE BRAIN

Screenplay by Jack Ronder

Directed by Kevin Connor

Selected Broadcast Dates:

UK              LWT:

             
Date: 2 October 1976.               Time: 11.00 am

             
Granada:

             
Date: 13 May 1977.               Time: 7.30 pm

US
              KRON (San Francisco):

             
Date: 23 October 1976.               Time: 7.00 pm

Credited Cast: Martin Landau
(John Koenig),
Barbara Bain
(Helena Russell),
Catherine Schell
(Maya),
Tony Anholt
(Tony Verdeschi),
John Hug
(Bill Fraser),
Marc Zuber
(Security Guard),
Michael Sharvell-Martin
(Brian Robot),
Annie Lambert
(Command Centre Operative),
Yasuko Nagazumi
(Yasko)

Guest Star: Bernard Cribbins
(Captain Michael / Voice of Brian)

Uncredited Cast: Quentin Pierre
(Security Guard Pierce Quinton)

Plot:
Brian the Brain is a robot found on board a Swift ship from Earth. It has survived an encounter on the nearby Planet D, which killed the crew of the Star Mission of 1996, consisting of four Swift craft and a mother ship. But its initial friendly appearance is deceiving: Brian kidnaps Koenig and Russell and takes them to Planet D.

Quotes:

• Brian:
  ‘Don’t step on my antenna! It gives me the heebie-jeebies, not to mention a headache.’
  
• Fraser:
  ‘What is this Brain – some crazy, hijacking slot machine?’
  
• Brian:
  ‘Wowee! It was simultaneous! You can have all your air back.’
  
• Koenig:
  ‘That Brain is mad.’
  
• Brian:
  ‘All I wanted was life, and friends. I’m so lonely – take it all. Take it all!’
  

On-screen Date:
1,150 days since leaving Earth orbit.

Filming Dates:
Tuesday 18 May – Wednesday 2 June 1976

Commentary:

Martin Landau:
‘One that is interesting is called “Brian the Brain”, which [involves] a computer that talks like a human being and moves around. It sounds like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rooney, but it turns out to be terribly dangerous. It starts out as a kind of charming object, and actually it is kind of a fun show.

‘The English stuntmen are not as good as those in [the
USA], and very often I would end up actually gaffing, or coordinating, the fight scenes, which really wasn’t my job. Part of the reason for doing that was so I wouldn’t get hurt. That was because I was in them! If you’re not doing it right, you could get really hurt.’

Catherine Schell:
‘I remember turning into a mouse. I had quite a good time turning into an ape. And I absolutely loved being the hawk. But the most fun I had was when I turned into Bernard Cribbins!’

Kevin Connor:
‘It was great fun to shoot on those sets, because you can do anything you like. I mean, anything goes, because nobody knows really about that world. “Brian the Brain” was a tongue-in-cheek story, a humorous one. Bernard Cribbins was the voice, and he’s a wonderful English comedian. We had a little dwarf inside. It was just great fun. It’s a great genre to work in.’

Bloopers:
Series continuity is broken when Brian the Brain mentions that the Moonbase computer doesn’t talk – which is entirely contradictory to Year One, as well as the Year Two episodes ‘The Mark of Archanon’ and ‘All That Glisters’.

Review:
‘Brian the Brain’, written by Jack Ronder, features an excellent and dramatic opening teaser. Sadly, this has nothing to do with the episode that follows, and before long a series of stunning stupidities are being hurled at the viewer: Maya calculates that the Swift spaceship (the size, more or less, of an Eagle) is a small planet. Tony vaguely states that the Alpha computer seems to have ‘slowed up’ (another rather pointless distraction from the lack of plot). An evacuation of Alpha is undertaken and immediately abandoned, while the mystery of what pulled the Moon off course is nearly completely forgotten. Ultimately, it turns out that Brian was fooling with the computer on Alpha and the Moon never was pulled off course in the first place – but it all makes one wonder what the point was, aside from stretching a threadbare concept into an hour-long episode.

On the plus side, the Swift is a very nice ship; a finely crafted miniature incorporating an enjoyably 1970s style and feel. As with the already established Eagle and Hawk ships, the name js taken from a bird, but it’s also appealing that it implies a capacity for very high speed.

Series continuity is strained to breaking point by the disclosures about the Star Mission of 1996, involving a Mother ship and four Swift craft taking off on a major deep space exploration journey – which implies the ships were capable of faster-than-light travel. In the context of everything established in Year One, this level of technology was beyond the capacity of Earth technology at that time. Exploration in 1996 was on the scale of the Ultra Probe mission in ‘Dragon’s Domain’, which involved just a single craft within Earth’s own solar system. All the indications were that this – and potential other missions of its kind – was prohibitively expensive. The five-ship Star Mission posited by ‘Brian the Brain’ is totally out of scale for
Space: 1999
.

The Star Mission idea presents other problems. Following the unbroken chain of disastrous Earth space missions from Year One (the Meta Probe, the Astro 7, the Uranus Expedition, the Voyager ships and the Ultra Probe), it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that there are yet more failed Earth missions out in space. Who funded them all? And where did the faster-than-light capability come from?

Planet D is a strikingly unique world of yellow lighting, low gravity, heavy mists, unbreathable atmosphere and dead trees covered in cobwebs. Its realisation is, in fact, excellent – thanks to Keith Wilson. Keith also got to play around with some nicely coloured Perspex while designing the interior set of the Swift, which certainly makes the episode more watchable … but when the colourful bits of Perspex are more interesting than the characters or plot, there is a clear problem.

What is annoying about Planet D is its name – had the production team run out of ideas for interesting names to give planets? Possibly it is meant to imply that it is the fourth planet in a star system, but it seems to be lazy scriptwriting when previous writers had come up with such marvellous planet names as Terra Nova, Zenno, Piri, Atheria, Ultima Thule, Ultra, Arkadia, Psychon, Golos, Vega and Pinvith the Lesser – just to cite some of the mostt memorable examples. In comparison, Planet D is insipid.

In flagrant disregard of their usual priorities, the Alphans ignore the fact that there are three Swift crafts and a Mother ship on Planet D (not to mention the fourth Swift that Brian is piloting), when they should be making every effort possible to salvage them and incorporate them into Alpha’s fleet. The potential value of these ships is incalculable, and yet no one thinks to try to fly any of them back to the Moon.

Brian the Brain itself is embarrassing, irritating and manages to prove that a robot
can
overact. Of course, this was filmed prior to
Star Wars
and the introduction of C3PO and R2D2, but this big yellow box on wheels is just too primitive to be tolerated. This is another example of the show suffering from the reduced budget of Year Two: the resources were simply unavailable to create something more impressive.

While the psychological defeat of Brian is well done, it shows a blatant lack of originality.
Star Trek
’s Captain Kirk did essentially the same thing as Koenig does in this episode: talking computers to death was practically Kirk’s trademark, and it should never have been Koenig’s.

John Hug is likeable as Bill Fraser, while Catherine Schell and Tony Anholt try their best to play all of this drivel seriously. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain are excellent, as always, but they must have been questioning their fate, trapped acting opposite this annoying robot. They prove that great actors can do good work even when confronted with something as nonsensical as this script. Compliments, however, should go to the ‘Love Test’, which is a classic moment to fans of John and Helena, and is effectively menacing, albeit ultimately as pointless to the plot as everything else.