The 21st Century of Gerry Anderson: Space 1999 (Part 1 of 3)

The Dark Herald delves deeply into a sci-fi classic: Space 1999 by Gerry Anderson, in an epic three-part series. Part One.

Space 1999

When I first saw the Millennium Falcon as a little kid in 1977, I thought it was the coolest thing in all existence.  The WWII AA guns were slick, the B-29 bomber bridge was rad, and even the boarding ramp was everything a little boy wants a spaceship’s boarding ramp to be.  I had literal dreams about the Falcon.  I was in love.  That isn’t to say that it didn’t raise a question in my young little head.  If this was a freighter, where did you put the *freight?

The truth is the Millennium Falcon was badly designed to transport any kind of legal cargo.  And if the YT class was built from the ground up to be a rumrunner, then the Empire would just blast them out of the sky whenever they ran across one.  

I eventually found out that the original design was this:

And this ship does look a lot more like a tramp freighter built for high speed.

While George Lucas liked it, he ultimately felt compelled to shoot it down because it looked too much like the Eagle from a British science fiction show that was shortly going to be canceled because of the success of Star Wars. 

There was a time when Space 1999 was the biggest thing in TV science fiction.  There were nerd fights over whether or not it was akshullay better than Star Trek.  They were pointless battles to be sure, but they happened.  Which means people genuinely cared about it.  At one time there was a passionate fanbase for the last of 21st Century Studio’s live-action science fiction shows.  

Gerry Anderson is frequently described by those who loved him as the least sentimental man they ever knew.  When a project was over, he lit it with a match, turned, and walked away without ever looking back at the smoldering remains.  Anderson had created something uniquely wonderful with Supermarionation.  For better than a decade Gerry Anderson had developed and built up a team of experts who delivered something that even today is just a little magical. But when The Secret Service was canceled by Lew Grade.  Gerry Anderson shut it all down and fired everyone, throwing Supermarionation away as garbage.

RELATED: The 21st Century of Gerry Anderson Part Two – Thunderbirds Are Go!

When UFO didn’t get an American network buy, it died for Anderson.  On to the next live-action and non-child-friendly project.  A completely forgettable early seventies British actioner called The Protectors.  I’ll give credit where it’s due, it was a lot better than it should have been.  It wasn’t a spy show, that craze was over, but you couldn’t call it a police procedural or a private eye drama either.  Basically, Anderson didn’t really commit himself to it being anything other than a generic team of action men (and one woman) for hire.  Britain’s entry into the Common Market meant that they could now shoot all over Europe instead of just Birmingham. The use of 16mm film kept the cost down, hiring Robert Vaughn got the show a syndication deal in America, and the opening theme could not have been more Swinging London. Avenues and Alleyways was a hit song for a while.

While The Protectors was in production, Sylvia got a shocking call from Lew Grade.  UFO had emerged from its crash site.  

CBS’s channel in New York City was running it right before the number one rated, All In The Family and that show’s halo effect had shot the dead series’ ratings through the roof.  CBS wanted to buy a second season.

Out of the blue, the brass ring was suddenly within reach of Gerry Anderson.  An American TV network deal at long last.

Problem.

He couldn’t deliver.  UFO’s sets had been destroyed, the props sold or scrapped, and the actors had moved on to other projects.

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No getting around it.  If Gerry was going to get his score bigger than life, then he was just going to have to create a new show. And UFO 2 was born.

Since this was a Gerry Anderson show the very first thing that would be needed was an acronym. This time it was W.A.N.D.E.R. World Association of Nations Defending Earth Rights.  He must have torn his hair out trying to come up with a better “R” word than Rights.  

The most popular episodes of UFO had been based in space, so the new series was going to be set on the moon, at a much bigger moon base called Moon City. Its fortifications were so overwhelming that no UFO was getting past the Moon now.  Consequently, the Aliens’ plans were now based around the destruction of Moon City.  Annihilate that and the Earth would be theirs for the taking… I guess.

Preproduction was going like clockwork. Ed Bishop was delighted to be back on board as Commander Straker. And the pilot episode was ready to be shot.  It was about Earth building an unmanned deep-space probe that would be sent to the Alien’s homeworld.  The Aliens weren’t cool about this and diddled around with the Moon’s gravity, sending the space probe hurtling into the unknown.

And then the Andersons got the call from New York.  CBS had moved UFO to another timeslot and the ratings had crashed.  CBS was out, they pulled the plug on the project.

RELATED: The 21st Century of Gerry Anderson (Part Three)

By now, ITC had sunk too much money into UFO 2 to pull the plug and Gerry Anderson invested too much of himself.  They went into emergency salvage mode.

That was the point where ITC America, (whose requirements would eventually destroy Space 1999) sprang into action making brainless demands.  The personal cost of commanding the defense of Earth had been enormous to Ed Straker and was a hit with the show’s fans. But ITC America’s Abe Mandell hated it and commanded that Straker be discarded for a new character.

Sorry, Ed.

Martin Landau was a respected actor with an extensive resume.  He had started off in TV westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. Unsurprisingly, his looks tended to typecast him in villain roles. Landau didn’t mind at first, villains were fun and were always in demand. He was just getting into motion picture work when he made a big mistake.  He accepted a regular role on Mission Impossible.  He was too good at it, and it instantly typecast him as a spy. Worse still, the spy craze ended as suddenly as it started. Back to villain work but now it was starting to feel like a treadmill for him. Being the heroic lead in a Gerry Anderson show looked like a good change of pace.

However, he still hesitated when ITC America offered him a job as The Commander in a new science fiction series.  It was going to be shot in Britain and he didn’t want to be separated from his wife for half a year, every year.  That drawback was passed along to Gerry Anderson, who as luck would have it, suddenly discovered a pressing need for a doctor character, a female doctor character who would be a co-lead, and would Landau’s wife be interested?

Now Anderson needed somebody else to be the science wonk.  Doctor Victor Bergman was invented and the part went to Barry Morse.  Morse was born in London at the end of WWI and worked in British theater and film. Then he went to Canada and from there drifted south to Hollywood.  His best-known role in the US was as the relentless Marshall Phillip Gerard in The Fugitive. Like Landeau he was a respected and reasonably well-known character actor.  And Morse still had his British Actor’s Equity card which solved a major headache.

RELATED: The 21st Century of Gerry Anderson – UFO

The idea of the Moon being blown out of orbit was fundamentally silly, and the sad truth was everyone including Gerry and Sylvia Anderson knew it was silly.  The problem was, again, Abe Mandell who was now insisting on there being no scenes on Earth whatsoever.  Because Mandell was certain, (okay with reason), that it would just be scenes in the UK. And Mandell hated all things British. Most especially British science fiction.

Gerry Anderson offered to blow up the Earth if that would help.  Mandell said, ‘no, too dark.’ By now the sets and models had been built. They were far too committed to a lunar setting to change any of that, so blowing the Moon out of orbit was a compromise.

Anderson’s shows had usually been setting-driven before and that was what science fiction mostly was back then.  Every story began with “What If…” And Space 1999 certainly looks like that when you first glance at it.  But once you get to know it, you start to see a lot more things that are subtly character-driven, the heart of the stories are, “Tell Me About A Guy Who…”

When crafting his new commander Gerry Anderson went with what had become his preferred default and made him an astronaut or to be precise a 1960s astronaut.  John Koenig was an intellectual man of action, a “Ph.D. who could win a bar fight.” While he had some tragedies in his past, he wasn’t consumed by them like Ed Straker. No matter the situation he always presented a mask of calm, competent confidence that his marooned people desperately needed from him. However, unlike Straker, Commander Koening wasn’t alone.

Professor Victor Bergman wasn’t just the smartest guy in any room he was also the Commander’s sempai. The older man counselor who always backed the commander’s play in public even if he was frequently giving him a look that said, “we will discuss this in private later.” And you knew the Commander would leave the professor’s dressing down feeling upbeat, ready to face the problem of the week, overcome it and save the day.  Bergman was absolutely relentless in his optimism.

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Doctor Helena Russel was the heart of Alpha.  She hits most of my definitions for a “heroic woman.”  By heroic woman, I absolutely do NOT mean a man with *tits. She wasn’t simply a healer of bodies; she would try to heal all the hurts.  She was the caring soul for whoever needed it. The man with the hurts she wanted to heal most was John Koenig, she was constantly having to push past the barriers his people needed him to have. They both wanted more from their relationship but their circumstances couldn’t permit them to have that kind of self-indulgence. 

The supporting cast weren’t just bridge bunnies either. 

Paul Morrow was Commander Koenig’s absolutely loyal second in command.  

He was also supposed to be the show’s male sex symbol. However, Alan Carter the blond Aussie pilot snaked that job away from him.  

Sandra was the girl technical wonk.  She had more to add than just talking to the computer, granted she would occasionally need rescuing but so did everyone else. She was Paul’s love interest.

This team certainly came out of the gate with much deeper characters than the crew of the Enterprise had. This was revealed in episodes like Black Sun, which we will look at next time.

What are your thoughts on Space 1999, or other Gerry Anderson projects? Let us know in the comments!

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