Catacombs Credits Guide
Emma Porteous

I thought that Space: 1999 was a glorious thing to do because it gave me a chance to sit down and design for a change. Initially I was to try and make their uniforms a little less harsh, because they were very uncompromising and not terribly flattering. I had to get jackets to go with them, 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. Originally 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.

Whatever you do, you're always influenced by the fashion of the time and looking back now I think it looks terribly Seventies. We designed new things each week and I don't think we recycled anything because people do watch those things quite avidly and I think they'd know if you'd tarted up an old costume. I remember designing the look for Catherine Schell in the first episode. She was this wonderful alien and had to be terribly exotic so I made her very feathered and glamorous. It worked very well because I got a wonderful grey shimmering fabric and lots of lots of grey ostrich feathers so that 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 so we made all that. The centre piece was a reflective material that glowed when the light was shone on it. The make-up and the dotted eyebrows that she had was very much Keith Wilson's idea. He was very much involved to begin with, but then he left me on my own once I was established.

There was a lot of imagination in it, but there weren't unlimited resources and you didn't have much time so it got the old adrenaline going. You had to come up with the next episode and there had to be something there. The joy of being in the film business is that every new script is something different, there are always other nice things beckoning and one has to move on. But I did enjoy Space: 1999 very much.