Catacombs Credits Guide
Johnny Byrne

The Dorcons

The Dorcons was a fairly easy one to write. The idea of using Maya was absolutely essential to this. But it would have to be in such a way that she would be incommunicado, keeping in mind that this was the girl that could get out of everything. So it had to be people who hunted Psychons and once having them could sort of control them. And the idea of taking the brain stem of the Psychon and putting it into an aging guy which would regenerate him was...it's a good science fiction story but it hasn't got anything awfully profound about it to say about the state of life and the state of the world or anything. It was a good action-adventure story because by that time I think I'd simply given up and wanted to finish my commitment precisely to the requirements of Freddie. That type of story. So I put "Dorcons" as a kind of Freddie Freiberger-Johnny Byrne story.

I saw Dorcons for the first time in over 20 years yesterday. It confirmed my original reservations about it at the time concerning Fred's demands. The first part worked very well and the dilemma was one that could have had fascinating implications. But the play off in most of the Dorcon ship, with Koenig's truly unbelievable fisticuffs, the poverty of the ideas motivating the same actions, and a masters of the universe space ship that seemed at times to be held together with chicken wire, and above all the rushed knee jerk nano-second conclusion - that and the junking of Children Of The Gods - all I can say is that I did the right thing by marrying Sandy Byrne and moving to Norfolk to raise a family. :)

Consul Varda, an obviously classically trained English actress, and Maya both used the American pronunciation of 'futile', as in 'resistance is futile', but with English accents. It sounded utterly crass to me and I didn't believe them for a moment.