Catacombs Reference LibraryUK Press
Bristol Evening Post
Catacombs Reference LibraryBristol was the largest city of the west region of HTV. See 1979 letters.
Friday, 17 October 1975. The series launched on HTV 6 weeks after most other ITV stations.
For weeks now, things have been going on out in space beyond the ken of West Country viewers tuned to HTV.
But at last the regional channel have caught up with "Space 1999" (HTV, 6.35), the ambitious 24-part, $2.5 million series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, late of "Thunderbirds," and made by ATV and Italian RAI.
The first hour long episode fells of a Moon split in two by a nuclear explosion, with the crew of Earth's space research centre there being carried off into space by the "rogue planet."
There are bound to be comparisons with the highly successful and oft-repeated "Star Trek" but at least half a moon should provide more elbow room than the Space Ship Enterprise.
Martin Landau, that Impossible Missioner, plays the commander of this particular mission with his real-life wife Barbara Bain —- also from "Mission Impossible" - as medical section chief and Barry Morse, who spent years chasing "The Fugitive" across the world's television sets, as a leading scientist.
Western Daily Press, Friday, 17 October 1975. This was the morning paper, with the same publisher as the Evening Post.
Tonight HTV viewers get into orbit a few thousand light years later than the rest of ITV viewers, who for several weeks have already travelled far with SPACE 1999 (HTV, 6.35 p.m.) This is the ambitious 24-part science fiction series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by ATV in conjunction with the Italian State television at a cost of £2,500,000. It stars the husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as members of a moon-based team with a mission to explore outer space and report on a rogue planet called Meta. Then, half the moon disintegrates in an atomic blast and the remaining piece, carrying 300 people, is flung far out into space.
Saturday, 6 December 1975, the day after Dragon's Domain. The reviewer was not impressed.
Thank heavens, I thought, when the first man landed on the moon: That must mean_an end. to amateurish space fiction of the-little-green-mew variety.
Space 1999 (HTV) went back to the bad old days with a vengeance, resurrecting a plastic octopus-like monster which wiped out all but one of a space crew.
No one believed the survivor. But we were expected to bridge the credibility gap and accept it as adult entertainment.
Short article from the Saturday Bristol Evening Post, late 1975 or early 1976.
An actress's lot may or may not be a happy one, but it can certainly be messy.
What Joanna Dunham went through to bring you the episode called "Missing Link" in ATV's "Space 1999" series, shortly to be screened by Harlech, is enough to put off Mrs Worthington's daughter.
"I had to be sprayed with gold paint, and spent much of the time on set slopping around in dry ice,' she recalls.
I say "recalls" because the episode was canned nearly two years ago.
Moreover, she has to play a girl aged 218, but is allowed to look her usual vivacious self because the life span on this particular planet, two million light years in advance of this one, is 10 times that of ours. Her dad, Peter Cushing - "a really lovely man" - is a handsome 508.
"This dry ice thing can be hilarious but it can be rather nasty, too."
On screen it looks much like a vapour; but on the set it makes the floor slippery "and if you breathe it in it almost chokes you."
The chief set consists of a 90ft.-long "tent" of parachute nylon with special lighting effects to create a world that consists entirely of light.