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Nick Tate He's not the real star?

He's not the real star?

But the Fan Mail Is Coming His Way

By Judy Flander, Washington Star, 31 July 1976

Nick Tate was doing a publicity tour in the US for ITC in July/August 1976, and attended the August Party convention at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"1 do believe there are some influences from the stars," says Nick Tate, a Gemini and an Australian. He ought to know, As the swashbuckling 1st Flight Lt. Alan Carter on the television series, Space 1999, Tate has been singled out by the science fiction fans for some of the same kind of adulation they've been pouring on the Star Trek stars, lo these six years since that early sci-fi series went into reruns.

Only, strictly speaking, Tate isn't a Space 1999 star. Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, the established American actors who have the principal roles in the series that was launched last season, are supposed to be the stars.

But it's Tate who's getting 5,000 letters a week - mostly from 16-year- old girls. And he's the one who was imported from London where Space 1999 is produced to address the Star Trek - yes, Star Trek. - convention at the University of 'Maryland College Park campus tonight at 7:30. "Trekkies," you know, have been the most super-critical viewers of the upstart new series.

His popularity is not difficult to understand - particularly for Tate. He is blond and sexy. His smile turns up on one side. And at 34, his good looks are nestling into some of the nooks and crannies of age that are devastating in the face of a woman, but in a man, devastating to women. While he says he has only one "bird" at a time, there are "millions" of them out there, he tells you with an insouciant smile.

But there's another reason why Tate is a stand-out on the space show. He has been, by comparison, the only really "human" character on the show. "Alpha Base," the moon space-base where the action started, was, Tate says, "originally conceived to work like a military base with the men and women in masculine clothes." Unisex pantsuits by Rudi Gernreich. Wooden faces. In the first season of Space 1999, the actors were encouraged to be all business. You couldn't tell the humanoids from the robots. Except for Tate.

Tate, who was first cast in a minor role, took over the part written for an Italian actor who didn't show up. As an Italian, the astronaut was supposed to be "volatile and fiery", characteristics that Tate says, "suit my personality. I like jumping into the fray, going off like a bomb. I'm a pretty physical person. Alan Carter is really just an extension of myself."

"YEAR 2" of Space 1999 begins this fall on at least 100 stations in the United States. (155 stations bought the syndicated show last year.) WMAL-7, which has been carrying it Saturdays at 7 p.m. will start the new series on Saturday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m., but beginning the next day it will run Space 1999 Sundays at 5:30 p.m. (The Muppets will take the Saturday spot.)

Irwin Starr, WMAL-TV's program manager, says Space 1999 was in "the No. 1 or 2 spot" in the ratings last year and the station likes it very much. But the show has been dropped by a substantial number of stations, and Gerry Anderson, the executive producer, hasn't turned a deaf ear on criticisms about the general feeling of sterility and lack of humanity.

"Year 2" is going to be a lot different from "Year 1" for the Alphans. In a genuine "if you can't lick 'em, join 'em" spirit, Anderson has hired Fred Freiberger, formerly of Star Trek, as producer, and he's giving Space 1999 its own "resident alien." But it's not a big-eared Mr. Spock. It's Catherine Schell, star of The Return of the Pink Panther, who is, in the words of Tate, "a knock-out looking bird." Schell, as Maya, can turn herself into a real bird or any other creature she chooses. And she has to choose often because, in various guises, she is constantly called upon to come to the rescue of the Alphans.

The budget for Space 1999 has been increased to $300,000 an episode (multiply that by 24 for the total season's cost). Also added: humor and humanity and new costumes (by Keith Wilson). Fancy jackets and badges for the men, dresses for the women, who now "look sexier," according to Tate. There will be new theme music and "special effects - dissolves, clever uses of lenses, focal changes, lighting, shimmering images, all done on camera which is, in the long run, more baffling to the viewers who wonder how these things are done."

And then, as naturally would follow such goings on, there's romance. Between Maya and Tony Anholt, who, as "Tony Verdeschi," is billed as "the most dynamic adventurer in the Universe." And between Dr. Helena Russell and Commander John Koenig (Bain and Landau). "You actually see them kissing one another," reports Tate, who says that in the "Year 2," "people really care about people." He'll have a "love affair, too", - in an episode still unmade" - "with an alien girl, but I think she dies." says Tate. And laughs, "Alan Carter loses again."

Tate is the son of a theatrical couple, John Tate and the late Neva Carr-Glynn, and began his acting career as a child. In Australia, he starred in the musical, Canterbury Tales, played in four movies and acted with his father on the Australian television series, Dynasty.

Space 1999 was his first chance to score on an international basis and he is well aware of the opportunity it afforded him. "It's no good being great in a teacup if nobody's looking into that teacup," he says, smiling as he makes up the simile. "I've got to be out on the table where everybody can see me."

Tate has no intention of leaving the space show "as long as it's good for me," but he obviously hopes to go on to bigger and better things - a television series of his own, hopefully, or more movies.

Tate doesn't think Bain and Landau resent his prominence. "They're great," he says. "Martin and I are very close friends." The two are markedly similar, says Tate, who thinks he knows why. They are both Geminis. And Tate believes in the influence of the stars on the lives of Earthlings.