These EpisodesBlack Sun
These EpisodesFrom the These Episodes documentary originally on the 2005 Network DVD boxset.
The story in the black sun is just simply that the moon disappears into a black hole.
We didn't call it a black hole clearly there was discussion at that time. Black holes were a theory. Some thought they were theories from mad astronomers. But of course over the years they have become a reality.
The idea of using the gravitational forces as a means of propulsion, through space, from one continuum to another, these were the exciting ideas that were being discussed at the time.
It might be quite interesting to explore the possibility of alpha encountering such gravitational forces and being unable to control them.
The love interest between that John Koenig and Helena Russell of course simmers beneath the surface of many of the stories.
It was actually something which we wanted to keep very much at arm's length. Because once you've established it, it's pretty hard in the context of a family series to break it up. We didn't want to fall in the trap of making them a cosy couple, a cosy man and wife. At least too early in the piece. The idea that the entire population of alpha was facing extinction, if not its maker, was something which then kicked off the need for all of them to express something about what it has been for each of them to the human.
Professor Bergman, his function and his role changed very, very swiftly, in the way in which the developments of the stories evolved. At first we saw what appeared to be a regulation scientist who could untangle knotty issues of science and so on. But as the almost metaphysical nature of the stories and the problems of this travelling group of people who are scared who were out of their depth, and who were on the point of extinction, Bergman became something else. He went back to the notion of the scientist savant.
Bergman was in essence the reader of the runes. He could interpret the thoughts which they themselves and problems they themselves could not even articulate.
We very successfully aged Martin Landau and Barry Morse to look very very believably very very old. Tribute to the make up department, tribute to their performances obviously.
Since then the entire Christian community at the time seemed to be confident in the fact that any manifestation of the deity might be male, it occurred to me that it would be fun to disabuse them of that certainty and to present them with a female.
Contents copyright Martin Willey