The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity

In 1975 George Heinemann, vice-president of children's programming for NBC Television in the US, devised Special Treat, a series of eight one-hour educational films. One of these would illustrate Einstein's Theory of Relativity, in a dramatic adventure that would appeal to children. Heinemann commissioned Gerry Anderson, producer of the forthcoming new science fiction series Space: 1999, to make this one-off film.

In the story created by Gerry Anderson and writer Johnny Byrne, two families would travel into space on a spaceship that travelled at the speed of light. The film was titled The Day After Tomorrow. It was devised as a potential pilot episode for a series, so the film had a second title, the episode name Into Infinity. When the special was shown on the BBC in 1976, the first (series) title was removed so as not to confuse the audience with two titles. The film's budget was £120,000.

Byrne's script was dated 27 June 1975, with amendments 3 July. The film was filmed at Pinewood Studios in ten days during July 1975, between the two series of Space: 1999, using many of the cast and crew from the series. The film even looks like an episode of Space: 1999, and an obvious precursor for the Year Two changes, in design, music and action-based plot. Stars Nick Tate and Brian Blessed were veterans of the series, costumes and sets were recycled from 1999 (or would be reused in Year Two), and a spaceship was designed by model maker Martin Bower thinking Into Infinity was in fact an episode of Space: 1999.

However, the story is intended for children. It includes two child actors and there are scientific explanations for educational value (of the Doppler effect, of Einstein's life and theories, and how red giant stars explode as supernovae). It was shown as the third programme of the NBC Special Treat series on December 9th, 1975. It received its UK premiere on the BBC on December 11th, 1976. In the UK it was repeated in December 1977.

It was re-shown in the UK on BBC 4 on November 9th, 2014 at 22:50 (sadly not HD as advertised).

The film length is 52 minutes. When the BBC broadcast the film, they removed the caption The Day After Tomorrow., so the film would only have one title (Into Infinity). This was the only cut. A listing error on some internet sites record the length as 80 minutes, and inspired a rumour that an extended version exists. The 52 minute version is the only version, and the only UK TV cut was the title frame.

Cast and Crew

Johnny Byrne had written 8 episodes of the first series of Space: 1999, and was preparing three scripts for the second series as well as writing the script of Into Infinity. His dog Bones made a brief appearance as the family pet Spring, who gets left on Space Station Delta. 1992 Johnny Byrne interview

Charles Crichton directed the film. Legendary film director Crichton had directed 8 episodes of the first year of Space: 1999 and would direct 6 more of the second.

Brian Johnson and Nick Allder did the special effects. For the film they made more extensive use of freon gas to simulate rockets firing in space, a technique carried on in the second series of Space: 1999. They also developed the space warp effect, with amorphous colourful clouds flying past the ship as it accelerated. The effect was later used for space warps in Year Two of Space: 1999 (during the titles and the episode Space Warp).

The Altares docking tower. The head section of the tower was removed for Space Warp, which explains why the tower section is reordered.

Bower also made the UN shuttle, inspired by the shape of Thunderbird 2, from Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds. The small satellites that the Altares launches reappear in the spaceship graveyard in The Metamorph.

Production design was by Space: 1999 producer Reg Hill (Keith Wilson was working on Star Maidens). The pilot control panels were revamped from those of Voyager in Voyager's Return (they later appeared as the Weapons Section in Year Two). The reactor door had previously been seen in Force Of Life and would be recycled again in The Beta Cloud. The colourful computer panels from the film were used prominently in Command Center in the second series of Space: 1999 (complete with original labels for "Photon Drive", and "Yaw" and "Pitch"). The firesuit that Nick Tate wears (made by Bestobell Engineering Products Ltd of Slough) would be seen again on Alphan firemen in Space: 1999 Year Two. The jackets worn by the Altares crew anticipated the jackets that Year 2 Alphans would wear.

Music was by Derek Wadsworth, who went on to provide the music for Space: 1999 Year Two. He worked with Sreve Coe, a songwriter recently out of college who had some experience with synthesisers. Some of Coe's synthesiser tracks for the film would be used as sound effects in Space: 1999. The original 24-track master soundtrack were kept by the publishers, Panache Music, but after the owner died in 1976 the tapes were lost. Wadsworth kept a 2-track copy, which he eventually loaned to a record producer in the US. The producer put the tapes in his briefcase in the car at the Los Angeles airport, but the briefcase was stolen.

Other crew members who had worked on Space: 1999 included director of photography Frank Watts, editor David Lane, make up by Connie Reeve and music editor Alan Willis.

The cast was led by Nick Tate as Captain Harry Masters, who had starred as pilot Alan Carter in Space: 1999. The other two adult stars had been guest stars in first series episodes. Tom Bowen was played by Brian Blessed, who had been a guest star in Death's Other Dominion and would return in The Metamorph. Joanna Dunham, who had been a guest star in Missing Link, played Anna Bowen. The narrator was Ed Bishop, a veteran of Gerry Anderson series and star of UFO, which preceded Space: 1999. Don Fellows, who had played the GTV newscaster in Breakaway, appeared briefly as Delta station commander Jim Forbes.

Science

Thanks to Marcus Lindroos for Science and Observations

• The "lightship" concept clearly refers to Eugen Sanger's "photon rocket" concept of the early 1950s. Sanger's idea was to use the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter to produce an energetic gamma ray "exhaust" which like all other photons of electromagnetic radiation (visible light, radio waves etc.) travel at the speed of light. Unfortunately, the gamma rays produced in the electron-positron reaction favoured by Sanger will come out in random directions. To turn this "gamma ray bomb" into a useful rocket, the gamma rays would have to be channelled into a directed exhaust stream using some sort of mirror reflector. No known material seems capable of this (Sanger tried to devise an "electron gas" mirror but failed).
• If the photon drive were feasible, it could theoretically accelerate a ship to ~95% of the speed of light (.95c) assuming 80% of the ship's launch mass is propellant. Unfortunately, there would be no propellant left for orbital insertion around Alpha Centauri as well as the return trip to Earth. The effective top speed would then be .20-.25c. -- much too low for Einstein's time dilation effect to become important. Consequently the Altares must carry a system for collecting propellant from space, e.g. a magnetic "ramscoop" for gathering hydrogen atoms from the tenuous interstellar medium.
• In 2003, NASA JPL engineer Robert Frisbee investigated a slightly different "beam-core" matter-antimatter concept that would annihilate protons and antiprotons. The advantage is that unlike positron-electron annihilation, some of the resulting particles (charged pions) can be directed by magnetic fields to produce thrust. Only 22% of the propellant mass produces the momentum that drives the rocket forward For this reason, the top speed of .25c is much less than what Sanger envisioned. Frisbee's spacecraft resembles the Altares to some extent (both spaceships probably consist of propellant tanks containing frozen hydrogen and anti-hydrogen fuel pellets and an aft "spine" that houses radiators and magnetic field generators). However, a real antimatter propulsion spacecraft would have to be extremely long (600 kilometres!) and slender in order to minimise radiation damage from the vast amounts of gamma rays produced by the engine.
• The Altares' speed makes rapidly receding Pluto appear red as its light is Doppler shifted. However, the asteroids encountered in interstellar space between Alpha Centauri and our Sun must apparently be travelling at roughly the same speed as Altares (i.e. near light speed) since their light is not affected...
• The comment that the ship's relative velocity "shrinks up" the apparent size of nearby stars "as predicted by Einstein" refers to the fact that the entire starfield would be dramatically compressed toward the direction of travel. So space would seem black and empty except for the region in front of the ship, where the stars would seem brighter and more blue due to the Doppler shift.

Observations

The film deals with several scientific concepts (rotating black holes, red giant stars and supernova explosions, Einstein's theory of time dilation) but not always accurately.

• As in Space:1999, there seems to be artificial gravity generators -- a rather unnecessary gimmick since the ship's constant acceleration would produce the effect of gravity anyway.
• The ship's final velocity to Alpha Centauri seems to be about 95.5% of the speed of light so an Earth-bound observer will have wait 4.5 years for the ship to arrive at its destination. Time onboard the Altares will pass somewhat more slowly since it is travelling at near-light speed, but the journey will still take a few years (Einstein's theory of relativistic time dilation is largely irrelevant on short interstellar journeys since the acceleration/deceleration phase takes 1-2 years and consequently the ship's near-light speed cruise phase is cut short. Carl Sagan estimated that the travel time to Alpha Centauri would be 4 shipboard years if the ship constantly accelerates at 1g). However, the crew does not seem to age at all. The producers could have avoided this problem by incorporating a hibernation system like the one seen in Doppelganger or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• 
  It would seem that the Altares deploys its interstellar "satellites" at a distance of a few hundred billion kilometres (~0.03 light years) from Proxima Centauri -- the faintest and nearest member of the triple star system. The Alpha Centauri A/B pair is visible in the distance 0.2 light years away; the twin sun like stars shine much more brightly than Proxima which is a faint red dwarf.
• The crew is hit by a meteor shower after leaving Alpha Centauri; meteors impacting at 95+ per cent of the speed of light would cause major damage to the Altares (most interstellar spacecraft designs have a thick erosion shield in front).
• Compared with the Sun, the radius of the red giant star is said to be 10,000 times larger although its mass is only two solar masses -- not massive enough to explode as a supernova. The largest known red supergiant stars have radii about 2000 times that of the Sun but are much more massive than the Sun (>10 solar masses).
• The nearest supergiant stars are located thousands of light years from our solar system. The Altares would have to travel extremely close to the speed of light for shipboard time to slow down sufficiently (to the crew, it seems the journey only takes a few hours although the ship apparently has moved thousands of light years).
• The ship's acceleration is implausibly rapid (tens of thousands of miles/sec.); the crew ought to be crushed out of existence by the resulting g forces. However, some sort of acceleration damping system might be necessary for the ship to be able to fully exploit the relativistic time dilation effect (see previous paragraph).
• Neutrinos are indeed released by collapsing stars shortly before the supernova explosion starts, however, these massless particles are extremely difficult to detect (in the episode, the crew seems to use a telescope like device).
• After the supernova explosion, the Altares crew detects a signal from Beacon Delta (still located on the Moon as it was in Breakaway?) that was transmitted 15 years after Altares left the solar system. Dr. Anna Bowen concludes 15 years have passed on Earth. For the Altares to encounter a supernova, it would most likely be thousands of light years away... meaning thousands of years have passed on Earth.
• Laser beams are invisible in space. They also travel at the speed of light - the SFX shows a beam visibly moving across the space (Black Sun makes the same mistake)

Links

• Images and commentary
• Elevator capsule model
• Altares model profile and blueprint [Catacombs]
• Fantasy Flashback (TV Zone 48, 1993)
• Model photos at the Space City exhibition
• Film details by Chris Bentley [Fanderson]
• Andersonic #10 p24-29 is a script to screen review by Shaqui le Vesconte, p30-32 is an interview with composer Steve Coe
• DVD: The film was first released by Fanderson on VHS and DVD, exclusively for their members. This was withdrawn in 2015
  The film was released by Network in the 2-DVD set "The Lost Worlds Of Gerry Anderson", in March 2015
• Novel: In 1976, Douglas Mason, writing as John Rankine, wrote a novelisation, but book was never released and the manuscript was lost
  A new novelisation by Gregory Norris was published in October 2017, and published by Jamie Anderson, Gerry's son.