Destination: Moonbase Alpha Read Free Page B

was about three weeks later that we moved to Pinewood.’
    Following days of rehearsal and screen tests, filming finally commenced at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, on Monday 3 December 1973. Special effects filming had already begun at Bray Studios on Tuesday 5 November 1973. Live-action filming was primarily conducted on the L and M stages of Pinewood Studios. L stage housed the regular standing sets (such as Main Mission in Year One, and Command Centre in Year Two), while M stage was utilised for episode-specific sets such as alien worlds or spacecraft. Other stages at Pinewood were also used as required for various episodes throughout the filming of the series.
    Keith Wilson was responsible for the design and look of the interior of Moonbase Alpha, as well as all the aliens and environments encountered throughout the series. He recalled, ‘I had two basic stages. I had one stage with all the Alphan sets on it. I had designed a modular system so I could – overnight – build a set very quickly, because every panel was exactly the same size as the next. So it was like a big Lego kit. I could put all of these pieces together. So if there was an episode that took place on the Moon, or Alpha, it was very easy. It would give me a chance then to plan ahead. But if it had a big new set – an interior of a spaceship, or a planet surface – then I would have to work very fast. But I would have the other stage to do that. They were identical size stages. So I had one for Moonbase Alpha, and the other for all those planet surfaces. I would have ten days to do anything that had to be done. It wasn’t a problem: I was well organised and I just did it.’
    Writer and story editor Johnny Byrne recalls joining the production: ‘I was called down to Pinewood when they were still considering Space: 1999 as a follow-on from UFO , and I heard nothing for some time. I met Chris [Penfold] there. Then some time later I was called in again when it was now Space: 1999 , and I was asked to re-write a script that eventually became the second episode, “Matter of Life and Death”. I found myself, shortly thereafter, in a private little part of Pinewood, away from all the madness of L & M Stages.’
    Christopher Penfold said: ‘I asked Johnny Byrne to come on to the show. When he joined we began to work very closely together. I commissioned him, first of all, to write a script. Then very quickly he became a part of the writing team and did a lot of absolutely wonderful work. I had admired Johnny’s work, which was the reason I asked him on. We got on extremely well together, and we were doing pretty much what we wanted to do, within the parameters of the series. We were on a high, there’s no doubt about that … I certainly loved what I was doing. I think that’s the secret – passionate commitment.’
    The production encountered problems from the beginning, as Gerry Anderson recollects: ‘We had so many problems … When we first started filming Space: 1999 , we had a horrendous situation in the financial sense. We shot six weeks of effects without getting one shot in the can. Every day when we went to screen the dailies the density of the image was in constant fluctuation. Under normal circumstances, this is a problem that can be tracked down quickly, but we just could not discover the cause of it. We changed cameras. We changed lenses. We called in experts from Eastman Kodak. We called in camera engineers. We had daily conferences trying to find out what the trouble was. We even used different film stocks. Then we shot in black and white instead of colour. Nothing worked. We lost everything. Finally, we found out it was a very simple fault. It was a brake on one of the film magazines, which was dragging. Every time it dragged it slowed down the transport mechanism, thus increasing the exposure. It was a minute problem but we lost thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds.’
    Special effects for Space: 1999 were