Rewatching Space 1999

[sunshineboyuk]

Yes and it was a load of utter rubbish , it failed on every level and was deservedly cancelled .

I like the sound of UFO ... is it a dvd must have ?

[Bobby Blake Gioberti]

Yes and it was a load of utter rubbish , it failed on every level and was deservedly cancelled .

But Catherine Schell is terrific in it.

I like the sound of UFO ... is it a dvd must have ?

Go for it. The Australian release is probably the one to go for, although the UK effort looks and sounds great.

[sunshineboyuk]

Well , Schell looks good and is great in a vacuum of utter banal forced campery and fluff... it tries to be all things and ends up being nothing. She's Ok but she would have been better in the original concept because she's actually quite a sombre and tragic prescenece and they just treat her as an exotic sexual bimbo . I hate season 2 .

Looking forward to UF OH !

[J. R.'s Piece]

It does happen.

But Catherine Schell is terrific in it.

Go for it. The Australian release is probably the one to go for, although the UK effort looks and sounds great.

Luvvly digital remastering! It does look gorgeous. I love it.

Catherine Schell was quite good in 'The Persuaders' episode, "The Morning After" as the wife that Lord Brett Sinclair (Roger Moore...fans of his suffer from Roger Moore-tis) couldn't remember ever having married.....she was in that Gene Barry vehicle, "The Adventurer" with Barry Morse. Gene got three-time Space 1999 guest star, Stuart Damon fired from it for being too tall. They were other ITC productions.

UFO is a show that's entertaining but it was treated horrendously by the ITV regional companies and some episodes were held back and didn't air until over two years after the initial run ended. Even on it's BBC2 screening (some of the episodes receiving their very first pre-10pm airing!) a few years back, it was impossible to follow it because they kept shifting it around in the schedules, finally keeping episodes back as fill-ins for sports events. It's often stated that schedulers didn't know how to treat it. It's a show that features modelwork and vehicles like other Gerry Anderson shows, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet...but UFO deals with adult themes (there's an attempted rape in one episode) and has some rather downbeat endings and some episodes that don't feature the vehicles or a UFO at all. On the closing credits of 'Confetti Check A-OK', (one of two episodes not to feature the opening titles), the BBC2 announcer said, "Never mind. I'm sure a UFO will come along next week."

It is a show that changes over it's run, partly due to the December 1969 closure of the MGM studios at Borehamwood, where the first 17 episodes were filmed. When filming resumed on the next nine episodes in May 1970 at Pinewood studios, there were changes in the cast and production team. Several people who worked on other ITC shows came in to write and direct and some of those later episodes seem more unusual and action-packed and with more of a psychological edge to them (I'm not too sure how to describe it but it's there).

To be fair about many ITC British film series for television (Lew Grade shows), the major stumbling blocks were the differing screening times for ITV regions and the need for a sale to the American networks to ensure further episodes, hence the imported US leads. It was really 'Danger Man' (US title: Secret Agent) and 'The Saint' which were hits in America, as well as the Associated British Corporation's 'The Avengers'. Entertaining shows could easily get cancelled after one series, as the parent company looked for another American success. In the case of 'Danger Man', production had ceased for three-and-a-half years before the show's worldwide success caused a relaunch, whilst 'The Saint' ceased production for a few months after 71 b/w episodes, only for a US network to order 47 more episodes in colour. British show, 'Randall and Hopkirk[Deceased]' (US title: My Partner The Ghost) got high ratings for the US channel it was screened on, some three years after ceasing production.

[Bobby Blake Gioberti]

Well , Schell looks good and is great in a vacuum of utter banal forced campery and fluff... !

Catherine Schell in Space: 1999 is almost like Stephanie Beacham in The Colbys.

No actor has any excuse for being bad in a TV series when you see the likes of Schell and Beacham doing so much with so little.

[J. R.'s Piece]

Landau and Bain also insisted on a certain amount of screen time which meant stories often needed to be re worked because they were not allowed to have a second less than their contracted screen time. Nightmare!

Yes. According to an article by Michael Richardson published in the Spring 2002 edition of ACTION TV magazine, before signing a contract, Martin insisted on a high percentage of screen time per episode and Millicent Fogel (erm...Barbara Bain) had an unwritten agreement to have two minutes for every three minutes of Martin's time. Apparently, The Testament of Arkadia had additional Koenig scenes inserted for just this purpose. I do find this interesting because ITC had in 1964-65 previously produced the dramatic police show, GIDEON'S WAY (U.S title: GIDEON C.I.D), starring John Gregson and Alexander Davion, where the guest villains carried the storylines and appeared to have greater screen time than the regulars.

By the way, Johnny Byrne died recently.

[James from London]

Breakaway


Having not seen Gerry Anderson's groundbreaking sci fi series Space 1999 since it's original run in 1978 ( I had not reached double digit growth ) I was not entirely sure what to expect ,

Me too.

would this controversial series stand the test of time ...?

Or would it prove to be as indigestably boring as BLAKE'S 7?

What is most striking about Space 1999 is that it is almost completely devoid of characterisation, it is almost a television version of or a direct response to 2001 a Space Oddysey and that makes it quite unique in television sci fi which has relied heavily on types and bold Characterisation’s.

Yes, the characters could just as easily be puppets. Puppets with subtext.

Landau's Koenig brings something to the table , a tension - mostly in his jaw - that surfaces now and again to great effect .

Yeah, he's really compelling. Funny to think his daughter turned out to be a vampire.

Nick Tate's Aussie Pilot Alan Carter is the most emotional and demonstrative of the bunch and he practically jumps out of the screen

Yes, he has actual feelings. He later played another pilot on SONS AND DAUGHTERS, only much hairier, like David Bellamy hairy.

Bain gives an incredibly minimalist performance, it really works, we are never sure what's going on inside her head but we are sure that something certainly is.

Oh my God, I've never seen anyone do less and do more on screen at the same time. It's ridiculously fascinating. And boring. Fascinating and boring at the same time.

Bain and Landau imbue every line with meaning and at one point it becomes like watching Ibsen in Space .

Yes!

Most of the show is comprised of the most incredible live sfx . Anderson's team were masters of their craft and must be applauded for their exemplary work on this show, which was at the time the most expensive show ever made. And it pays off..... the shots of the moonbase and it's design-iconic Eagles are breathtaking even now . CGI could never come close to getting the atmosphere and the movement of these graceful machines . The set is built with lavish detail , never before had television seen such attention and imagination on a sci fi show ......

Yeah, it looks really, really good. Even though BLAKE'S 7 had a really great, darkly atmospheric concept and a couple of juicy villains, it was continually hampered by clunky acting, clunky sets, clunky effects, clunky everything really. SPACE 1999 feels incredibly streamlined in comparison ... at least so far.

white tunics which never seem to get dirty.

Well, they're more off white, as if they got put in the washing machine with some of Barry Morse's green underpants. They're deeply unflattering especially on the middle aged men, especially on Barry Morse. His hair is also frighteningly real. No one on TV would be allowed to have hair that real today. He looks like he should be managing a 1970s football team.

Breakaway is a really good opener , it's intense and serious and completely devoid of humour and that's why it's good . It has a whole new tone, a welcome tone , because for too long sci fi was light and didn't take anything seriously let alone itself . And along comes Space 1999, which takes everything far too seriously, and we get the first attempt at a Television Space Odyssey ......

Yes, it was fascinatingly boring and boringly fascinating. It's nice to see Zenia Merton as Sandra again. I was always intrigued by her, even though she never did or said anything remotely interesting or comprehensible. I think I just had a pre-pubescent thing for Oriental girls, like Wei Wei Wong on THE GOLDEN SHOT. We had the same agent for a while and she recently turned up in CORONATION STREET as Sinbad from BROOKSIDE's doctor. Zenia, not Wei Wei. I don't know what happened to Wei Wei. She's probably doing time somewhere. The new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is like SPACE 1999 with emotions.

[James from London]

"A Matter of Life and Death"

The plot of this one feels very BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. The Moonbase mob come across an orange planet which looks like it might support human life. But the crew members sent to investigate it turn a bit weird. Then Dr Helena's dead husband turns up and starts muttering about anti-matter. Then he dies again. Dr Helena remains compellingly expressionless throughout. Down on the orange planet, Prentis Hancock dies, Sandra goes blind, Carter explodes, and Martin Landau and Helena watch as Moonbase Alpha blows up. Then Martin Landau dies. Finally, Dr Helena's face cracks. Then her dead husband shows up again, says some more stuff about anti-matter, and turns back time so everyone's OK. Completely mental, but strangely satisfying.

[J. R.'s Piece]

Or would it prove to be as indigestably boring as BLAKE'S 7?

Oh, it had it's moments. Blake's obsession with finding and destroying the Federation installation that controlled weather conditions on a couple of hundred federated worlds led to them breaking into an empty room and Gan being killed on the way out. Blake suffered from guilt, Travis was more unstable and Servalan sacrificed him in a show trial...apparently brought to justice for killing lots of civilians (his argument was based on the Nuremberg trials...). Blake's retaliation for Gan's death caused Travis to escape....and Blake became increasingly fanatical in his hunt for Star One (the installation) and had to face up to the fact that millions of peoople would die if he destroyed it but he went ahead with planting his explosives all over it anyway...and his refusal to kill Travis resulted in Travis betraying humanity and helping with an alien invasion, which led to the Liberator being on the front line, Servalan seizing the Presidency, Jenna contacting Servalan for help, Travis gunning down Blake ....and Avon finally killing Travis, plunging the series into a format and cast-altering war halfway through. Cally's planet and sister were wiped out. Servalan suffered a psychic miscarriage when her clone babies died, Vila fell in love, Blake disappeared only to pop up again a year later (bearded, on life-support due to his injuries and dependent on medicine and in danger of death) but it was revealed to be a drug-induced hallucination and Servalan revealed that Blake was really dead, causing the destruction of the Liberator with Servalan aboard, leaving the crew stranded and the death of Cally. Jenna died offscreen....Avon decided to kill Vila and then...never mind...at least I didn't mention the Federation guards shooting pacified zombies off an escalator...

Yeah, it looks really, really good. Even though BLAKE'S 7 had a really great, darkly atmospheric concept and a couple of juicy villains, it was continually hampered by clunky acting, clunky sets, clunky effects, clunky everything really. SPACE 1999 feels incredibly streamlined in comparison ... at least so far.

....and they only ever fired the LAMDA actors. The RADA actors stayed or went by their own choice.

...erm...Yes. SPACE 1999 was a very expensive ITC show designed for US and international distribution with an initial budget of around £3million, whereas the BBC were reluctant to spend more than a few thousand pounds on DOCTOR WHO or BLAKES7 stories. Some Doctor Who stories came in at under £10,000 budget. ITC filmed series (e.g. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, WILLIAM TELL, THE BUCCANEERS, SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, The INVISIBLE MAN, DANGER MAN, THE SAINT, GIDEON'S WAY, THE BARON, THE PRISONER, MAN IN A SUITCASE, THE CHAMPIONS, DEPARTMENT S, RANDALL AND HOPKIRK (DECEASED), STRANGE REPORT, U.F.O., THE PERSUADERS & THE ZOO GANG) were shot at feature film studios to feature film standards on 35mm film. The BBC didn't have this kind of money and used to record on to video with some film inserts. An exception to this is the introductory Pertwee DOCTOR WHO story, which was shot entirely on film due to problems.

Yes, the characters could just as easily be puppets. Puppets with subtext.

Barry Morse said that he and Martin Landau deliberately performed a take in the manner of Thunderbirds puppets, to try and get the message across to Gerry & Sylvia Anderson that there wasn't much character development in the scripts. He also added that the ploy did not work.

[J. R.'s Piece]

at least I didn't mention the Federation guards shooting pacified zombies off an escalator...

....nor all the kissing in the last two seasons...!

[James from London]

Black Sun

It becomes clear very quickly that Space's 1st season - it's only season in the form the creators intended - is extremely emotional and complex. I said before that the characters in the opener were bland . I take this back . They are not bland , they are just realistic. They are realistic people getting on with an extrodinary job , suddenly finding themselves in a situation so extreme it doesn't bear thinking about .

Yeah, it's not just John Koenig and Barbara Bain: the entire crew is emotionally repressed. Their situation is so horrendous they can't afford the luxury of sentiment - or even facial expressions. I think the lack of emotional manipulation explains why the episodes, both this one and "A Matter of Life and Death", can get away with outrageous twists which don't make any sense.

Barry Morse must be given huge credit for the wonderful job he does as Professor Bergman , he brings a warmth and a kindness of spirit to the mix

Yeah, he's very nice isn't he, with his vintage bottle of brandy and his terrible hair.

The final part of this show belong to Landau and Morse as they pass through the Black Sun . The final part of this episode is a theological discussion , an examination of hope and the importance of hope ....

Oh I loved it when they turned into a 2,000 year old version of Smashy and Nicey. Completely insane.

[SnarkyOracle!]

I knew there was another, lost SPACE:1999 thread someplace:

http://www.soapchat.net/showthread.php?t=119009

[sunshineboyuk]

Yeah, he's very nice isn't he, with his vintage bottle of brandy and his terrible hair.

He's fab isn't he. I can't think of any other actor / character comparable in the sci fi genre. I guess the chain smoking Doctor in Battlestar Galactica is pretty unique too . I also love Morse's reaction to some of the later events , he's a perfect gentle medium between Landau's uptight almost paranoid Koenig and Bain's subliminal almost invisible reading of Helena.

[Bobby Blake Gioberti]

Even though BLAKE'S 7 had a really great, darkly atmospheric concept and a couple of juicy villains, it was continually hampered by clunky acting, clunky sets, clunky effects, clunky everything really.

Blake's 7 is really a showcase of the BBC’s attitude towards science fiction. It so wants to be a serious space opera, but it’s thwarted at every turn by Terry Nation’s plodding plots (he's a hack basically), a bunch of RADA luvvies and costume designers who can’t resist going way over the top and directors seemingly happy to indulge them.

Still, there’s a bleakness about the characters and their situation – they’re all doomed to failure – that works, and it’s an intriguing time capsule of 1930’s American pulp Golden Age science fiction filtered through a 1970’s British empire has fallen/winter of discontent cynical sensibility. Our heroes drink from polystyrene cups with silver sellotape around them to show how futuristic they are, and the white leather sofa on the Liberator flight deck is like something from Abigail’s Party. I keep expecting Jenna and Cally, clearly the Agnetha and Frida of BBC science fiction, to offer Blake and Avon some cheesy pineapples.

[sunshineboyuk]

I've just had a weird comparison moment while watching the brilliant Lena Olin as the devious damaged Mother of Syndney Bristow in ALIAS. Olin does so much and yet so little and it makes her absolutely fascinating to watch ... I'm wondering if Barbara Bain is has a resonance having played a black ops double agent herself in Mission Impossible. MI is episodic self contained stuff but Bain had a knack of letting US know she was just pretending while remaining credible through simplicity to her victims . It is a simple early form of ALIAS 's subtext , never quite showing your true face .. Could Bain have played Irina Derevko ? Well probably and certainly the contract negotiations would have been equally as torturous for producers as Olin if that is at all possible , but she has a simlair thing going on.. pretending to pretend. I think that's what I'm, rambling about.... yeah Bain is BRILLIANT at pretending to pretend .

And that's why Space is so weird because Helena isn't pretending and yet when I watch i keep expecting her to suddenly reveal she is actually a robot or something.... Minimalist is great , internal method acting is fab for those doing it but it's fascinating to me how some actors can be mesmerising while others just look half dead .

I'm still not sure what the hell Bain is doing in Space and if I like it or not ..... I keep laughing about James description of her as " fascinatingly boring and boringly fascinating" .... that's it... Olin is just fascinating. I'd like to have seen her on the moon . Oh yeah... I know what prompted it ... yeah , Space 1999 is swedish sci fi and Bain was doing that stuff in Mission she was doing the internal swedish Olin thing , it's all too weird...

It's the Testament of Arkadia , it's given me a headache .... I'll post about it eventually .

[sunshineboyuk]

RETRACTION -

I completely retract my unfounded comment that Olin gave producers a hard time about returning to LAIS

Q: You did a season of the television show Alias in the States. Why did you leave?

A: Yes I did and I left because I was done, you know, and it turned out so wrong. I enjoyed it tremendously, I loved everybody on the show and it was great fun and this character they created for me was so much fun to play but after a year it was over. I’m very spoiled working in movies where you shoot for three, four months and then you go on to something else. It was hard to imagine shooting the same thing the next summer. It’s just like I was done. And then it came this thing where it was ‘well is it about money?’ And it wasn’t. But they didn’t write me out and they should have killed me off (laughs).

Q: But there is no chance of you going back? There’s pages and pages on the web devoted to that character…

A: There is always a chance. I loved the show but there were issues with the travel and things like that – because we live in New York and the show is filmed in Los Angeles. But I would love to come back, that would be great fun.




I hope that excerpt clears that up. I have been on heroin for 3 years and no nothing about any TV show called ALIAS or SD-6 . I am a liar and phoney and a fraud and I will no go back to what I do best , working for the Labour Party .

[James from London]

"Ring Around the Moon"

Majestically boring in a trippy sort of way - a bit like listening to a Pink Floyd concept album when you're not in the mood. Barbara Bain gets kidnapped by a disembodied voice and wanders around in a black void while wearing a floaty nightdress before returning to Moonbase Alpha and walking along corridors in a trance. The miracle is that anyone noticed the difference.

[J. R.'s Piece]

Blake's 7 is really a showcase of the BBC’s attitude towards science fiction. It so wants to be a serious space opera, but it’s thwarted at every turn by Terry Nation’s plodding plots (he's a hack basically), a bunch of RADA luvvies and costume designers who can’t resist going way over the top and directors seemingly happy to indulge them.

Still, there’s a bleakness about the characters and their situation – they’re all doomed to failure – that works, and it’s an intriguing time capsule of 1930’s American pulp Golden Age science fiction filtered through a 1970’s British empire has fallen/winter of discontent cynical sensibility. Our heroes drink from polystyrene cups with silver sellotape around them to show how futuristic they are, and the white leather sofa on the Liberator flight deck is like something from Abigail’s Party. I keep expecting Jenna and Cally, clearly the Agnetha and Frida of BBC science fiction, to offer Blake and Avon some cheesy pineapples.

Sounds like that food and drinks trolley that they had out in Death-Watch....although Blake and Jenna were MIA by then. You've just reminded me of the no expense spared (no expense spent) format-altering intergalactic war...achieved entirely by stock footage..... I think Nicholas Rocker did the most OTT costumes from the latter part of series 3 and throughout series 4....although the regular cast only had 2 costumes each on that final year (and a Scorpio suit)... The BBC weren't keen on budget increases then and BLAKES7 had the budget of the recently cancelled police show, Softly Softly.

Terry only did six scripts after the first season though. I liked the ones by Robert Holmes, Chris Boucher & Tanith Lee more.... Hack? Ah, Ed Bishop used to use the term, 'Hack with a capital H' to describe his admiration for the influx of experienced ITC filmed tv series writers and directors on UFO's second filming block (the 9-episode Pinewood studios shooting block from May 1970).....such as David Tomblin, Dennis Spooner, Cyril Frankel & Jeremy Summers, because he thought that they gave the show a more faster-moving energy. Block 1, the 17 episodes filmed at MGM Borehamwood in 1969 relied more heavily on writers and directors from Gerry's puppet shows. More experienced filmed series people like Charles Crichton joined Gerry with THE PROTECTORS. Terry Nation does at times seem like the other sort of hack writer in that he would use previous material to fashion a 'new script'. With his stuff, sometimes I get the feeling I've been conned into buying one of his stories three times over on different shows.

I've just been reading an article on Gerry Anderson turning Ed Straker into John Koenig....at least Miss Ealand's computer keyboard from UFO made it to Main Mission....

[James from London]

"Earthbound."

I have vague but vivid memories of seeing this one as a kid. Christopher Lee's Button Moon spaceship crash lands on Alpha and he swishes around enigmatically for most of the episode dressed like Toyah Wilcox in her "Sheep Farming In Barnet" phase. His offer to take one member of the crew home to Earth attracts the attentions of Roy Dotrice, reprising his role as Commissioner Simmonds, a nagging thorn in Koenig's side. He makes such a great cowardly villain, they could easily have kept him around as a Dr Smith in LOST IN SPACE or Dr Balthar in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA type character, but I guess that wouldn't have been a very Swedish thing to do. In any case, it's worth sacrificing his character for the wonderfully dark TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED style twist at the end.

A very haunting episode, even if Barbara Bain lapses into another of her bloody comas that seem to go on for hours ...

[sunshineboyuk]

His offer to take one member of the crew home to Earth attracts the attentions of Roy Dotrice, reprising his role as Commissioner Simmonds, a nagging thorn in Koenig's side. He makes such a great cowardly villain, they could easily have kept him around as a Dr Smith in LOST IN SPACE or Dr Balthar in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA type character, but I guess that wouldn't have been a very Swedish thing to do


Isn't he wonderful , I got so excited when he survived the pilot but yeah the dark and twisted Tales of the uNEXPECTED ending is worth it it's one of the entire series highlights, pity Sandra didn't do the TALES dance as the show's credits rolled ...





A very haunting episode, even if Barbara Bain lapses into another of her bloody comas that seem to go on for hours ...

There's days more of it to come , it's pactically an episode format device written in to Bain's contract which says I must go into a coma or freak out in a fascinatingly boring way for at least 15 minutes out of every 22 .... There's an irony that her daughter went on to play possibly the most deranged insane female character of the fantasy genre In Buffy...