Design Sketch for Cantar and Zova from The Exiles
Opposite Page: Zova (Stacy Dorning) and Cantar (Peter Duncan) in The Exiles.
Above: Emma Porteous's designs

Jagger. I was a little wary of leaving my
permanent job, but it was an incredible
opportunity so I took it."
   By the mid-Seventies Emma had a num-
ber of notable film credits to her name,
including Entertaining Mr. Sloane and
Swallows and Amazons. She was sub-
sequently lured back to television by a call
from Gerry Anderson, who invited her to
work on the second year of Space: 1999.
"I thought it was a glorious thing to do
because it gave me the chance to sit down
and design for a change. A lot of films
only require ordinary everyday clothes,
and I had missed the design element, be-
cause when I was at ATV I used to do all
the big musicals and the shows with danc-
ers. To come back to something that in-
volved designing every single week was
wonderful."

A Change of Style

   Initially, her brief was extremely lim-
ited; "I was to try and make their uniform
a little less harsh, because they were very
uncompromising and not terrible flatter-
ing. I had to get jackets to go with the,
put some more colour into them and make
them a little less austere. That's really
what they approached me to do, and it
went on from there. Once they'd seen
what I'd done, and I'd designed some
things for Barbara Bain and Martin Lan-
dau, they asked me to do the series. Origi-
nally I think the set designer, Keith
Wilson, was doing a lot of the aliens, but
they asked me if I'd like to do them and I
couldn't think of anything nicer."
   Did she watch any of the first season as
it was broadcast? "I did, and I got some
ideas from that, but they wanted a fresh
outlook on it really. One hadn't got to be
too initibited from the first series. They
gave you a marvellously free hand, al-
though there wasn't in fact that much
money on it, but enough to let you be
inventive." Emma was unable to re-cycle
the wardrobe from the first season to any
great extent: "We just used a few of the
uniforms and put bands of colour on
them."

Designing Maya

   Emma's next major project for the show
was to create a look for the new regular
character Maya, played by Catherine
Schell. "She was this wonderful alien and
had to be terribly exotic. Whatever you do
you're always influenced by the fashion
of the time, and looking back now I think
it looks terrible Seventies. I made Cather-
ine very feathered and glamourous, and it
worked well because I got a wonderful
grey shimmering fabric. I got lots and lots
of grey ostrich feathers, so when she
moved it all fluttered and looked slightly
bird-like. The jewellery had to look as
though it was nothing to do with modern
day stuff, and we made all that and the
centre piece was a reflective material that
glowed when the light was shone on it.
   "The make up was very much Keith
Wilson's idea--the dotted eyebrows she
had. He was very much involved, then he
left me on my own when I was estab-
lished."
   Did either of the leading ladies have any
strong feelings about the clothes they
should be wearing? "Not really, they were
all extremely amenable. I think once
you're told you're an alien you're open to
suggestions."
   Emma would follow the same routine on
each episode in order to achieve her de-
signs. "I'd get my script, then I'd break it
down and get ideas, and meet with the set
designer and discuss it. You go away and
make sketches, then bring them back to
show the producers." She stresses that at
this stage all of the design departments
would work extremely closely on achiev-
ing a unified look: "It all had to be part and
parcel, so we had meetings and talked
about it. When I did my designs, I tried to
do the make-up and hair with them, so that
made it much easier. It's very difficult to
design just the clothes in isolation, but the
other designers had their own ideas and
we all contributed together."
   "We had everything made, and I had the
most wonderful seamstress who set up her
own little workroom, and we just designed
and made everything either in the studio
or with various outworkers. We got fab-
rics from everywhere; I trailed round the
shops endlessly, to places like Boro-
vicks."

The Exiles

   Although she has few memories of de-
signing for the evil Mentor in the series
opener The Metamorph, Emma does have
strong recollections of the second story





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