These EpisodesBreakaway
These EpisodesFrom the These Episodes documentary originally on the 2005 Network DVD boxset.
I was very excited when Gerry called me, really, because the film industry at that time, if I remember rightly, was going through a pretty lean patch. Somebody said to be able to get a series off the ground of this size was was fantastic
When I called America to tell them we were going to turn the beginnings of a second series of UFO into a new show which we called Space: 1999, the president of the American company said to me "I want an undertaking from you Gerry that the new show will not have any stories that take place on earth."
The problem of what to do with nuclear waste was pretty much in the news. And it was something of a concern to me. And ideas of simply launching nuclear waste into space was one of the mad ideas that was going round at the time. We knew that we had somehow to have a major event which would release the Moon from the Earth's gravity. I can't remember exactly how it happened but that was a kind of Eureka moment I think when we realised that a good nuclear blast could actually kick the moon out of Earth's orbit.
ITC insisted that Gerry found somebody who could bring them very high powered American input into the scripting process.
I remember having a very delighted telephone call from Gerry and Sylvia, saying that they had found somebody that they thought I could get on with extremely well. His name was George Bellak and that I'd be meeting him soon.
It's always been a problem for me. To find the right type of writer who understands my particular way of working
George and Gerry at found it difficult to see eye to eye and so that was a somewhat difficult relationship for them from the start.
I had a very high regard for George. Both as a person and as a writer. But of course Gerry had his reasons for needing somebody to take over from George, which were I think to ensure that Breakaway really fulfilled his requirement for it to be mainly an action adventure episode that would open the series with a big bang.
The all action title sequence. I think Gerry was very good at these. I think he felt you had to give people a taste of what was to come, and you had to give it to them very quickly. And you had to make them feel excitement before you actually got to the show.
Breakaway of course took quite a long time, quite a lot longer than other episodes to shoot. It was the pilot episode, it was always intended to be a longer episode. It was the episode in which the teething troubles of the production were always going to be sorted out.
We had monitors all over the place. Or so it seemed, in fact we had about six monitors and used to carry them from one position to another. When the film was completed it looked like loads and loads of monitors all over the Moonbase. At that time it was impossible to film a picture from a television screen because the pictures used to roll up. Or roll down. The shutter on the cine camera was out of sync with the picture on the television. And we invented a situation where the cine camera actually generated the time base for the television set. So we were able to photograph images that weren't moving and I think look very real. Today nothing wonderful about that that up a time it was a great innovation.
When it came to making the pilot film, the people in America said that they would like it directed by an American director because he understood the American people, the American market and all the rest of it. Which really was a lot of nonsense, but it's very difficult to be uncooperative because just produces bad feeling and that, in turn, affects the production
Lee Katzin was a very ambitious director. He saw in Space: 1999, I'm sure, an opportunity to display his powers as a director, and he was a very keen to make the best of what we had. In the way of resources and he was quite ruthless in demanding further resources in the way of time.
Lee Katzin had a very good track record in America. He'd done a lot of pilot films. And a lot of top notch series. He was a very nice bloke. He was very competent. But I think he was struggling a lot with the sets, with the technical aspect of how we had to shoot things.
It became a joke by about the third day, because we were still in Main Mission on the third day, scene one. The fourth day came. The call sheet said Main Mission, scene one. Fifth day. Main Mission, scene one. It went on like that. We never we never got out of Main Mission. I don't know how long, I wasn't keeping a diary of it unfortunately. If I had I think I would have run out of paper. It extended into thirty one working days.
When we cut the picture together, what should have been a one hour show ran for nearly two hours. And I sent it to New York. And I've got to be honest enough to say that I secretly went ha ha ha, when the president of the New York company said "Gerry, what's happened, I mean the picture's terrible, it's absolutely appalling, and not only that I mean it's runs for ever. Well I didn't say "I told you so" because that's not in my nature but inwardly I was saying, yes, "I told you so".
So now it was a question of saving that picture. So I went into the cutting room with a notepad and my pen. I went through the picture with the editor. And I wrote new sequences, where the story failed. I decided on the cuts I would make. I decided on new shots where I would have to bridge one sequence to another. And then I went on the floor myself as the director, and directed all these new scenes, and then I supervised the cutting of that programme until it came out the fifty minutes we required for a one hour spot.
The new scenes were mostly written by Christopher Penfold and directed by David Lane. Gerry Anderson would certainly have overseen the writing and directing, but his name does not appear on any of the paperwork.
This was sent to America. And I got a call which says "Gerry, you're a genius, how did you do it, it's incredible. I've just shown it in one of the preview theatres in New York and when it was finished, the projectionist came down and said 'I have to say, you say this is a television series, it looks like a major feature film'. So, again, I said to myself "ha ha ha ha".
A lot of Americans in the film business have this attitude that unless it's filmed in America with an American artist and American directors it's gonna be no good. Of course it was one up for the United Kingdom.
Contents copyright Martin Willey