The Catacombs The Production Guide
Script To Screen: Breakaway
by Martin Willey

Script To Screen

This is page 14, scene 23 from the "Temporary Final" version of The Void Ahead. In this scene, Koenig meets Helena in her office. In this early draft, Bergman is present, introducing the two. In the final episode, Koenig comments on Helena's microscope - a college prize. Here, Helena comments on Koenig's history, specifically a story she heard about his father. She asks if it is a story invented for the media- what we would now call "fake news". Much of Bellak's script is discovering a cover up of the "virus infection", with Symonds (Simmonds) and Grodno (Gorski) playing politics and trying to control the news media. At the time Bellak was writing this, a US Senate committee was investigating the Watergate burglary. While in real life the scandal continued to escalate, later drafts of the script downplay the politics.

Breakaway

14

23 CONTD.

HELENA

Yes - even to the fact of a remark
you made about your father? Who
never even saw the sea once in his
life? And perhaps that's why you
came into the Space Program?

(a beat)

Was that..invented..for the occasion?

KOENIG

I'm not that inventive, doctor.

BERGMAN

The Commander's father was a Mid-
western American farmer...

KOENIG

He saw his wheatfields - not salt
water.

HELENA

I was impressed by that..even though
I thought it was..well..image-making
fiction. I'm pleased to be mistaken.

KOENIG

You might also be mistaken in that
stream of confidential reports Earth
Command gets from you about the
picture here. Now, how many people
have been affected by this...disease..
to date?

HELENA

Ten, so far. Eleven with the man
this morning. It's an unusual form
of brain damage that I have not seen
before -- ever. Radiation damage...

KOENIG

You just said you never saw it before.
You've seen nuclear radiation damage
before, I'm sure...

HELENA

Commander, nine of the eleven worked
at the Nuclear waste Disposal Area.
In four cases, people just lost control
of themselves and had fatal accidents.

CONTINUED:

Martin Landau annotated his script page. His first comment is approval for the background on Koenig, perhaps suggesting more information about Koenig should be added.

Meed to know something of Koenig's history here - bio - physicist - explorer - astronaut's father etc. etc!!

In the next versions of the script, these lines are gone, and we don't learn anything about Koenig's background until the episodes Dragon's Domain, The Rules of Luton and The Lambda Factor.

Below Landau rewrites some of Koenig's and Helena's dialogue. Helena's "Never" line is a little more emphatic than "ever", but mostly the words are simply rearranged to make them more fluid for speech; there is no change in content.

KOENIG

You might also be mistaken in that
stream of confidential reports Earth
Command gets from you about the
picture here. Now,To date how many people
have been affected by this...disease.. ?
to date?

HELENA

Ten, so far. Eleven with the man
this morning. It's an unusual; form a form
of brain damage that I have not seen never seen
before -- Never. Radiation damage...

KOENIG

You just said you never saw it before.
You've seen nuclear radiation damage in the past?
before, I'm sure...