The Production Guide
Script To Screen: Alpha Child
by Martin Willey

Script To Screen

• Script: Jack Crawford
• Script: Nurse Paula
• Script: Space Battle
• Call sheet: NGA
• Call sheet: Flower
• Call sheet: Baby

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Monday 15th July 1974 was day 6 of filming Alpha Child. Finally they finished a week of shooting in Main Mission, and moved into the Medical set for the next 4 days.

Julian Glover and Cyd Hayman had joined the episode on Thursday 11th July. Cyd Hayman had originally been assigned a caravan dressing room, but requested one in the main building. Clifton Jones agreed to let her use his dressing room, 327, and move in with Nick Tate, hence the thank you note on the call sheet below (as the Main Mission scenes finished, this was Clifton's last day on the episode).

The rest of the cast are seen in scene 114, getting up from the floor, and watching the screen.

There are a couple of short scenes later in Main Mission, when the battle cruiser moves over Alpha, showing Kano, Sandra and Tanya, but these were filmed earlier on Wednesday 10th July.

The next scene, 142, is actually the last in the episode- Koenig, Helena break into the medical centre and see Mathias and Nurse Paula recovering, while on the other bed is Sue Crawford and the baby. The reverse shots of Koenig and the others in the doorway were shot on Wednesday 17th. Note that Sue Crawford is still named Cynthia, as she was in the script.

Scene 10 has baby Jackie put in the incubator, and Helena tells Sue/Cynthia to get some rest. This is the last scene for Bina Williams.

The last main scene is 16, after the opening sequence, as Koenig meets Jackie and he talks to Helena. There was still some parts of this scene to complete the following day, Tuesday 16th July. See the script pages for scene 16.

This was an extended day, and it seems the evening work included a number of "inserts", close-ups for this and previous episodes. Most of these didn't involve the actors, except for Barry Morse who came in specially to shoot the scene for the series titles.

Filming on Alpha Child would continue until Monday 22nd July, when the sequences showing the astronauts on the lunar surface were filmed alongside new scenes for Missing Link; see the call sheet here.