Catacombs Reference Library
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models

RETURN TO THE FUTURE
by Martin Bower

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Models Number 12 p14-19

Scanned by Paulo Jorge Morgado

• Part One
• Part Two

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PART ONE | PART TWO

It may seem like travelling back a long way through time to cover models built for a show that went into production in 1974, but it was that TV show that started me in my professional career as an independent model maker and designer. So with BBC TV and Satellite both either about to, or already rerunning the show, the time seems ripe to return to the beginning of 1974.

For its time Space: 1999 was a very high budget show and a good part of that budget went into producing what were considered then, and indeed now, some pretty stunning special effects. This was solely down to the team effort of the special effects crew headed by Brian Johnson (Johncock on the credits of Thunderbirds) and Nick Allder at Bray Studios near Windsor (formerly, of course, the home of Hammer horror films!)

In some respects I was the odd one out on the team because I alone worked in my own studios, which at that time consisted of a converted tractor barn at Woldingham in Surrey. Woldingham is 50 miles from Bray and even then was a good 1 hour journey which I made about once every 10 days to deliver models and collect scripts ready for each next episode, as the show was made on what is called a "10 day turnaround"; meaning an episode was filmed every 10 days.

The Battlecruiser was so popular that Martin got to do this 10' version for series 2

One question I'm often asked is: how did I start making models for films? Which is of course their way of actually saying: How do they get to make models for films?! Well I have to say firstly this is not 1974. There were no computer generated images in general use then and the model maker was a. far more necessary creature than he, or she, is now. Add to that the fact that in '74 only a few people knew that the job of "Special Effects Model Maker" existed, and compare that with today - where virtually every model making student leaving college wants to work in films, and you have the reason why it is now very difficult to become such an animal!

But to answer the question, - I simply (simply?!?!) wrote to every film company I could find and asked them if they needed any models built. When I didn't get a single response I got in my car with my. portfolio of photos and went knocking on doors! This bought me the odd job - like making signs for a PG Tips Chimps advert... (the first thing I ever did for TV). But then a friend showed me a tiny cutting from a newspaper saying that a new TV series called Space: 1999 was going into production, so I wrote to the studios and was told to go and see Brian Johnson at Bray. Brian saw my photos, and my car load of models and, pointing at a huge grey "thing" that was to eventually become known as the "Battlecruiser", said "take that out, I'd like to have a look". When he then turned to me and said "Would you mind if I shot some test footage right now of this model?" I was flabbergasted - and I was off on a career in TV/Film model making!

The first models I ever made for Space: 1999 were the small 30" Alpha Child ship and its double sized twin, some 5 feet long! But it is one thing to fiddle away at home building models for yourself in your own time, and quite another to be told when my initial design sketch for the ships was approved by Brian - that you have two weeks to build two models of the size mentioned. My initial reaction at actually landing a job on a real film was therefore suddenly bought down to reality with a very large crash as I contemplated on my long drive home just how I was going to construct these "turtle" shaped ships I'd so innocently contrived without a thought of how they would actually be built! So it was that I learned my first important lesson when designing a craft, namely: always keep in mind how you're going to make it while you're designing it!

Martin working on the small Alpha Child ship

In the end I built both the models in hardboard. This was steamed and bent over a pre-formed wooden framework and the two-way curves done by filling the areas with P38 Isopon car filler and filing it into shape with a large wood rasp. Once this was done the whole thing was sprayed in cellulose primer filler and rubbed down. I repeated this process several times until I achieved a really smooth surface over the entire shape, blending the areas of P38 into the hardboard until no join lines were visible. I then added all the detail in PlastiCard and a minimum of kit bits. (At that time I had no collection of plastic kit parts and no money up front to buy them with). Therefore the rear engines were made from wedding cake plastic stands and other detailing included buttons, garden wire and plastic sprue for piping. The one part I do remember using though was the rear body section of the 1/24th scale Revell Gemini Capsule kit. It became the gun-like section between the two 'lobes" on the front of the model: Luckily a 1/48th scale version of this kit was also available for the half size model.

Which leads me onto the other problem I have had to contend with a hundred times since: that of reproducing an identical model double the size, which of course means that all the detailing I got so carried away with on the small model must be repeated exactly the same only twice the size on the larger model. This also includes all the panel line detailing, and in the case of the Alpha Child ships, all the different coloured shaded panels! I relied very heavily on this technique right through Space: 1999 as a way of adding detail. Indeed on series 2 I built two Glider models that sat atop the Eagles. There was no kit detailing at all on these since they were designed to be very sleek for re-entry into the atmosphere, rather like the real space shuttle. They were overall red in colour but in fact I used 5 different shades to achieve the final effect and did a very heavy dirtying down job on them with soot. The idea for this burnt effect on a red surface coming, I must admit, directly from seeing the Lunar Module in UFO! You have only to look at a real aircraft to see that what looks like one colour from a distance is actually a series of different shades when seen close up. Indeed this is really part of the "weathering" or "dirtying down" process and, to my mind, is one of the best ways of achieving realism.

Panelling on glider achieved by using several shades of the same colour

The two scales of Glider are clearly evident in this shot. Note the 44" Eagle in background

Shot shows how two scales of the same model had to be built for various shots

The same building technique using wood based sheeting of various sorts was applied to several other ships, such as the Satazius (for the episode The Last Enemy), and the Metamorph ships for series 2. Although here I went up from hardboard to chipboard to get more strength into the models. And here I have hit upon a key difference between a film model and a hobby model. A film model must be strong!

I again learned this the hard way when, needing an extra mother ship for the same Alpha Child episode, Brian Johnson bought my "Battlecruiser" model. I was much chastised by one particular model maker at the time when this model kept falling apart, but the truth of it was it had been built 4 years earlier riding on the inspiration I had received directly from viewing Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: a Space Odyssey. Hence my ship's completely intentional similarity to the Discovery in that film. There was no E.M.A. plastic tubing in 1969, so the tubular body of the "Battlecruiser" was 20 thou Plasticard wrapped around two cardboard tubes from the inside of tin foil rolls! Detailing on it was done from kits already constructed and broken up again. These included the Aurora 2001 Moonbus kit, (Yes, I know, I can hear all those collectors crying into their paint cloths) and the original Starship Enterprise kit. The main radar dish in the centre of the model is its saucer hull cut down! I even resorted to paper bendable milk straws for piping as well as plastic sprue. Still, I think they got their monies worth out of that model. Brian got it very cheap and in various forms it appeared in four other episodes! Original drawings for Battlecruiser featured in Alpha Child. The rear view (insert) is not to the same scale

Rear of Battlecruiser following conversion for, use in Alpha Child. NB: jets made from plastic mixing bowls Front of Battlecruiser with Enterprise hull clearly visible

For its final appearance in the episode The Last Enemy, it was transformed into another ship by cannibalising models I'd already built for earlier episodes. I had built a space station for the graveyard sequence in Dragon's Domain from two plastic neon strip light covers, detailed with the runners from the Airfix "travelling crane" kit. However, these covers had already been used to make a lunar station many years earlier. That lunar station was taken apart, two of its "arms" removed and stuck back to back to form the basis of the Dragon's Domain station. Now this same space station was stuck onto the front of the Battlecruiser, along with another smaller satellite model I'd also built previously, in place of the spherical command module. The whole thing was then sprayed yellow! So it can be seen how maximum use was made of the models and that by clever rearranging they could appear as entirely different ships. Altered Battle cruiser with space station clearly visible stuck on front for The Last Enemy

The Lunar Station that became the Dragon's Domain space station but eventually became the new front of the Battlecruiser for The Last Enemy Dragon`s Domain space station made from the two strip lights previously used for the Lunar Station which ended up on the front of the battlecruiser in The Last Enemy

Martin works on 14" Gwent model

Oh, and before I move on - yes, I did get the Alpha Child ships finished on time but there wasn't half a lot of late nights involved! If you were to ask the SFX crew (and Nick Allder in particular), which model holds the least happy memories I think it is fair to say everyone would chorus Gwent! At that time it was not the name of a Welsh county but the name inexplicably given to a vast machine, supposedly a quarter of a mile, across, which resembled a crab on two sets of rotating legs. It spoke with actor Leo McKern's voice, and appeared in the episode The Infernal Machine. It too was built in hardboard by the steaming technique already mentioned, around a motorised aluminium tube built by Nick. However it wasn't so much the building of it that was the problem. To me it was much like most of the other models. It was filming the damn thing! Imagine trying to get a realistic shot of this craft, doing a rolling take off across the lunar landscape. I won't go into the sordid details involved in lifting this very heavy 5' wide model smoothly into the air (hang on - there's no air on the moon!) but suffice it to say that at the end of filming, Nick picked the model up bodily and threw it across the studio in shear frustration! Still, looking on the bright side, I did a 14" wide model for long shots and that survived okay! Close up of large Gwent model minus its feet Small 14" Gwent model

It would become tedious for me to recite here how every single model for Space: 1999 was built, so out of the 86 models I did altogether for both series, I will single out certain ones in order to define all the different techniques I employed during nearly 3 years on the show.

One day was given to come up with this 4' ship

My normal routine was, as I've already said, to do the models for each show within 10 days to fit the filming schedule. However, this was very difficult, even allowing for the fact I worked 12-18 hours a day 7 days a week! With the odd "ghoster' thrown in (this is a film industry term for working right though the day, through the night and then through the next day without a sleep break). So Brian always gave me extra time whenever possible. Some shows took longer to shoot than others because of the different number of SFX shots required for different episodes. Compare Dragon's Domain (many people's favourite episode) with The Rules Of Luton in series 2, (nearly everybody's least favourite episode!) which had virtually no model shots in it at all. For me this therefore meant that sometimes I had my modelling time extended to 3 or 4 weeks.

In fact Dragon's Domain is an ideal episode to demonstrate the number of models needed to film just one craft. The Ultra Probe is only one craft in the storyline, yet 3 models of it were built to get all the shots required. These were a 6' version, for general shots such as the model flying past the camera, a 3' version for long shots, and a large command module section (built to the same scale as the 44' Eagle), for close ups, this latter model having all the working bits including moving sprung clamp arms and opening hatches. 6' Ultra Probe model I had recently seen the film Silent Running, (made by Brian Johnson's friend and colleague Doug Trumbull). With the undocking of the Ultra Probe I wanted to recreate something like the scenes in that film where the domes undock from the Valley Forge. To achieve the "glitter" effect - seen as lots of WW pieces of debris spurt out- of the hatches as they are blown, Brian used the same technique as Doug Trumbull. Silica from the element of an old electric toaster was broken up into minute fragments and blown out through the open hatches with compressed air! If you want to know where the idea for this effect came from just look at newsreel footage of the real Lunar Module blasting off from the moon! The Ultra Probe models were highly detailed and employed EMA tubing and piping for virtually their entire basic shapes. (I'd discovered it by then!) The girder work on the Eagles was done in brass for shear strength, but the design of the Ultra Probe meant I could get away with plastic piping for its girder work. The jet exhausts were turned on a lathe in aluminium just as the Eagle's jets were. The front of the command module was based on the design of the Eagle's nose, so I had to make a wooden pattern and press mould this in 2 halves in Perspex sheeting. Unfortunately I could not get access to a 44" or 22" Eagle to get a casting to convert as these were in constant use at the studios, so I had to start from scratch. Both the 6' and the large Command Module section noses where done in this way and corresponded in scale to the 22" and 44" Eagles, however the smaller 3' model had a solid wood command module. Martin's Ultra Probe drawing

Large scale Ultra Probe in scale with 44" Eagles with hatches and clamps open Close up of 6' Ultra Probe from Dragon's Domain. Note the dreaded Panzer wagon kit mentioned in the Alien article Ultra Probe nose cone design

The panel cladding on my models and on the Eagles was done by simply making two sets of pressings from the original wooden masters. The first two halves were stuck together after having had, the window areas cut out and panelled in, and then the second pressings were cut out individually and fitted over the first basic shape. This was a very time consuming process as the cladding had to be cut out very accurately and aligned perfectly.

PART TWO