Catacombs Reference LibraryJohnny Byrne Interview
Catacombs Reference LibraryTV Zone Number 54 (May 1994); p9-11
Pinewood Studios: 1973.
An attempt to mount a second series of Gerry Anderson's UFO has failed, but a new production called Space:1999 emerges in the process. As the first episode, Breakaway, begins filming, there is concern about some subsequent scripts that aren't working satisfactorily. Story consultant Christopher Penfold hires Johnny Byrne to do re-writes. The rest, as they say, is history.
"I was brought in to do a rescue job on the second episode in double quick time," Johnny Byrne explains. "I think I had about ten days to get something workable. My background had been in straight science fiction: I was part of the Michael Moorcock's New Worlds, and I wrote things for small science fiction magazines." The script requiring urgent delivery was A Matter of Life and Death, originally penned by Alt Wallace. "I had to totally re-do it," says Byrne, "and in essence it was a different script to the one Art submitted long before the series became a reality. Since his work had been the originating source I thought it was only fair to share the credit."
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were suitably impressed by the final production, and offered Byrne the post of story editor. "I think it was largely to keep me writing full time for the show, although I did do some script editing functions. We were in the studio every day, and it was highly charged: we were seeing rushes, having meetings, and writing pretty much to specification."
His next script was Another Time, Another Place, in which an 'ion storm' creates a duplicate of the Moon - and the Alphans glimpse a possible version of their future, "There was tremendous pressure to get a script out, and I worked it on a daring basis of thinking of the worst possible situation and writing my way out of it.
"There is a scene in which Koenig and Carter go out to investigate the duplicate Moon, and discover themselves dead in an Eagle. I was framing that and working back."
Would he tend to script edit his own work? "To a fair degree. There came a point where I would shift it over to Chris, and he and Gerry and I would sit down and work out what was needed. I did a lot of work with Gerry; he was excellent for a writer, he had a very strong sense oft story and trusted his instincts enormously. He was highly creative and could make those leaps of imagination which is very rare in a producer."
Next up was Force of Life, in which technician Anton Zoref is possessed by an alien entity, which causes anything he touches to freeze. "Here you have this being going through a galactic transformation. It has no function other than to change from the 'caterpillar' into the 'butterfly' and the things it meets along the way become agents of that change. It has no universal plan to destroy. Those were the kind of mysteries that attracted us." That episode was not received well when sold to Denmark. Viewers took great offence at a the climactic scene where Zoref is hit with lasers, but his incinerated body animates, complete with glowing eyes. "That apparently scared the pants off the Danes and they insisted on it being taken out," Byrne recalls. "I think it was a wrong thing to do, because it gave a visual presence to everything we had been talking about in the story. This guy wasn't just a psychopath; he was acting on overwhelming compulsion."
Byrne's End of Eternity focused on Balor, an immortal sadist. "That story started from the title. I chose the name Balor from Baal; the devil. The idea was: how do you destroy an immortal killer? However, the story didn't hold the potential in the timeslot to explore all the implications of it."
In Voyagers' Return the safety of Moonbase is threatened by a Voyager spacecraft that was launched from Earth years before. "At the time we were sending the Voyagers out. Initially the idea had been suggested by a mate of mine who was trying to write for Space: 1999, but it wasn't possible because the whole thing was so frantic. We had been through a big learning process of what was shootable and what wasn't. We took the idea off him, gave him some money, and then constructed the story."
The craft's propulsion drive is lethal, thanks to a mistake by the creator, Ernst Queller, who is living on Alpha under a pseudonym. "The idea of having someone like a guilt-haunted 'Nazi' character appealed to me. I simply expanded that to give it a kind of framework, and looked for some way of atonement."
Byrne took the series into new territory with The Troubled Spirit, a Science Fiction ghost story. "I was looking for the classical ghost story elements to fit to a high-tech concept," the writer discloses. "The idea of a seance that could be boosted by electronic means seemed to work.
"What I personally liked about that story was the symmetry: you have the guy carrying out an experiment, it arouses a force which originates in the unknown area of the human consciousness, it raises this horribly disfigured being which is psychopathic and is a doppelganger of the guy who starts the experiment. Everything they do to counter it pushes it towards the death it has come back to avenge. Once you have that kind of symmetry to a story you can make it work."
Joan Collins guest starred in Mission of the Darians, an episode which dealt with cannibalism. "The Andean plane crash had happened, and I was struck by the fact that people had eaten each other to live. I'm not one who goes for good and bad, black and white villains. I like to try and keep the human dimension and keep the characters as people who are struggling to overcome some ghastly event in their life."
Byrne was unhappy with his next script, Testament of Arkadia. "A lot of people liked that, but I think it suffered considerably from a lack of resources. The story was an interesting one and was inspired by the question 'Where do we come from?"' The writer believes the theme which sets the first season apart from its successor is that of Earth people facing the mysteries and enigmas of unknown regions of space. "They were grappling with very profound problems, which made for a lot of bewilderment and introspection, and for me that overcame a lot of the superficial gloss of the thing. As they moved further out into space the characters became more competent; it was an interesting development that wasn't planned."
At the end of the first year, the production team took time to examine the fruits of their labours, while waiting for confirmation of a second season. Johnny Byrne wrote a paper for internal consumption, which analysed their successes and failures. There were also tentative discussions with some Science Fiction writers, including Michael Moorcock, about providing story ideas that scriptwriters could dramatize. Byrne began work on three new scripts: 'The Biological Computer', 'The Face of Eden' , and 'Children of the Gods'.
Although the second season got the green light, the American backers insisted on an American producer. Freddie Freiberger moved in with his own vision of Space:1999, and undid much of the good work that Penfold and Byrne had done.
"Freddie is a very strong character and we got on very well personally, but I couldn't see much future for myself in the role I'd been playing. The idea was to get the series to go network which is virtually impossible; we were transAtlantically trying to do an American thing on the cheap.
"There were important changes made, and Maya was introduced. It threw out everything I had planned to do in terms of story, so I was re-commissioned to do The Metamorph to introduce Maya. It was a reworking of 'The Biological Computer'; instead of the guy [Mentor] being down there on his own with Psyche, he was now there with his daughter.
Catherine Schell was cast as the exotic Psychon, who could change her shape into any living creature at will. "I had reservations about Maya; I thought she was making it all too easy. If you have characters who are virtually invulnerable you lose out in terms of drama. You need your people to be in jeopardy, and if she can turn into an ant and crawl under a forceshield that eliminates a lot of the difficulties."
Byrne's second script for Season Two, Face of Eden, re-emerged much later as The Immunity Syndrome. "It was one of my favourite stories, and reflected very much the kind of story I was driving towards following on from series one. Again they were Earthmen, and I think that strangeness, for all its naff slow moments, struck a chord with people. Freddie turned them into spacemen."
Children of the Gods, on the other hand, was rejected. "Gerry said to me that it was one of the best things he'd read, but Freddie didn't like it. I would have loved to have done it but it wasn't to be; instead I did another one called 'The Last of the Psychons' (which became The Dorcons)."
So what was Byrne's opinion of the second season? "It reflected different priorities, and I think it lost a bit of its soul. Most of the stories were commissioned all at once, so you didn't have that build we'd had on the first year. You were dealing with people who were coming in, doing it, then departing. That abruptness reflected the way that crucial part of it was put together.
"Freddie's priority was to make it more American, more pacey. He kept saying, 'Above all it needs more humour'. What that reduced itself to was a crass line at the end of a scene with fixed smiles coming on the faces of the unfortunates who had to endure it on screen. People were dashing around so much that when they did have a moment to speak they had to deal largely with story. They became a bit too knowing, they understood too much; they were up against the odds, but they were there to kick ass."
Space: 1999 ended after the second season; Freiberger's recipe for success failed to ensure its continuation. Nevertheless, Johnny Byrne is proud of the show. "We had a very fine cast, we had the best technical people working with us and I don't think there will ever be another series like it. No one could simply afford the money it cost to do it."
David Richardson