The Production Guide
Script To Screen: Breakaway
by Martin Willey

The first set is the Moonbase corridor, built on stage H. This begins with scene 19, when Koenig and Bergman meet Gorski, and follows with all the other corridor scenes in the episode. Scene 19 probably started filming on 2nd January and is concluded today.

The other set is the waste area 2 depot, where Bergman and Helena watch the astronauts in the opening scenes, and later when Koenig and Bergman fight with Collins. Originally it had been planned to shoot all the depot scenes on one day (12th December). These shots started filming the previous week (there are audio recordings from 28th December), and the shooting schedule has most of them to complete on Friday 4th January. Much of these scenes will be re-shot much later (February 21,22,25 and 26, 1974), removing one character who was present.

In scene 19, Koenig leaves the travel tube with Bergman and meets Commander Gorski ("You've no doubt had a tedious journey"). Lots of Alphans are moving around, while the Operator (Valerie Van Ost) is seen talking on the communications post screens. All these Alphans will be the same personnel seen in the following corridor scenes. Fran Miller is quite prominent in these shots, standing to the side in front of the post. Guard Tony Allyn can be glimpsed behind Gorski towards the end of the scene. Others seen in this shot are Lew Hooper (medic), Alan Harris and Janice Hills. Jack McKenzie isn't clearly seen.

In scene 151, Alphans gather to hear Koenig's announcement. Lew Hooper is in the centre here, with Janice Hills behind the communications post. In the opening scene 19, the screens had shown Valerie Van Ost "live", with a TV camera on the actress to the side of the stage. Here, Martin Landau is a video recording from scene 148, filmed on 17th and 18th December (see call sheet, which notes that Koenig's dialogue must be telecine recorded).

The reason that almost all the opening scenes would be replaced was because it originally included three people, Helena, Bergman and Gundlach, and more exposition dialogue. To trim the scene down, they removed the actor, Michael Sheard (he would later guest star in Dragon's Domain). Apart from tight close-ups of Helena and perhaps Bergman, little of the original scenes survive.

The window, smashed by Collins, explodes into space. The broken glass is toffee glass, made from slowly heated sugar with a little corn syrup to stop it crystallising. The clear sugar glass is very brittle, breaking easily but without hard sharp edges. Recent productions use plastic breakaway glass, which is less likely to melt under hot studio lights. The spacesuit helmet that Collins using is also a special "crash helmet", as the fibreglass prop helmets could be damaged. The call sheet also specifies both practical oscilloscopes (that is, real ones) and dummies which would be pushed over during the fight.