The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity The Day After Tomorrow: Into InfinityTV Zone 48 (November 1993); p22-24
Two families arrive at Space station Delta: Tom Bowen, his wife Anna and their son David, and Harry Masters with his daughter Jane. They are to be the crew of the lightship Altares. Family units have been assigned to the mission because they will be travelling at the speed of light; the time dilation effect means that when they return, people on Earth will have aged thirty years. They enter their craft and prepare for launch.
The ship begins its journey. Accelerating, it 'enters the red spectrum of the Doppler shift', then approaches maximum speed. They pass Pluto, which at first appears blue because of the shift, then changes red as they pass.
Leaving the Solar System, the crew launch satellites which will transmit vital data back to Earth. Harry announces they are on schedule, and it is time for link up with Jim Forbes, back on Delta. Jim's message was sent a hundred days after they left.
The primary objective of their mission achieved, they now have to decide whether to return to Earth, or to head deeper into Space to explore further. Masters asks his crew to vote; they all elect to go forward.
Advancing into Space, the Altares encounters turbulence in a star cluster. As Jane and Anna discuss the life history of the genius Albert Einstein, the ship is hit by a 'meteorite shower' , and suffers some damaged. The guidance system is lost, and the light speed drive cuts in. Harry hits the fail-safe, and the Altares slows. Then the fail-safe itself fails, and the ship carries on accelerating. The crew harness themselves into their seats, except for Anna who is thrown against the wall. As Altares goes faster and faster, the acceleration effects become unbearable.
The ship lies motionless in Space; the fail-safe has cut back in. The shaken crew regain consciousness, but there is no power in the burnt-out drive units. Instrumentation has also failed; there are no records of time or co-ordinates, and the computer does not recognize any of the stars. They must be billions of miles off course.
There is worse news: Altares is caught in the gravity field of a sun, and is drifting towards it. They must repair the drives, which will remain at a critically high temperature for some time. Masters dons a thermal suit and enters the area; he can stay there for only fifteen minutes.
Anna's readings of the red star do not make sense; its density is less than a millionth of Earth's sun. Tom believes that it is at the end of its life; a red giant. Masters reveals that one of the drive units needs to be replaced. Tom must take over from him as his prescribed time in the area expires. The sun is approaching the supernova stage. There will be a gigantic explosion. Harry remains to repair the drive units, much to the distress of his daughter. He completes the task just as the star commences its detonation. Tom orders Jane to get the ship moving.
Altares speeds away from the blast. Safe and well, the crew receive a signal from Delta beacon, transmitted fifteen years after they left Earth. They can now begin plotting a course home.
However, the ship is subject to a strong gravitational force and begins to veer off course. The drives are unable to break away, and Tom deduces that they are heading into a black hole. Attempts to escape prove futile, but Anna recognizes it as a rotating black hole - they may be thrown into a new universe.
Bathed in a cacophony of coloured lights, the Altares hurtles through the black hole. It emerges in a strange galaxy, with new planets and frontiers to explore. There can be no return.
Filming on the first series of Space: 1999 ended in the early months of 1975, and the production team took time to gather their thoughts. Gerry Anderson was thinking ahead to the second season, story editor Johnny Byrne was preparing three new scripts, and ideas were being explored for improving the show's format.
The quiet was interrupted by a telephone call from America. George Heinemann, the vice-president of specialised childrens' programming at NBC, rang to explain that his company was making a series of after-school specials. He asked if Anderson had any ideas for an episode that could cover Einstein's theory of Relativity, and Johnny Byrne was called into the office.
"Gerry said to me could I do a story for school kids?" Byrne recalls, "and I said no problem. I went into my office and wrote a little thing that took the principle of a ship travelling at the speed of light and put a family in it so by not leaving them separated meant they wouldn't age at different rates because of the dilation effect. Gerry read it over the phone and we got the go-ahead straight away."
Unfortunately, the practicalities of writing a kind of Lost in Space by the textbook were not as simple as it first appeared. "Once I got the go-ahead I suddenly realized I knew very little about the theory of relativity," Byrne continues. "I left school at twelve and a half, but I'm a good reader and I went out and read Relativity for the Lay Man, and realized I was in deep trouble because there were so many aspects of it."
As the show was aimed at teenagers who were the equivalent of 'O' and 'A' level standard, the production team were not able to bluff their way through it. "Whatever science you put in had to be relatively soundly based. We brought in Professor John Taylor who'd written a book on black holes, but there wasn't an awful lot he could do. In the end the story simplified itself down by necessity. I gave an illustration of the Doppler shift, and gave an idea of how planets destroy themselves, and how they can become a black hole. "Then we tried to duplicate the effect of sending people into the black hole. That wasn't feasible, but on the other hand just because it had never been done didn't mean it was impossible."
Into Infinity had a duration of fifty minutes, and was made on a modest budget that amounted to $225,000. However, the studio had an immense stock of sets and props hanging around from series one of 1999, and new items that were designed were then re-used on the second season.
Ten days were allowed for filming at Pinewood Studios, with an additional six weeks at Bray Studios to complete the special effects sequences. Again, models were re-cycled: space station Delta was in fact part of the spaceship Daria from Mission of the Darians. Many of the production crew were 1999 regulars, from director Charles Crichton, special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and director of photography Frank Watts. Derek Wadsworth, who provided the musical score, was later re-contracted by Anderson to provide another up-tempo theme for the second year of Space: 1999. Into Infinity had no specially prepared title sequence: captions were simply imposed onto footage of the families transferring to the Altares from space station Delta, accompanied by Wadsworth's music. In a similar vein to many other Gerry Anderson series there was a pre-titles collection of clips, which featured action-oriented highlights.
Space: 1999's Nick Tate (Alan Carter) was cast in the lead role as Captain Harrv Masters, while two first season guest stars Joanna Dunham (Missing Link) and Brian Blessed (Death's Other Dominion) portrayed the remaining leads. Child actor Martin Lev had previously been seen in the movie Bugsy Malone, while Katherine Levy played a leading part in the popular ITV children's fantasy serial Children of the Stones. Ed Bishop, whose working relationship with Gerry Anderson went back many years, provided a narration, which explained many of the show's more complex scientific concepts. Jane Masters' dog, which was seen in the opening moments being left in the care of Jim Forbes on Delta, was in fact called Bones, and belonged to Johnny Byrne.
NBC showed the episode third in their educational series The Day After Tomorrow. The educational series was called Special Treat. Anderson's show had two titles- the "series" title, The Day After Tomorrow, and an "episode" title, Into Infinity. It was seen on BBC 1 in the United Kingdom on 11 December 1976. The open ending hinted at more to follow: "Here are these people in an extra-dimensional existence in this other Universe,' Byrne muses. "There may be similarities, there may be radical differences. What an interesting idea to explore in terms of a different Science Fiction series."
Unfortunately the idea was never pursued. "Gerry and I discussed it after it was made," he adds. "I think the hope was that someone might come back with some kind of offer." Such plans were overtaken by circumstances. The American backers of Space: 1999 moved in Freddie Freiberger to produce the show, and much of the flavour of the first season was lost. Johnny Byrne left his job as story editor, and returned to Norfolk to write. As Anderson concentrated on making 1999 "bigger, better, more exciting than ever", Into Infinity just got swallowed up into its own black hole, and stayed there.
Richard Houldsworth
Copyright Martin Willey.