Destination: Moonbase Alpha (23 page)

Rating:
7.5/10

1.12

VOYAGER
’
S RETURN

Screenplay by Johnny Byrne

Directed by Bob Kellett

Selected Broadcast Dates:

UK
              LWT:

             
Date: 11 October 1975.               Time: 5.50 pm

             
Granada:

             
Date: 31 October 1975.               Time: 6.35 pm

US
              KRON (San Francisco):

             
Date: 22 November 1975.               Time: 7.00 pm

Credited Cast: Martin Landau
(John Koenig),
Barbara Bain
(Helena Russell),
Barry Morse
(Victor Bergman),
Prentis Hancock
(Paul Morrow),
Clifton Jones
(David Kano),
Zienia Merton
(Sandra Benes),
Anton Phillips
(Bob Mathias),
Nick Tate
(Alan Carter),
Alex Scott
(Aarchon),
Lawrence Trimble
(Steve Abrams)

Guest Star: Jeremy Kemp
(Dr Ernst Linden / Queller)

Guest Artist: Barry Stokes
(Jim Haines)

Uncredited Cast: Suzanne Roquette
(Tanya Alexander),
Sarah Bullen
(Operative Kate),
Loftus Burton
(Operative Lee Oswald),
Andrew Dempsey
,
Robert Phillips
,
Michael Stevens
(Main Mission Operatives),
Tony Allyn
(Security Guard Tony Allan),
Quentin Pierre
(Security Guard Pierce Quinton),
John Clifford
(Astronaut in Corridor),
Alan Harris
(Alphan),
Laurie Davis
,
Al Flemyng
,
Anita West
(Technicians)

Plot:
Alpha encounters the
Earth space probe Voyager One, which contains vast amounts of information amassed on its journey. But powered by a Queller Drive – a fast neutron propulsion system that generates dangerous radiation – Voyager is capable of destroying the base. While the Alphans discuss the risk they face to gather the data from the ship, a new threat emerges: aliens whose worlds were destroyed by the Queller Drive are following Voyager and are intent on exacting revenge.

Quotes:

• Linden/Queller:
  ‘I have been guilty of pride and arrogance.’
  
• Helena
  :
  ‘They say the road to Hell …’
  
• Linden/Queller:
  ‘Is paved with good intentions. And the road to Heaven too, apparently.’
  
• Aarchon:
  ‘You came proclaiming peace, and you wrought destruction.’
  
• Koenig:
  ‘His sacrifice gave us a future. His knowledge, hope. And now someone has to carry on his work.’
  
• Linden/Queller:
  ‘Your people have suffered greatly. Therefore, punish me. Do not condemn an entire world for the mistake of one man. My purpose was to unite a divided world; to reach out in the name of science and humanity; to illuminate the mysteries of space. To seek out other worlds, and offer the hand of friendship.’
  

Filming Dates:
Wednesday 7 August – Monday 26 August 1974

Incidental Music:
Includes music from the film
Thunderbird 6
previously heard in ‘The Last Sunset’.

Commentary:

Prentis Hancock:
‘As Paul Morrow, I was always there in a scene, but it was a bit thin on the ground on him actually getting involved. They came to me one day and said, “We’ve got a real character episode for you this week, Prentis,” and I thought, “Great!” But it turned out to be one line in a conference in which a space voyage was mentioned in which my father had died!’

Zienia Merton:
‘Actually, I got told off by Jeremy Kemp – nicely, of course. I was in awe of him and thought he was smashing. I thought he might just think I was pushy or a dreary little extra trying to chat him up, as I didn’t have many scenes with him. So I kept out of the way. Then we had a party, and he said, “You’re very naughty, you know … You should make people feel at home. After all, this is kind of your home.” So I explained why I hadn’t approached him, and I said I knew what he meant, and that of course it is an unwritten thing that you do welcome people.’

‘For dramatic purposes, we simply had him surfacing on the Moonbase, because this thing is coming back, and as it comes into contact it’s got this drive that will switch on, which will annihilate them. They don’t know how to stop it, but then Queller reveals who he is and he helps them do it. And then [we see] the full consequences of what he has done – again, building on the existing situation. When we think the story over, it’s only really beginning, because [Voyager] is being trailed back to its home planet by people whose worlds have been absolutely destroyed and are intent on exacting a horrific revenge.

‘So there was a kind of social message in that, a
slight
one, and one tried to make it as interesting and agreeable and as tense a situation as possible … It was more a nuts and bolts story, that – a pure sort of nuts and bolts science fiction
Space: 1999
story. I particularly liked the interior of the Earth ship, the Queller ship. The alien ones looked a bit too stick-cricket-like. They didn’t strike me as menacing enough. They were meant to be – and I laid this on very heavily in the script – extremely menacing. You could sense power but not see it, and you had the feeling that things were going to start poking out and start firing at you at any moment …

‘Here was a man who believed he had a great gift to give to space, people, other nations and other races if he brought contact between those two worlds. He
did
bring contact, but not in the way he expected. And I think there’s a message there that – even today, when we’re littering space with all kinds of hideous junk – we don’t really give a thought to the consequences and the things we send out. Just as if something came from outside and landed here, with the thought of contamination – it’s a grisly thought – we should have the same regard for what might be out there. That’s not to say we shouldn’t explore. We should be very responsible and treat space as much like our home backyard as we can. It’s a curious thing, that. As we become more aware of how precious the Earth is, and how to look after it, the less we seem to care about space. Obviously, when we’ve sorted out our back garden and sorted out the Earth, then
perhaps
we’ll sort out space. And by that time, let’s hope that it hasn’t gone too far …

‘I enjoyed it … and I think the scientist was well played by Jeremy Kemp. I liked the story because it was simple, it was immediately comprehensible, it was relevant to people’s lives, because it was directly linked to what was actually happening in terms of our rather misty-eyed notions about mankind sending [out] universal messages of love, hope and peace. Well, we know where that kind of thing ends up, don’t we? It usually ends up with someone getting their arse kicked. It’s self-deluding to believe that by sending things out into space you are actually helping to extend mankind’s mission to civilise. We know what happened in Earthly terms when this kind of thing was tried: you had missionaries arriving in [places] like Africa, and when they arrived they had the Book and the Africans had the land – by the time they left, the missionaries had the land and the Africans had the Book. This is, I should imagine, the kind of fate that will befall those aliens unfortunate enough to encounter us. If they are of a lower level of competence and technology, their fate won’t be a nice one.

‘So it’s about the assumptions that we bring to our understanding of what constitutes life and the arrogance that we have about our own form of existence and our own way of living. We see it played out on the small scale of the planet Earth. Played out on a vast scale up in the stars, it’s just too horrendous to contemplate. I think that all of those aliens who ever said, “Stay where you are and leave us alone,” have got it right and probably will have for at least the next five million years!

‘I wanted to give Queller a Germanic type of façade. I never saw him as a “nasty” – I didn’t see him as a Nazi. I had in mind those haunted individuals who had avoided being taken by the Russians at the end of the Second World War and found their way, sort of bribed, into service by [the] American and British [governments], serving in the Cold War. These were people who were intelligent enough to know that the end product of their science and their genius was the destruction of people and it was in the service of a despotic master. They, by their own reckoning, were not evil men – they were perhaps scientists; they were idealists; they were all sorts of things. But if we talk about the downfall of 20th Century Man, this is the classic symptom of that malady. They took their poison chalice, they took their shilling, and they lived with the guilt. This man [Queller] perhaps exemplified it that bit more severely, because what he had done was to actually kill people in the service of trying to improve humanity’s lot. He carried the guilt; he found a way to bury himself, lick his wounds, and hopefully everybody would forget him. That was his situation. He was too brilliant to be wasted, and the powers that be knew about him and they had him there doing something very important out of sight and out of mind. We
all
deserve a second chance, and [Queller] exemplifies the larger condition of the Alphans being people who were set on a course of redemption for humanity as a whole. Don’t forget the almost biblical destruction of the Earth. And these people were given the opportunity, one could say, of redeeming whatever caused the fall: man’s second chance.’

Bloopers:
Watch the shots of Voyager One flying – liquid Freon can be seen dripping from the bell rockets and dropping to the bottom of the screen (which it wouldn’t do in zero gravity in outer space).

Review:
‘Voyager’s Return’ features an effectively chilling opening, with the Voyager probe destroying an Eagle and killing Alpha pilot Abrams, as well as damaging Eagle One and injuring Carter, before relaying the message, ‘This is the voice of Voyager One. Greetings from the people of the planet Earth.’ The death of pilot Abrams is one of the most visually accomplished in the series – he is literally sucked out of the Eagle’s shattered view-port. It is a short sequence, but certainly on a par with similar later shots of explosive decompression in the “War Games” episode.

The destructive force of the
Queller Drive is best stated by Paul Morrow when he says, ‘You’d survive better standing smack in the middle of a nuclear explosion.’ The knowledge that the Queller Drive killed Paul’s father provides both intriguing character background and enlarges the strong supporting role for Prentis Hancock.

The episode plunges the viewer effectively and immediately into discussions on what to do with Voyager: Helena wants it stopped before it can do any more harm, while Victor wants the scientific information it contains. As Bergman states, ‘For 15 years Voyager has been photographing other planets, analysing atmospheres, detailing all forms of life, recording gravities, temperatures … It would take 100 years to learn what Voyager already knows.’ Koenig finds himself in a position of balancing the various opinions around him and seeking an acceptable middle ground. The Alphans are quite divided on what to do with Voyager, making this an intriguing examination of the way the command of Alpha is often open for discussion.