Catacombs Credits Guide
Prentis Hancock

Comments from the Alphacon 2012 convention, Los Angeles, September 2012.

I met Lee Katzin one Saturday morning, with Sylvia in her office. We had a chat. They'd seen Wam!, the [Protectors] two-parter. I thought the part of Carter was the part to go to. On Monday my agent phoned. "Don't worry, we've done the deal, on Morrow." He'd done the deal before I'd gone to see Sylvia and Gerry, so there was no question of auditioning for it.

What was quite nice about the set was that although it was enormous, it was not intimidating. The tables and chairs made it quite office-y, and that kept it human. It filled more than half of M stage, which was one of the big stages at Pinewood.

We had a script read every fortnight. Martin and Barbara I suspect already had a script read with the writers. Three stars, and then I led the second line billing if you like. In the rear end crawl I'm always top of the list. Those people on the rear end crawl were invited to the script reading. But the comment from us was quite well down the line.

There was a much more interesting idea that Gerry ran past Nick and I, that we thought we were going to do at one time. There had been a camera attachment to a helicopter which allowed it to be a Steadicam for a 10 minute magazine. He wanted to have a planet surface that was all water. Commercial lifeboats are called out to one area I think above Swansea, where the horizon - you can find a spot on it where there's no ships. So Nick and I would be in a rubber dingy in the middle of this area, the helicopter could come in and we could play a 9 minute scene using the whole magazine of the camera. It was an interesting idea. It never came to fruition, but they were considering it, using the latest technology for aerial shots and our incredible acting abilities.