Film Compilations Film 2 (1979)
Compiled From Breakaway War Games |
Additional Scenes Directed by Additional Scenes Written by |
|
Chairman Dexter | Patrick Allen |
Deputy chairman Walsh | Weston Gavin |
Commander Nardin (uncredited: Narrator) | Marc Smith |
Int. International Lunar Finance Commission Boardroom
Ext. New York City at night (establishing shots)
Ext. Building Entrance (establishing shot)
The boardroom decoration includes unpainted Airfix models including a Saturn V rocket, two space shuttles and, on the desk, Starcruiser (an aborted Gerry Anderson project that spawned an Airfix kit). The consoles are old props from Gerry Anderson's 1969 series UFO. Strangely there is an American stars and stripes flag, although this is an "International" organisation with British chairman.
Scenes of the Eagle training crash were reversed (left for right) shots from elsewhere in the episode, especially Koenig's crash. (The scenes of Main Mission glimpsed in this segment are also reversed).
Additional library music is sourced from three British composers in the Bruton library. Thanks to Oliver Lomax and Chris Dale.
Apart from the above, there were no cuts in the episodes.
Narration: "From the very first moment in time when man looked out into the Universe, our galaxy has been dominated by the Moon, the Earth's great natural satellite."
Our galaxy contains billions of stars, none of which are dominated by the Moon. It should probably read "our sky has been dominated". It is still far better than the nonsense narration in Destination Moonbase Alpha.
Narration: "The Command Centre, Moon Base Alpha, is a well established colonised space station, regularly monitored and smoothly functioning, its very existence made possible by a specially developed support system fed by nuclear waste from Earth."
This is a confusing sentence, probably as it is adapted from the narration in Destination Moonbase Alpha. Command Centre is the control room that replaces Main Mission in Year Two (and not seen in these episodes). According to the rest of the film, nuclear waste is just dumped on the far side of the Moon, not recycled.
Why is a training flight on the dark side of the Moon being monitored from Earth in an otherwise ordinary office board room? By looking out the curtains the deputy determines they are passing over navigation beacon delta.
Mid-town Manhattan, New York, looking south from 42nd Street, late 1970s. The Empire State Building (1931) is on the right in both pictures. In the opening shot, on the left is the skyscraper of 200 Park Avenue (opened 1963, then known as the Pam Am Building; since 1981 the MetLife Building), with the Chrysler Building (1930) partially obscured beyond. Since 2016 One Vanderbilt stands alongside it. The street level view is roughly the same viewpoint, and is from the corner of Bryant Park at Avenue of the Americas/W 42nd Street. At the centre is the American Radiator Building at 40 West 40th Street (opened 1924, then called the American Standard Building; since 2001 the Bryant Park Hotel).
The Blam comic Aftershock (2012) includes more scenes of the Chairman and Deputy in their boardroom, with Simmonds.
Marc Smith was the narrator, appeared on camera, and had worked on the original series, as the voice of the Beta Cloud.
There is one computer terminal, possibly a DEC VT100 although the dark case is unusual. First produced August 1978, the DEC VT100 was not a computer; it communicated with a host (what is now called a server) to allow data input, via the keyboard, and output, via a character-based screen, the ancestor of the command line windows which all computers still support. More modern versions of it were still in use in 1999.
An unpainted Airfix Eagle on the table.
Note the Starcruiser model on the table and Saturn V rocket beyond.
Contents copyright Martin Willey