‘Chris and I occupied a block away from the main production unit, called the Punishment Block … The only casualty was the secretary in between our two offices – Chris Penfold’s and mine. She went crazy dealing with rewrites, and from five storeys up she threw the typewriter through the window, and had to be taken away. We never saw the poor woman again. There were no computers in those days; every rewritten page had to be retyped, if there was only one line changed. So it was like the problems of today a hundred times over. And we loved every minute of it.’
SUMMARY
Barry Morse gave a perceptive summation of his thoughts on Space: 1999: ‘I enjoyed working on the series, as I usually do. In a career that now has lasted more than 70 years, I’ve only very rarely had experiences where I wasn’t comfortable and happy with the set-up in which I was working. In this instance we were working with a charmingly professional bunch of actors, most of them much younger than me, and the general atmosphere within the shooting period was really very friendly.
‘One of the most pleasurable aspects of Space: 1999 was that it recruited an army of fans from all over the world, whom I’ve met in the succeeding years. It’s rather touching to find that there are whole groups of people from all sorts of different countries who are brought together and bound together by a mutual admiration for this series. So, indeed, it had a value from my own personal point of view, in that way, in that I’ve been able in the 30 years since we shot that series to meet the “customers” – the audience – in all sorts of different parts of the world. In normal circumstances, if you do a single television show, you’re not likely to meet the audience in the same way and with the same friendship as I’ve been able to with fans of Space: 1999.
‘From my point of view, I had spent well over a year – 16 months – virtually imprisoned in the studio. I felt I wasn’t making the best use of whatever gifts I may have, in playing this rather dull role. I felt I hadn’t created a particularly vivid character for Victor Bergman. It had boiled down to me – as Barry Morse – drifting through and saying whatever was set down for me. The problems that had been built in and created from day one were never successfully solved, in my view. Thus it was, that what could and should have been a most wonderfully imaginative and visionary work of science fiction, never fully lived up to the expectations and hopes I had for it. I thought the whole series was a good opportunity, largely wasted.
‘If – in some future revival of the series – one were to try and explain what happened to Victor Berman and why he was no longer around, one would have to go one of several routes. One would be that he simply died [of old age], because presumably he was the oldest inhabitant of the crew. Another explanation might be that his artificial heart failed and he died. But a more imaginative explanation might be that they touched down somewhere on some or other outer planet and he, Victor Bergman, became deeply fascinated by the lifestyle of these people who lived on this other planet, XYZ. He then decided that the rest of the crew must go on in their explorations and he would remain with the XYZ population. He would study the way they lived, because he felt that it was rather superior to how the normal human race lived! That would have been an interesting development, wouldn’t it? There are all kinds of other ways that his disappearance could be explained, but such a thing was never done in the original series. So it remains a mystery. Whatever happened to Victor Bergman?’
Keith Wilson recalled: ‘What I would have to do, to control the whole series – or the budget of the whole series – was to have script control. I am one of the few designers who has ever had script approval. [I wouldn’t] comment on the script, but I would see it before the actors, before anyone else, to say whether or not I could do it in the time. We had ten days to do each episode. I would look at the script and I would say, “I can’t possibly do this in ten days,” or “This is going to be so expensive.” I would spend money on a particular episode and go over-budget on that episode, but I wouldn’t spend any money on the next one, so it would balance itself out. They had to come up with scripts where I wouldn’t have much to do, every now and again, so I could catch up. Almost every script had one huge new set, every ten days.
‘I used to have lunch every day with the scriptwriters. Because of the nature of the series, I had to have a lot of say. Gerry obviously gave me the say, because he had to. It was no good scriptwriters writing some incredible thing, because I would get a copy of the scripts and I’d walk into Gerry’s office and say, “This is impossible. I can’t do it. I’ve got ten days, I’m already in the middle of a film that’s very difficult and you expect me to do this?” So he used to say, “Well, what can you do? How can we alter it to make it work?” So I would spend a lot of time with the scriptwriters, and two in particular – Chris Penfold and Johnny Byrne. We used to talk every lunchtime. So a lot of ideas for the scriptwriters, particularly with those two scriptwriters, would spring from our conversations. I was always very keen on doing monsters and that sort of thing, because I felt that was what the public wanted. Whether I was right or wrong is another thing … We did things on Space: 1999 that other people would hesitate to do even in a big feature film. With the budget that we had, I think we did very well.
‘I loved the series. I loved doing the show, because I had so much freedom. There was nobody to tell me what to do. Not even Gerry Anderson. Nobody. I had total freedom with the look, costumes, hair, make-up … absolutely everything. So, for me, Space: 1999 was a high. It’s one of my favourite productions I’ve ever worked on.’
Sylvia Anderson said: ‘I can only comment on the shows that I was involved in, and my battle, or my side, was always to develop the characters. I considered that however brilliant your effects are, if you don’t care about the characters you don’t have anything. And that’s what happened years ago – you couldn’t get a highly regarded actor to appear in a science fiction movie because usually people concentrated on effects and forgot about the characters … For that reason I’m not a great science fiction fan, I have to say, unless it’s something really stunning. As I was saying, years ago you couldn’t get good actors – they didn’t want to appear as competing with the effects. But gradually we’re getting rid of that idea and trying to build the characters to match the effects … After the first series, as everybody knows, Gerry and I went our separate ways and I wanted to do something completely different. And so I wrote my first novel, which was called Love and Hisses. It was quite successful and I was quite proud of that, because writing has always been the thing that I’ve enjoyed the best.’
Anton Phillips recalled: ‘Having seen the first series I thought, “If I have this to do again, I’d really like to just loosen up a little.” Mathias looked very serious and uptight, didn’t he? He should have had a drink problem, really. He needed to loosen up a little, smile and have a bit more fun. Pinch Helena’s bottom – that sort of thing.’
Christopher Penfold said: ‘I think we were interested in asking questions that could not necessarily be answered. I think that was something that many of the stories gave us an opportunity to do. Not affecting closure, I think, is what it’s about. A fine teacher explained to me that most of the action in a picture goes on outside the frame. I think that what you actually see on the screen sets off reverberations that are going to continue in the audience’s minds at least beyond the next ad break. What we tried to do was to write stories that would excite that kind of curiosity, to stimulate the spirit of enquiry, to promote philosophical speculation. That’s a reason why so many of the stories have that “What’s next?” kind of ending.
‘I think curiosity – God, this is so essential. I remember being told by a very fine teacher in my school days, “You have to ask questions. The minute you stop asking questions, you’re dead.” I still believe that, and it’s certainly what we believed in Space: 1999. We wanted to leave [the Alphans’] big questions unanswered, because there are no answers – yet.’
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF SPACE: 1999
Fin
al post-synching work on Year One was completed in April 1975: actor Barry Morse recorded the specific date in his diary as Friday 11 April. In the intervening period between completion of Year One and the start of filming on Year Two in January 1976, various cast and crew members scattered around the world and worked on different projects.
A NEW BEGINNING
Due to the departure of Sylvia Anderson and the fact that the first series of Space: 1999 had received a mixed critical reaction (complaints focusing on the low-key characterisation and the more mystical plot aspects), changes were made to the show for its second season. The ratings for Year One had opened spectacularly and, judging from media reports, had largely stayed that way. However, also significant in the eyes of ITC New York was the failure of the first series to secure a spot on American network television.
Asked about the potential for the second series to have continued on in the vein of the first, Christopher Penfold responds: ‘I’m pretty sure the first season format could have been successfully extended to a second season, yes. It was a creative powerhouse, and most of the stories were evolved in response to crisis of one kind or another. I suppose it’s a somewhat arrogant statement to make, but I feel that those responses would have been there. We would have been able to find and continue the variety of that. I think that the possibilities of that format were – like the universe itself – infinite … The whole point of science fiction is that you extrapolate from the known into the unknown, in order to better understand the known. Capital punishment we could have taken on. Genetic engineering we could have taken on. Any issue that confronts us in our everyday lives has within it the germ of an idea, which within the contexts of science fiction can generate a story … We were interested in asking questions that could not necessarily be answered. That was something that many of the stories gave us the opportunity to do. Not effecting closure, I think, is what it’s all about. What we tried to do was to write stories that would excite curiosity, stimulate the spirit of enquiry and promote philosophical speculation.’
Gerry Anderson had Johnny Byrne write a detailed analysis of Year One, considering the strengths and weaknesses of the programme, and looking for the most promising direction forward. Byrne recalls this period: ‘Chris left just before the end of series one and I was somehow still there … There was a great deal of uncertainty at the end of the first series as to what the future was going to be. I stayed on at Pinewood during the long hiatus that followed. During that time I wrote The Day After Tomorrow – Into Infinity, an after-school special for NBC. We shot it around some rescued sets from series one. Main cast included Nick Tate, Brian Blessed, Joanna Dunham, two kids and – in one shot – my dog, Bones, which the space-voyaging family in the story were leaving behind.
‘I was asked by Gerry to write a critical commentary on Year One, probably as a way of keeping me around and out of mischief. They were trying to get the second series going. So I wrote a very detailed thing. It was very critical, including of stuff I’d written myself. I was taking a very hard look at everything and trying to find the point of departure to move what we had – the considerable achievement I felt we had managed – forward, on the same path, but correcting obvious anomalies … We had been finding our way. Now it was time to really go for it.
‘I was very hard on everyone. I was particularly hard on myself – I was feeling very sorry for myself. But I looked at some of the difficulties or the disadvantages of the system that we had evolved – Chris and I particularly. There were lessons to be learned about what Chris and I and the other writers had left in our wake – we had not been aware of the larger implications of what we were doing. But there is a good deal of truth in the notion that, as the Alphans were struggling to come to terms with that dangerous and threatening and different universe out there, they were echoing the state of mind and the state of being of the writers. So out of it had emerged what we now call a story arc, as such. And I think in the commentary I wrote I did pick up on this and said, “There is a very large theme here, that we can project forward. We can ask ourselves, ‘What is Space: 1999? What is the basic nature of its appeal in the largest universal sense?’” And the idea was that it was an epic story. It was humanity condensed to a small number of individuals, with all their hopes and expectations, going out there. And for me particularly, with my background in Celtic history, it was an origin story – a great epic story of a people in search of a destiny, trying to fulfill a destiny, and a home. All of those things could have picked up from the point we left it at episode 24.’
Nick Tate recalls the period following Year One: ‘Most times when you’re [making] shows, they’re already on the air and you’re getting a lot of feedback, so you know what the audience wants. When we were making Space: 1999, we were nearly finished the first series before one episode was shown anywhere, which is an extraordinary thing to do. We were very slow in making them, [and in cases like that] producers have to be very careful about when they start airing. We didn’t know how audiences were going to like the show, what characters were going to be popular and if we were going in the right direction. It turned out in the end that I think ultimately the first series concepts were the right ones and they should have stuck with them. Maybe they could have Americanised it more … It did tend to be very English, and I think that stood, to a certain extent, to its disservice. When we finished the first series, there was a lot of talk about us going straight into the second series. We finished in March 1975, but nobody knew when we might begin again. Most of us thought that the series would go on. We were thinking maybe August. Everybody was kissing each other, saying, “We’ll see you in August.” Then we didn’t hear anything. Everybody said, ”It’s canned. It’s not going to happen.”
‘They told us it was the largest syndicated show in the world, and indeed it was. It was groundbreaking. But, because it didn’t get to be seen until September 1975, ITC was not prepared to go ahead with a second series. So we were all let go. We all went to various parts of the world. I went to Australia to do a film called The Devil’s Playground, which was a very beautiful film. Then I came back and did another thing for Gerry Anderson: Into Infinity or The Day After Tomorrow – I don’t think anybody could make up their mind what it was gong to be called, so they called it both those names. It was something Gerry did between Space: 1999 seasons, because I don’t think he knew if ITC was going ahead with another series of Space: 1999. Nobody knew.
‘So now we’re talking about September or October. I had actually turned down other work in Australia that I was offered. I had said, “No, I’m going back to England to do the second series of Space: 1999,” which didn’t happen [at that time]. Normally the hiatus is three or four months. So round about October or November, I was convinced that it wasn’t going to happen… I did a lot of other things – got some work in the theatre, met my wife – and then I started to hear that Space: 1999 was happening…’
In late October 1975, ITC New York finally indicated to Anderson that they would supply financing for a second season, provided an American head writer be brought in to redesign the show for the American market, with the hope a network deal might result. Anderson flew to Los Angeles to interview candidates for the position, continually reporting his progress to Abe Mandell in New York. Anderson selected Fred Freiberger, whose past series work had included The Wild, Wild West and, most significantly in this instance, Star Trek. An impressed Anderson hired Freiberger despite Mandell’s concerns as to why he was available and not currently employed.
Freiberger later recalled how he came to join the series: ‘Gerry Anderson came to Los Angeles, I guess around the end of 1975, and he was interviewing people for the story editor position on the show. I got the job as story editor. When I got to London, I didn’t know if it was going to be a guaranteed year there – [or, more so,] if there was any [certainty] that there would be a continuation of the show. After three weeks, we got word that the show was cancelled. Lew Grade told us. So after about our th
ird week there, we started to pack to go home. Now, I don’t know if it was Gerry or I – the situation is a little hazy [in my recollection] – but either Gerry suggested to me, or I suggested to him, to do a critique of the show. To do something to see if we couldn’t change Lew Grade’s mind. I did a critique. One of Gerry’s points in bringing me over, in bringing an American over, was kind of to create something that would appeal to American audiences, because that’s where the money actually is in the business. So I did a critique. In my critique, I said that the show needed more youth. It needed work in order for Space: 1999 to be picked up. And it needed more than just band-aids on what was there …
‘I came up with this new character called Maya. We sent that on to Lew Grade, and I’m convinced it was the character of Maya that made the second year possible. One of the reasons I was able to come up with Maya was part of my science fiction background. I’d worked for three years with Hanna-Barbera on their Saturday morning shows. Working in kids’ television sparks your imagination; you can do some wild things. Nobody was thinking “token” anything [with Maya]. Star Trek did a lot of morality plays – that wasn’t my concern here. I was [aiming] to get a show back on the air again that would get ratings and would be entertaining in the American sense.
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