Catacombs Reference LibraryUK Press
1974 Press
Catacombs Reference LibraryThese articles appeared in UK newspapers while the series was being made, but long before it would be seen on television (September 1975).
"Look Ahead" column by James Thomas, p14
It's a decade away now back to Supercar and the £500 capital which Gerry and Sylvia Anderson invested in their puppets.
Sir Lew Grade of ATV picked up the idea and turned the Andersons into a multi-million pound empire. They have ceased to have the world on a string and moved to the lusher areas of Pinewood film studios.
From the £300 plastic puppets of Thunderbirds and Stingray, they went on to command the attention of established stars like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, now working on 24 episodes of their latest dreamchild, Space 1999.
At £100,000 an episode this will be the biggest gamble the intrepid couple have taken. It's about a colony on the moon where dumped atomic waste suddenly explodes and thrusts the planet out of orbit, sending 300 people from the world's different countries on an inescapable, no-return journey into the indefinite void of space.
A full extra camera unit is being used just to film the special effects and Anderson feels there has been nothing like it since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He confidently asserts: "Science fiction is coming back. We are moving forward at such a pace with long- distance space probes that what was strict fantasy a few years ago could now certainly become fact.
"This will be alarming enough to make people watch -but I think that people will enjoy it with the same attitude they give to motor racing or a Cape Kennedy launch. No body really feels they are in that capsule with the astronauts. The second-hand excitement is there.
"It's all desperately expensive, the biggest thing by far we have ever attempted." Anderson started life in the old B.B.C. Lime Grove studios as a cutting-room assistant who graduated to a "not very successful" director.
Now, as the boss, he can persuade some of America's biggest TV stars to spend a year in Britain on his productions.
Daily Mirror, p15. In 2 of the 3 references, the series is called "Space in 1999". The broadcat date was still January 1975 in the US, instead of September.
Close-Up of the week by Kenneth Hughes
Martin Landau and his wife Barbara Bain, stars of that old favourite Mission Impossible, are back together again.
They're reaching out for the planets in a new and highly-budgeted series called Space in 1999.
And word has it that the very special effects in the series are the most exciting since Stanley Kubrick's film 2001.
The couple are making 24 one-hour episodes at Pinewood Studios for ATV at something like £100,000 an episode which, says Martin, means it is possibly the most expensive television series ever. The series starts in the US next January. ITV will follow later in 1975.
Martin, it will be recalled, was Rollin Hand, master of disguise, in Mission Impossible.
Out there in Space in 1999 he plays Commander John Koenig, chief of Moonbase Alpha where 300 souls of all nationalities work and live together.
But the Moon, due to a vast atomic explosion, is blown out of orbit and spinning through Space. and the base inhabitants are looking for a new planet to live on.
Barbara, who won three Emmy awards in a row as best television actress of the year, plays Dr. Helena Russell who is, as Barbara says, just as much a woman as she is a doctor.
It is all a far cry from home in Beverly Hills or indeed from the house that Martin and Barbara have taken in London overlooking the canal in Little Venice where they are living with their daughters Susan, 13, and Julie, 9.
They will be working at Pinewood until March next year.
Not only were Martin and Barbara in Mission Impossible together - they walked out together because they weren't happy with the way the studio was handling the series.
Martin started work as a cartoonist on a New York newspaper before taking up acting. Barbara was a model. They married in 1957.
Mission Impossible is at present being screened in 69 countries, says Martin.
They hope for the same kind of success and more for Space 1999, which is produced by another husband and wife team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, creators of Thunderbirds, Stingray and Supercar.
Unknown UK tabloid, probably October 1974 just after filming The Full Circle
If relations are looking a little strained between Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, that cool husband-and-wife team from Mission Impossible, then blame it on their new television series. The title is Space 1999. In spite of Landau's caveman tactics, this means AD not BC.
Landau, 42, is an astronaut, based on the Moon, where Miss Bain is working as a doctor. An explosion knocks the Moon out of orbit, and sends it charging off into space and back in time.
The scene comes from one of 24 hour-long episodes being filmed at Associated Television's studios at Pinewood for screening next year.
Picture: Ian Vaughan
By Philip Phillips
Unknown tabloid, 1974
The notice at Pinewood film studios boldly states: "This is the most spectacular, expensive and exciting space science-fiction series ever made for TV."
It refers to the mammoth space odyssey series, Space 1999, which will be orbiting the world's television networks next year.
But are these claims justified?
The one about the cost certainly is. For the 24, hour-long episodes, being made by ATV chairman Sir Lew Grade in partnership with the Italian Television service, are running up a bill of £2,500,000.
The stars of Space 1999 Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the American husband-and-wife team from Mission Impossible, and London-born Barry Morse, who played the pursuing Lieutenant Gerard in The Fugitive.
I spent yesterday with them on the set, which is built on the massive Hollywood movie scale.
In one studio is a gigantic mock-up of the Moon's surface.
In another studio is the space ship, with a barrage of lights, computers and controls.
A third studio houses the Moon-based command. headquarters of the international spacemen- and women-whose adventures we shall follow.
Many British stars will make guest appearances.
They include Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Roy Dotrice, Richard Johnson, Cyd Hayman, Judy Geeson, Joanna Dunham, Julian Glover and Paul Jones.
The action takes place in the year 1999-hence the title.
Landau, 42, plays a high-ranking astronaut, Commander John Koenig, who has just taken over a vast scientific laboratory on the Moon.
Morse, 54, is Professor Bergman, an English space scientist who is the father figure" of the series.
Barbara Bain plays Dr Helena Russell, whose husband has disappeared on a space mission.
In the opening episode, the Moon is ripped apart by violent explosions, caused by dumped nuclear waste from Earth.
The scientists' part of the Moon is pulled out of orbit, and into the unknown. And so their adventures begin.
Landau says: "The effects are out of this world. There has never been anything like them.
"Hollywood has never done anything like this.
"We have the most extraordinary adventures among the inhabitants of the planets of other solar systems.
For instance, in one episode, Barry and I age 1,000 years. You should see our make-up!
"In another episode, we reach a planet where all feelings are reversed.
"You laugh when you are in trouble or pain. You cry if you are happy."
Viewers will notice nobody wears spectacles in Space 1999. They're old-fashioned in 1999. Contact lenses are used.
For Landau and his wife, Barbara, the series represents a great challenge and a sustained period of very hard work.
Their day starts at 6.30 am, and goes on until 5.30 pm. And so it will go on for 15 months.
Their's is one of the lasting Hollywood marriages. They were wed in 1957 and have two young daughters.
But they are not the only husband-and-wife team working on Space 1999.
It is being produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who gained world- wide fame with their UFO and The Protectors series.
TV Diary by Martin Jackson, "Looking ahead to 1975", p13. This was the day Tom Baker became the new Doctor Who. One correction: Space 1999 was filmed at Pinewood, not Elstree. ITC's Life of Jesus would be renamed Jesus of Nazareth and would air in 1977. The other ITC Biblical series mentioned, Moses the Lawgiver, would air in June 1975.
But still no one knows who will be the new Jesus Christ
WAVES of nostalgia and flights of space fantasy. Cops and robbers and costume drama. Television 1975 threatens a repeat of 1974, possibly even more so.
But with everything plummeting except prices, it is perhaps understandable that TV should pander to a mood of escapism.
Nothing though can match the out-of-this- world splendour of SPACE 1999, a lavish science fiction serial costing around £2 million now in production at ATV Elstree.
The flavour is that of an adult Star Trek, though not too adult, about a nuclear explosion which blows the Moon out of orbit spinning through the galaxy.
Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the husband and wife team from Mission Impossible, lead the moon base refugees through this equally impossible mission in the sky.
1975 also promises to be the year of the biblical epic. Sir Lew Grade's Life of Jesus is due to begin production in Israel at the end of next month...
This is an article by Kenneth Hughes from the Daily Mirror, a UK tabloid newspaper, on Tuesday 31st December 1974 (p13). It features a large picture, credited to Jeff Stone, of a Main Mission scene from the start of Space Brain (shot on Thursday 5th December 1974). The article was published a few weeks afterwards. Note that Space: 1999 was due to start on UK television in spring 1975. It would be held back a further 6 months, until September 1975.
ITV's New Year looks like bringing a big bang - it will certainly get off to a flying start with the launching of British television's most spectacular series ... the £3 million odyssey called SPACE 1999. Pictured above are the cast assembled in their Lunar Base - at Pinewood Studios, Bucks.
Situation The Moon is blown to pieces when atomic waste dumped from Earth explodes. The 300 people living on Moonbase Alpha are thrown out of orbit into Space, and their adventures and misadventures on a chunk of runaway Moan take them through a series Of twenty-four shows. The producers are husband and wife team Sylvia and Gerry Anderson makers of the puppet dramas Thunderbirds and Supercar.
The A T V -backed series is due on the screen in the early Spring. The stars are another husband and wife team, Martin Landau as commander of Moon Base Alpha, and Barbara Bain as Dr Helena Russell, boss of a skilled medical team.
Gerry Anderson promises spectacular effects never attempted before on television.
Kenneth Hughes
