Destination: Moonbase Alpha (74 page)

‘This is not to say I was right, and it certainly was not a judgment that you could make at the time: “I’m right and Fred is wrong.” You can make these judgments only retrospectively, and retrospectively there are two opinions about this. There are some very passionate fans who found enjoyment and found
Space: 1999
in the second series, with its less complex situations, more people friendly, the wonderful presence of Catherine – who is a fantastic actress and graced that part beautifully. But for me as a dramatist, quite apart from [my general feelings about]
Space: 1999
, that character presented far too many easy options. It seemed the more difficult the situation, the easier it was to resolve, because if [the Alphans] were not taking advantage of Maya’s unique powers in the situation, then they were just being dumb.

‘When Freddy came, it was apparent to me that there was no place for me in this new universe that was appearing. And anyway, trying to bend what I had written to the demands of this universe was simply not something that I was prepared to endure. That’s what it would have meant – enduring something – whereas before one was really having fun. This wouldn’t have been fun. It would have been stressful and confrontational, and indeed that was the case to a certain extent – purely in terms of story writing. I love Freddy, and I respect the work he has done, but he was not right for my
Space: 1999
, as I was not right for his
Space: 1999
. And there I would sort of draw the line.’

Nick Tate had a similar view: ‘I like the second series, but I’ve always had a real soft spot for the first series. It was just like we were all growing together and we had this ongoing relationship. Year Two was very different. Fred Freiberger wanted to humanise the show. Great! He wanted to put some colour into it. He felt that Rudi Gernreich’s costumes were boring. I didn’t think they were boring at all – I thought they were great costumes. He was right that we should have had other things to wear, but a dress designer could have made that decision without being a producer. I might not like him, but he obviously knew a great deal about the industry and about making television. He did some good things. He wanted to put some comedy into the show – that was a good idea, as well. He wanted the peripheral characters to be not so peripheral anymore, but to have some real interaction in the show, and that was a very good idea and should always have been the case. They might have made a mistake in the first series – that they wanted to keep Martin and Barbara and Barry very strong in the show and they didn’t want any of the other actors to really take major roles, so they didn’t hire actors of any great standing. That’s not to say they didn’t hire actors of great talent – they did. But they didn’t hire people who were already established stars, who would have demanded straight off the bat that they be used more. Prentis, Zienia,
Clifton, me – none of us had any clout. We did what we were told to do. I got lucky – they liked my character and they started to write for me. Very lucky for me; it didn’t happen so much for others. That was probably a mistake on their part that they didn’t really go out and find some very exciting people.

‘Those of us [supporting cast members] who went back [for Year Two] – Zienia and I – had no way of inducing this new producer to do what we knew would be right for the series. It would have made a more human series if we could have had more involvement. So they wrote in new people … Tony Anholt was a very nice man and a really good actor, and so they were right [to cast him]; but maybe they should have hired him from the beginning [of Year One]. That would have helped, too. But they didn’t. They went about some things in a very silly way.

‘I think Gerry said to Fred, “Help me – I don’t know what to do.” Or, more than that, I think that after the first series was made and we all thought we were coming back in August and we didn’t, ITC came to Gerry late and said, “Look – as you know, we’re not going to go ahead with this series the way it was. But we’ve decided we will do a new version of this series – but we have to do it our way. We’ll send out a man to you who will take over and show you what we want. And these are the things we want …” And they told him and Gerry apparently accepted. I’m not sure what all of those things were, whether it meant that all of us went from day one or whether that was decided along the way. I don’t know where that decision was made, or why. It was extraordinary.

‘It’s always been a mystery to me why they made the kind of changes they made. I can see how some of them were founded in good principles, but I think they made big mistakes. And we paid for it, because the series wasn’t a success. At the time, I didn’t think that
Space: 1999
had failed, and there was a tremendous amount of buzz and hope that it would go on. With all the fan mail and fan clubs, I can’t deny that. If people want to stick with it and perpetuate it, I’m honoured.’

Fred Freiberger said:
‘The writers, I thought, were horribly underpaid. I told the writers to go on strike! I didn’t want it to come to that, but … I couldn’t understand the pay on
Space: 1999
. It just astounded me what we were paying our writers.’

Keith Wilson recalled: ‘I would be working three scripts ahead. I would be planning sets and have people building them well ahead. I would have just ten days to strike what had been shot the day before or week before, and then to build those new sets. It was very highly organised. It was a small team of people – I think my whole department consisted of only about five people. Nowadays if you do something science fiction, you have hundreds of people. Then when it came to do monsters in the second series, I had to do monsters as well as the sets; there was just a make-up artist and me. If you do monsters now, you have hundreds of people doing wires and doing all that stuff. It was just me and one man, and he was doing other people’s make-up as well, so it wasn’t like he was there just to do monsters. I always felt the monsters were not very good, simply because we did it in ten days and there were only two people doing it. I’d design it; the make-up man would make it … Wardrobe would help. That’s all it was.’

Nick Tate said: ‘Obviously I did not agree with the construction of the second series. I thought some of the premises, including trying to make the whole thing more integrated and not just a one-man show, were good. Fred Freiberger wanted to bring monsters into the show. But you can’t say, “I want to bring monsters into the show,” and then say, “But we’re going to do it twice as fast and with half the budget.” Monsters are hard to do … It’s easier today.’

Of the double-up episodes, Keith Wilson noted: ‘It really threw me when we actually filmed two episodes together. The scripts would be written to accommodate my problems, and most of those second episodes we shot outside. That was the only time we started to use locations regularly. Up until that point, virtually all the exteriors were built on the stage. But to accommodate my problems, we started to shoot outside. You would get some of them set in a wood, or whatever. So that was a problem. But we got over it that way, by adjusting the scripts. It was all very carefully worked out weeks ahead. They were all locations very close to the studio: either on the studio grounds or in a forest, which we had right next to the studio. We never went anywhere extraordinary.’

Nick Tate has also been critical of the double-up procedure: ‘The double-up episodes were a very unsatisfactory way to work. A lot of the time we had to sit and wait, because we would need Barbara or Martin and they were shooting on the other episode and we couldn’t get them. It got very, very awkward. Eight episodes were [done in this way], with two being shot simultaneously [at any given time]. Martin was running from one soundstage to the other. Basically what they tried to do was separate the cast and put some of the minor cast solidly in four episodes and the others in the remaining four. Martin would be the main lead in one and they gave more to Barbara in the other. They would try to write the episodes in that way, so that Martin wasn’t too taxed. Martin was singularly important in all the episodes and got all the action, and his character largely drove the shows. It was hard to do those eight episodes, because whilst he dominated four of them, he had to have less to do in the other four … So they gave more to me, or to Tony Anholt, or to Catherine Schell, or to Barbara. And so it went …’

John Hug also commented on the double-up episodes: ‘I would have liked to be in more, with much more to do, of course. At one point, I can’t remember which episodes they were, but we were shooting two episodes in different studios at the same time. And what tended to happen with the double ones was that someone who had a lot to do in one episode would have little to do in the other one, which was [a consequence of] the practicalities of using the two studios at the same time.’

Reflecting on his part as a spaceship pilot, Hug said: ‘The Eagle’s seats were there, it was a mock-up of the front. It was pretty much [as seen on screen]: there was a console, things to hold on to. It was pretty easy to feel that you were in an Eagle. It was quite nice to sit there. There were the usual things that didn’t really work; you know, sticky numbers on a board. If they wanted close-ups of things they had to be functional, but usually you’d just press … down there. You got used to your favourite buttons. You know, seven’s a lucky number, so I’ll have seven. It’s like getting out of a car door – if it’s your car and you’ve been driving it for five years, you suddenly don’t fumble around and go, “Where the bloody hell’s the handle?” You’re on automatic pilot when you get in and out of your own car. So you need to know, if you’re supposed to be an efficient Eagle pilot. You don’t go, “Where’s that button gone?” You just go for it. You’ve got to look as if you know what you’re doing.’

Praising the special effects, Barbara Bain stated: ‘What was really exciting was going over to Bray Studios … It was very exciting over there. They were like a whole other genius group of people. I only wish they’d been closer, so we could have felt it more. But that was stunning stuff – really stunning stuff.’

Of his approach to playing John Koenig, Martin Landau said: ‘I’m a lot of things – I think every person is. People are complicated, and you see a lot of sides of me that are in Koenig, obviously. But basically, I don’t think I can play anything I’m not! I think it’s a question of extending certain parts of yourself and subordinating other parts.’

Nick Tate recalled his time filming
Space: 1999
: ‘I’ve done quite a few nice films since I did the
Space: 1999
series, but I don’t think that I’ve done anything that was as constantly enjoyable, or that kept me as fully employed – I was there every day of my life for three years, basically. We built an extraordinary relationship between all of us; we were very good friends and didn’t have time for anybody else. You have to be on film sets very, very early in the morning. I’d get up about 5.30 in the morning, get ready at home, drive to the studio and get there by 6.30, go straight into makeup, hair and wardrobe, then be on the set at 7.00. You work until 5.20, with an hour break for lunch. Sometimes you might go through until 5.45. Then you go home, exhausted. Or, more often than not, many of us would go to the pub. It’s a big tradition in England for actors to go to the pub. But we didn’t drink during the working hours; we just drank at night-time. There was a lot of partying that went on.’

John Hug agreed: ‘The bar at Pinewood was a pretty lively place when we got out of Moonbase Alpha, after shooting. People shouldn’t have driven home. It was always trying to find someone who was sober enough to drive. That seemed to be the main criterion for Friday nights.’

Of his co-stars, Tate commented: ‘Martin and Barbara were very private. Obviously, they were married and they had their kids. It was a working job to them; they did their work and then they’d go home. From time to time Martin would come out. He came over to my place a couple of times. Every Friday night there was a party at my house, and Martin and Barbara would come and they would sit there very politely while some people were falling all over themselves with beer. Barbara was very ladylike, incredibly well mannered and polite. She comes from a very good family, and is extraordinarily well read. We used to play and make up word games on the set – little crosswords – and we’d give each other clues and we’d have to guess the answers. Barbara was extraordinary at this – her knowledge of the English language is quite extraordinary. Martin was very clever, too. People don’t get to be stars in this business and not be bright. It doesn’t happen by accident. You might get one break – you might get one show – but most stars, I think, are very bright people.

‘It was great. I loved working on the show. I loved Prentis and Zienia and
Clifton and Anton. We were all great friends. It was lovely. I learned a great deal on that series. I’d done a lot of work before, but not on that kind of international level. I think I really learnt my craft, in terms of film, from working particularly with Martin. He is a superb technician, a very clever actor. I was lucky to have been in that series. I didn’t think at the time how important it would be in my life; I didn’t think it would mean so much to people after so many years.

‘I loved all the people that I worked with. I genuinely liked Martin, and Martin genuinely liked me. It’s like having a big brother, or an uncle or a father, or somebody you know who has got a particular thing that they just can’t let go of. I knew Martin had this problem with me doing too much. But apart from that, he liked me and he loved working with me. He was just a little jealous, that’s all. And I just had to cope with that. We had a lot of really good times together. He came to my house – I never went to his house. We did lunches and stuff together and he was a real pal. Some people are very generous with what they have – Martin is very giving of himself, constantly. He’s a wonderful,
wonderful
raconteur; a very funny man, full of invention, and I think he’s a fine actor. He deserves the Oscar that he finally got [for
Ed Wood
in 1995] – [two] years in a row being nominated [and not winning, in 1989 and 1990]; that’s tough.’