One Book Closes, Another Opens
Space: 1999 fans were lucky to get a second
season of the show at all. Despite its lavish budget and the care taken in every aspect of production, the first season
of the series had failed in its primary objective: to sell to one of America's national television networks. Space:
1999 as audiences had grown to know it ended when the final first series episode, The Testament of Arkadia,
was completed. This was ceetainly in the minds of the production team when making the episode, which ends with the population
of Alpha travelling full circle to the very beginnings of life on Earth and John Koenig literally closing the book on the
series at the end of the story.
Fortunately audiences appear to have very much liked Space: 1999. While ratings
in America's syndicated markets were healthy without being spectacular, the series was a big success throughout Europe, and
there was certainly an appetite for more episodes. Changes would have to be made, both for financial reasons and due
to the internal politics of ITC. Financially, the economics of the mid 1970s meant that although the second season would
be made for a larger sum of money than the first, this amounted to a cut in the series budget. The £125,000 each episode
was budgeted in 1973 would by 1976 have been worth £210,000 (calculated using the Retail Price Index). So high was the
inflation rate at this time that a Year One episode would have cost £243,000 by the end of 1977. Rising prices played
havoc with the series' budgeting, with materials growing constantly more expensive, plus wage increases for the technical
crew had been agreed by the government and thus were non-negotiable.
Despite the constant pressure from Abe Madell's ITC New York, the first season broadly represented
the series Gerry Anderson wanted to make. For the series to return, far more control had to be ceded to Mandell, which
meant big changes.
Post Mortem
The earliest preparation work for Space: 1999's
second season took place before the decision had been made to actually renew the series. The triumphs and failures of
the recently completed programme were discussed and a day long meeting was convened attended by Gerry Anderson, Brian Johnson,
Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Johnny Byrne and Charles Crichton.
Byrne was more than willing to take his share of the blame for the show's shortcomings as the sole
remaining representative of Space: 1999's script department. He also produced a document entitled Critical
Commentary on Space: 1999 (First Series) in which he gave brutally honest, but fair, comments on the writing,
acting, direction and overall production of each episode, marking each episode with between one and five stars. Johnny
Byrne was fully expected to remain as the show's Script Editor if the series returned, but the situation changed radically
when a new Producer arrived.
A Show Called Fred
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's often fractious marriage finally
ended irrevocably in the production of Year One and it was impossible for her to remain in the post of Space: 1999's
Producer. Having gained Lew Grade's consent to produce a second season, it was insisted that an American Script Editor
be hired to ensure that scripts were produced with appeal to audiences in the US. This made sense as it had proved impractical
for American-based writers, working under a British Script Editor to contribute a great deal to Space: 1999
in its first season. A suitable American willing to relocate to the UK had to be found, and Gerry was dispatched to
the States in order to procure one.
Candidates with the right kind of experience were thin on the ground, and finding someone who was both
suitable and available proved difficult. A promising contender eventually emerged in the personable form of Fred Freiberger,
who had worked on series such as The Wild, Wild West (a sort of Western with Science Fiction trappings which
might now be viewed as Steampunk) and had produced the third season of Star Trek.
In his authorised biography,
What Made Thuderbirds Go, Gerry recalled Abe Mandell's reaction when Gerry announced that he might have found his man:
"Why is he available?". With time running out, no other suitable candidates to hand and the unavailable producers being,
naturally, otherwise engaged, Gerry went ahead and hired Freiberger. From this distance in time it can be seen that
both Anderson and Mandell had a point. If Freiberger was so good, why was he able to immediately fly to England for
a year? From Anderson's perspective, Mandell was insisting on an American Script Editor, and Freiberger was the most
suitable one he could find.
