Destination: Moonbase Alpha Read Free Page A

resulted really from the conflagration that Western Europe experienced … through the sickness of Nazism and the Holocaust, and the migration across the Atlantic. I think that George Bellak’s huge contribution to the series was its inherent respect for humanity. Its regard for the processes of consensus and democratic decision-making, and so on – although the need of course was to have a very strong and determined and decision-making leader. I think that in the way Moonbase Alpha was set up, the hierarchy, the structure, the philosophy of the first series, although the actual words of George Bellak got quite substantially changed in the writing, it is his stamp that remains pretty firmly fixed on [“Breakaway”], and on many of the ideas and stories that ensued thereafter.’
    ‘The Void Ahead’ was re-written by Penfold and became known as ‘Turning Point’ and then finally as ‘Breakaway’.
     
PRODUCTION
     
    It was the desire of the producers that there be as many big names – and spectacular explosions (another hallmark of Gerry Anderson productions) – associated with the series as possible. Nothing was spared in either time or money. In all manners the intention was that Space: 1999 would be the best, most incredible science fiction series ever seen on television.
    The series was initially set to film at Elstree, as actor Prentis Hancock explains: ‘We were originally in Elstree Studios. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get the set ready in time, so Gerry got everybody in from the design department one weekend – this was before I joined – and said, “This weekend we go to Pinewood.” So they pulled out of one studio, into another, where they did build the set on time. The look of it was slightly different, obviously.’ Keith Wilson recalls the same move: ‘We were actually setting up at Elstree Studios and we did a moonlight flit. It was, it certainly was. We picked our cars up and we were leaving. Literally the next day we were setting up at Pinewood.’ As a result of this ‘moonlight flit’ the production was blacklisted by the unions.
    Christopher Penfold also stated: ‘ Space: 1999 actually started not at Pinewood Studios, but at Elstree Studios, where Gerry Anderson was in production with another live action series called The Protectors . At the same time, I was there with a series [called Pathfinders ], which I was asked to begin to get the scripts together for, some three weeks before the first day of shooting. Under those circumstances I don’t think that anybody at Elstree thought that [ Pathfinders ] would survive. Actually it did, by virtue of my hiring a motor caravan and living 24 hours a day on the lot at Elstree and writing scripts through the night. This, I think, more than anything else, made an impression on Gerry Anderson. It wasn’t anything to do with my proficiency in science fiction, just the fact that the impossible seemed to have been achieved on this other series. And so he called me in to start discussions about what was going to be a new series of UFO . As the discussions got under way, I think [what we had in mind] was, more than anything, the influence of the already-successful Star Trek , which [based] its stories entirely extra terrestrially. I think that ITC, the producing company, thought that might be a direction in which to take a new series of UFO . I think Lew Grade, who was the big money man, would have gone to the next stage of UFO , but he really wanted something that was going to have all the bells and whistles of a big international hit. So the terrestrial element of UFO was abandoned. The discussions took place at Elstree Studios about the ways in which we might launch a group of Earthly humans off on this odyssey through space. The notion of … the nuclear waste dumps on the surface of the Moon evolved, and the idea of the explosion pushing the Moon off onto its journey was the origin of the series. All of that took place at Elstree Studios. It