Destination: Moonbase Alpha (76 page)

Catherine Schell recalled her role as Maya: ‘Maya had met lots of aliens on her travels and they were usually pretty disgusting. They were usually pretty hideous. They were usually very big ogres … I wish there had been more animals used, instead of monsters. I did give them some ideas, but they never used them. I said, “If I change into a dog, why does it have to be an Earth dog?” I suggested that they give it a rinse to change the colour of its coat, to make it look more alien. I also suggested putting a horn on a horse so that we could have a unicorn.

‘There were some things I talked about with Freddy to make it just a little bit more imaginative. But I was thinking in different terms. Things of the future. Where people would never wear glasses – there would be something that [meant] we could all see much better than we do today. Ear implants – we would be able to hear much better. These things could be picked up eventually in the future. Having humans behave with instincts that animals have. We would have been born with these, since we are animals, but our science has actually stripped us of and stopped us developing the instinctive things that we might have: the telepathy that we might have between us. And so we talked on those types of subjects. That people from another planet, maybe Maya, would still have these instincts, that they would not have been over-developed. By that I mean that they wouldn’t have had something else placed over them. You know, we wear glasses; cows don’t wear glasses; horses don’t wear glasses; dogs don’t wear glasses – they have other senses that take over when one sense begins to wane. We have stopped developing in that way, because it’s easier to put glasses on. It’s easier to wear hearing aids, so we haven’t developed the senses the way we should have.

‘I was very disappointed in all the monsters. I mean, why always monsters? All these great hairy apes, when there could have been far more interesting things. If you think that there is life on another planet, then it wouldn’t be that much different from life here on Earth. I’m quite sure it would have all developed in the same way it has on Earth, so all these monsters you see from outer space – why? Okay, so the gorilla rules on another planet, but don’t make it so different from what we know as life. Have the unicorn. On a planet there might be a unicorn … [Catherine puts on a deep, mocking voice] “Yes, Catherine, that sounds like a good idea – I think we’ll forget about that.”’

Johnny Byrne recalled: ‘I had the same kind of problem with Maya as I had with the original notion of the Moon moving through space. One of the fundamentals of drama – television drama, anyway – is that you don’t make things too easy for your people. It seemed to me that if you had a creature who could turn herself into a bug, a pigeon or an insect that could crawl under a force barrier, it was devaluing the elements of having humans getting out of difficult spots. It was a difficult thing, because virtually every plot was contrived around Maya. I think in the context of the second season, she worked. She was a good character, a good actress. And it gave a potential for a kind of love interest that I don’t think was ever properly exploited.’

Keith Wilson related: ‘We had to come up with an alien in two weeks. Therefore, I suppose, some of our monsters did look like somebody in a rubber suit, because we didn’t have the time or the money to experiment. I mean, I think the aliens in
Star Wars
were brilliant, but they had all the time and all the money in the world to make it work. We didn’t. Also you had to be thinking all the time, “Right, if I use that monster in this script, what can I do to it for the next one?” So you make pieces that attach to it and you design it in such a way that you know if you put another piece on it’s going to look different. You had to be thinking ahead the whole time.’

Catherine Schell said: ‘I played a prank on Keith Wilson. I laid monster footsteps down – they went all the way down from my dressing room, down the stairs, and all the way to his room. And I had all sorts of people helping me, cutting out these great black blotches. They went into his room, and I managed to get some blood, which make-up gave to me, to come out of his room. The door was closed; it was locked. But there was just this pool of blood in the morning when he arrived. We were great friends – we liked each other very much.’

Schell also recalled: ‘A funny story about one of the monsters. Martin and I were working; it was one of those moments in between shots, in between scenes, and we were just sitting there thinking about nothing. There was somebody who had just played the monster, who was being unrobed. He had a great big head and a huge body. There were ladders going up to him and unzipping him, unzipping the outfit to get him out. So it was just one of those moments where you just look at something and watch it happening. Then they lifted this enormous head off this person, and underneath was someone who was just as monstrous as the monster! Martin and I just started laughing, and we understood why we were both laughing: “Why bother?”’

Having produced seasons of both
Star Trek
and
Space: 1999
, Fred Freiberger said: ‘I love all the best of science fiction. The thing that I loved about working on
Space: 1999
was the people in the crew, and the facilities were just wonderful. My wife fell in love with England … I liked
Space: 1999
better than I did
Star Trek
. One thing, though: the Moon going to other star systems – it could not really do that. In
Star Trek
, Roddenberry came up with the idea of having warp speed, which would be the rationale. So once you recognise that, you’re not just doing something that might not be possible [– it is definitely impossible]. But you make adjustments with that … Somehow or other, I felt much more swinging on
Space: 1999
than I did on
Star Trek
. It was very formulaic on
Star Trek
, doing a morality play every week.

‘I liked the Eagle, because we didn’t have anything like that on
Star Trek
. We had this thing that Roddenberry came up with – the transporters.’

Martin Landau explained: ‘I think we were given a bad rap at the time. We weren’t in competition with
Star Trek
.
Space: 1999
was a different show. It had a different quality. We never intended to invade anybody’s territory, as such. The fact that people started comparing them, well, I guess it’s a logical comparison, but the texture of both shows was very different. So I never understood why that odd rivalry grew. I don’t think anybody ever intended
Space: 1999
to be a rival, just an addition to the genre. There’s something about
Space: 1999
that is lasting, interestingly. I think people admire it more now than they did then. Certainly, the kinds of special effects we had on a weekly TV show were virtually prohibitive [in cost] until then. I know, because when I was doing
Mission: Impossible
,
Star Trek
was on the next two soundstages at the same studio. The effects on
Star Trek
were quite primal, rather primitive, to say the least. But
Star Trek
wasn’t about effects, where
Space: 1999
was.’

Asked if he felt
Star Wars
or other films were influenced by
Space: 1999
, Gerry Anderson said: ‘I’m sure that they were. In retrospect, I think my problem was that my vision of the future was of everybody being spotlessly clean, wearing deodorants and nicely pressed clothes, with stainless steel and everything sanitised, and the show has that kind of look. But it was a show that combined people with special effects, and then of course came
Star Wars
, which had people of today, put in tomorrow’s setting, and achieved a believability that triggered the whole thing. But I think that
Space: 1999
and
UFO
and those sort of shows certainly paved the way.’

Nick Tate also had a
Star Wars
story: ‘When George Lucas came to Pinewood and he was going to shoot the first episode of
Star Wars
he asked to meet me … I was still doing
Space: 1999
– my agent said, “Go in and meet George Lucas.” She said, “He’ll only see you for about three or four minutes – he’s seeing lots of people.” I was with him for nearly an hour! I had a really great meeting with him, and I think he was really considering me for something in the movie. I don’t know what. But I was still involved with
Space: 1999
– we were still shooting – so he might have thought I was too tied up. Life is cruel, but it goes on. But I excitedly went back to Gerry and I said, “I’ve just been in a meeting with George Lucas and he’s going to do this science fiction film!” I said, “Gerry, we’re coming to the end of the series. You’ve got the sets – let’s make a movie!” He said, “Nick, it only works for the small screen. It’s not going to happen. I’ve tried.” I said, “Well, we’ll do it! Let’s ride it – let’s make a movie! Let’s get this on the big screen.” He said, “They’ve done the demographics, Nick – it’s not going to work.” He was absolutely adamant about this, and I really did try to talk him into it. I said, “I don’t know who this guy is – he’s made this little film
American Graffiti
– but people have got big hopes for this new
Star Wars
.’ Gerry dismissed it and said, “We’ll see … we’ll see…” You know how it all turned out. It is amazing, though – nobody ever knows what’s going to work.’

Barbara Bain said: ‘I wasn’t as happy with the second season. It wasn’t as clear for me what the intent was, and the changes were cosmetic as opposed to philosophical. Some of the ideas were good, but some were not … I think the ratio of good to weaker scripts was higher on
Mission: Impossible
than on
Space: 1999
, but there were still some wonderful ones.’

There were difficulties and occasional confrontations between various members of the cast and crew during the filming of Year Two, as Martin Landau recalled: ‘Very often I would say to Charlie Crichton, “Do I accommodate the script, or does the script accommodate me?” With Freddy I would always say, “I’m accommodating the script – Koenig wouldn’t say that!” Fred would say, “Oh yeah? I wrote the script.” You talk about a pre-emptive strike. I said, “The man never does that – he has his philosophies!” He said, “Oh, it’ll work.” And I said, ”You can’t. The entire script is based on that!” He said, “Well, it shouldn’t be. That’s where your job comes in.” I said, “What you’re asking me to do is the absolute antithesis of what I should be doing with this character!” He said, “Hey, you’ve had a lot of those.” Freddy’s not as quiet [as that]. [He uses] more short words … four letters.’

Catherine Schell said: ‘Well, it’s a civilised business in England – nobody takes guns to work, or anything. I think everybody behaved – certainly superficially – terribly well towards each other. I have to say I never had any problem with Gerry at all, as I didn’t with Freddy, either. There was never a moment of argument. Things went more sour afterwards, but certainly not while we were working together, and I think he was very supportive.’

John Hug recalled his fellow cast members in positive terms: ‘They were nice to work with – they were people who were quite happy. Technically, anyways, they were happy with the stuff. Even if people were not happy with some of the scripts.’

The broadcasting of the series in the UK remained a problem, as Keith Wilson recalled: ‘I think it was an absolute disaster the way it was handled here in England – absolute disaster. It was being shown in London on Saturday morning at 11 o’clock. I never, ever understood it. I think it was the best quality science fiction show that had been made for television. You had
Star Trek
being shown year after year, and here we had a brand new show and it was being thrown away – why, I’ll never know.’

Regarding scientific accuracy and a critical review of
Space: 1999
by Isaac Asimov, Gerry Anderson commented: ‘I think that a show that is absolutely scientifically correct can be as dull as ditch-water. But I think the point he was making was that, if you are going deep into the universe, then you can say whatever you like and that’s fine; but if you’re dealing with subjects that we have up-to-date knowledge on, like the Moon, then you ought to be correct. I think that was a reasonable criticism. But I think the problem with scientific advisors is that if you had a scientific advisor in 1820 he would have told you that it was impossible to fly and to travel beyond the speed of sound. And today they’re telling us that it’s impossible to travel beyond the speed of light. I think, therefore, they are inhibiting to a production, and since the heading is science fiction – underline the word
fiction
– I don’t really think there’s any place for them.’

Martin Landau agreed: ‘
Space: 1999
tried to create a reality within what could possibly be a true Moonbase. The Eagle spaceships were framework machines, not something out of
Buck Rogers
. They were just a continuation and an extension of the technology at the time. Critics of the show used to question if there would be explosions out in space, or fireballs with the lack of oxygen, but there’s nothing as dull as a “quiet” explosion. Obviously, licences had to be taken to create a cinematic element, so yes, there were licences taken. But by and large, much of what we did on
Space: 1999
was scientifically accurate, though other elements were not. It isn’t that we were naïve. It was a question of creating a show that was interesting and watchable, because I think if you just followed astronauts around 24 hours a day in outer space, there would be a lack of drama, and at best it would be pretty mundane.’