Barry Morse Meets 'Victor
Bergman,' his likeness
THE RETURN OF VICTOR BERGMAN
The world premiere of the new short film starring Barry Morse entitled
The Return of Victor Bergman, featuring the actor's return to his classic
role, was held on Friday, July 16, 2010 and was hosted in-person by Barry Morse
biographer Anthony Wynn.
CREDITS
Screenplay by: Robert E. Wood and Barry Morse
Original Segments by: Johnny Byrne and Christopher Penfold
Director: Robert E. Wood
Producer: Anthony Wynn
Editor: Eric Bernard
Camera Operator: James Ommert
Story Consultant: Anthony Wynn
Sound Recordist: James Ommert
Digital Transfer: Aaron Carlson
Lighting: Anthony Wynn
Commlock prop: Mark Shaw
Video Storage: Aaron Carlson
Produced by Planet Productions, Ltd. For Fan Distribution
Filmed in Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Before his passing, Barry Morse wrote the Afterword of the newly published
book Destination: Moonbase Alpha by Robert E. Wood. This is the complete
series guide to the classic British TV show Space: 1999 and it also includes -
for the first time ever in print - the complete story behind the disappearance
of Barry Morse and his character 'Professor Victor Bergman'. This true story
is one that no fan has ever known - until now. For more information, visit the
official website Destination: Moonbase Alpha or order your copy today directly
from the publisher at Telos Publishing.
Eagle hovering over Moonbase Alpha
Space:1999 aired in North American from 1975 to 1977 and was one of the very first programs to be syndicated on a wide scale to nearly every television market, in some cases supplanting major network programming.
Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (Thunderbirds) for Lord Lew Grade, the show ran for two seasons (48 episodes) and was filmed in England at the famed Pinewood Studios.
Reportedly the most expensive weekly television series ever mounted up to that time, the show boasted state of the art special effects and starred Martin Landau (Commander John Koenig), Barbara Bain (Doctor Helena Russell) and Barry Morse (Professor Victor Bergman).
The premise of the show involved storage of the Earth's radioactive waste in depositories on the moon, monitored by Moonbase Alpha. Due to accidental explosion on September 13, 1999, the moon is blasted out of Earth orbit and sent on a journey through the cosmos.
Barry starred in Season One, a total of 24 episodes. Thereafter, his character, Professor Bergman, after having made a dramatic impact on viewers -- was simply was gone from the show with no explanation given to the audience.
"I came up with the idea that Victor Bergman had come
to England as a refugee child during the reign of the Nazis,
and that he might have originally been Austrian or Czechoslovakian."
"I built up a whole character based on that, and the idea that,
being somewhat older than almost all the other people on the space
station, Professor Bergman could almost be described as a kind of space uncle."
EPISODES OF SPACE:1999
STARRING BARRY MORSE
YEAR ONE
Pilot Episode: "Breakaway"
Directed By: Lee H. Katzin
Notable Guest: Roy Dotrice
In this initial adventure, on Moonbase Alpha -- which monitors lunar storage sites for atomic wastes shuttled from Earth -- Commander Koenig and Dr. Russell oversee an eleventh-hour attempt to avert a chain reaction of thermonuclear explosions that eventually blasts the moon out of Earth's orbit and sends it hurling into space, as the mysterious planet Meta approaches Earth. On the barren sphere, the three hundred and eleven men and women of Moonbase Alpha, a self-sustaining scientific installation, survive.
Episode 2: "Matter of Life and Death"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guest: Richard Johnson
The discovery of Dr. Russell's husband, lost in space years earlier, nearly leads to disaster when the Alphans realise he is composed of anti-matter, and that living on his planet would mean violent death for humans.
Episode 3: "The Black Sun"
Directed By: Lee H. Katzin
Notable Guest: Paul Jones
Commander Koenig must bank all hope for survival on Professor Bergman's plan to create a new force field when the Moonbase is drawn into a deadly "black sun", a space phenomenon that even devours light.
"It’s very striking that a majority of people will tell you
that their favorite episode is “The Black Sun,” a show filmed
quite early in the series, where we’re faced with imminent death.
In one of the exchanges between us, Martin said – as we raised our
glasses of brandy – 'To everything that might have been,' and I replied,
'To everything that was.' That was the kind of high moment, as it were,
in that episode."
Episode 4: "Ring Around The Moon"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guest: Max Faulkner
An alien spaceship locks Alpha into an orbit and proceeds to steal classified data from its computer banks. The Alphans must destroy a mission from a dead planet that is absorbing Moonbase information and destroying personnel as part of a plan to attack Earth.
Episode 5: "Earthbound"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Christopher Lee, Roy Dotrice
An alien spaceship en route to Earth encounters the Alphans and crashlands near their base, its crew frozen-down for the long journey. Commissioner Simmonds, who was visiting Moonbase Alpha when the moon was blasted out of orbit, sees an unexpected chance to return home.
Episode 6: "Another Time, Another Place"
Directed By: David Tomblin
Notable Guest: Judy Geeson
Past and future overlap, when a weird space phenomenon which creates duplicates of the Alpha and its inhabitants leads to the death of a young woman -- who had already envisioned the disaster. Moonbase personnel land on a doppelganger Earth where they discover themselves in their own future.
Episode 7: "Missing Link"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guests: Peter Cushing, Joanna Dunham
An anthropologist from the planet Zenno millions of years in the future abducts Commander Koenig for his studies of a "missing link," an earlier life form.
Episode 8: "Guardian of Piri"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guest: Catherine Schell
Only Commander Koenig sees through a seductive woman's entreaties to join her on the planet Piri for a blissful, machine-controlled existence. The Guardian of a tranquil and beautiful planet lures Moonbase personnel to the land of eternal peace, which Koe nig realises is living death.
Bergman (Barry Morse) and Koenig (Martin Landau)
Episode 9: "Force of Life"
Directed By: David Tomblin
Notable Guests: Ian McShane, Gay Hamilton
Commander Koenig and his crew must stop one of the Moonbase technicians, whose sudden, consuming need for heat threatens Alpha with doom. Burned-out equipment and frozen corpses lie in the wake of a technician who has become an instrument of destruction that feeds on energy and endangers anything that he touches.
Episode 10: "Alpha Child"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guests: Julian Glover, Cyd Hayman
When an Alphan woman gives birth, she unwittingly becomes part of an attempt by aliens to avoid their civilisation's extinction by taking over the bodies of Moonbase personnel. As the first baby born on Alpha suddenly grows to the size of a 5-year-old, Koenig senses a more sinister explanation than outer space conditions for a child that heralds an alien war in which, no matter who wins, Alpha loses.
Episode 11: "The Last Sunset"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
The Alphans must determine whether the Planet Ariel, which closely resembles Earth, is really the hope for their future that it appears to be. Paul and Sandra look forward to raising a family as the Alphans prepare for an exodus to the planet.
"Bergman’s disappearance was never explained at all.
All sorts of viewers from all over the world constantly ask,
'Come on, they went on to a second series and Victor Bergman
has just disappeared – nobody ever said a word about what happened
and what caused his disappearance!' So I’ve grown used to saying,
'Well I guess he fell off the back of the moon.' No explanation
was ever offered or given as to what happened to him or why he disappeared."
Episode 12: "Voyager's Return"
Directed By: Bob Kellett
Notable Guests: Jeremy Kemp, Barry Stokes
A scientist hurries to retrieve valuable research information from Voyager, an Earth-launched spacecraft before the Alphans destroy it. Unknown to them, he is responsible for the malfunction that turned the ship into a deadly killer spewing lethal particles, while the aliens whose people have been destroyed by the errant probe are going to have their revenge on the people of Earth.
Episode 13: "Collision Course"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guest: Margaret Leighton
The Alphans plan to use explosives to avoid a collision course with another planet, but an alien woman convinces Koenig that destiny would be better served if their planets did collide.
Episode 14: "Death's Other Dominion"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Brian Blessed, John Shrapnell
The Alphans are invited to share a lost paradise and immortality on the frozen planet Ultima Thule with members of a space expedition from Earth launched in 1986. A half-crazed Soothsayer warns Koenig and his colleagues to flee the planet.
Episode 15: "The Full Circle"
Directed By: Bob Kellett
When two Alpha reconnaissance flights pass through a time warp, the crews find themselves sharing an existence with their Cro-Magnon counterparts. Sandra is kidnapped by cave men whose chief bears a striking resemblance to Koenig.
Episode 16: "End of Eternity"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guest: Peter Bowles
Commander Koenig rescues an immortal alien doomed to spend an eternity inside a barren asteroid. The liberated one repays his kindness by wreaking destruction among the Alphans. Koenig must risk his own life in order to destroy a psychopathic alien.
"It’s always possible to produce more – and hopefully better –
versions of any existing series, particularly in the science
fiction genre, because it’s a field that’s expanding all the time
and is never completely examined. But I would like to think that
in any future production of that kind the individual characters
should be paid more attention to. You don’t need to go too far
to look to find that all the best dramatic material in the whole
history of mankind is based on human character – what human characters
feel, what they try to do, and how they respond to what happens to them.
The best example of all is your friend and mine, William Shakespeare!
He doesn’t have all that much in the way of explosions or lighting
effects, or all those things which they try to cram into a show,
but he does have an amazing variety and depth of human characteristics.
That’s what drama is all about."
Episode 17: "War Games"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Anthony Valentine, Isla Blair
A planet attack on Moonbase Alpha leaves the Alphans no alternative but to relocate on the planet to plead for mercy on the survivors. But the aliens who inhabit it warn them that humans would be destructive to their civilisation -- and they will protect themselves at any cost.
Episode 18: "The Last Enemy"
Directed By: Bob Kellett
Notable Guest: Caroline Mortimer
Two warring planets, positioned so that they cannot shoot at each other directly, seize Alpha as a gun platform when it wanders into their range. Commander Koenig must negotiate a ceasefire between the opponents when the battling threatens to destroy the Moonbase.
Episode 19: "The Troubled Spirit"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guests: Giancarlo Prete, Hilary Dwyer, Anthony Nicholls
When a botanist is forbidden to continue a series of experiments on plants, the Alphans are terrorised by his murderous, vengeful spirit -- a spectre that seeks retribution for the man's death before it occurs.
Episode 20: "Space Brain"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Shane Rimmer, Carla Romanelli
Moonbase Alpha faces danger on a collision course with a gossamerlike organism that has annihilated an Eagle craft and crew and taken possession of the mind of another crew member, when an outburst of strange hieroglyphics on all of the moon's screens portends its encounter with a "Space Brain."
Episode 21: "The Infernal Machine"
Directed By: David Tomblin
Notable Guest: Leo McKern
An ancient man and the talking machine he serves come to Alpha to request urgently needed supplies. Dr. Russell and Commander Koenig must free themselves from a powerful man-machine that plans to keep them as its human companions until the day they die.
"I always say that one of the most pleasurable aspects
of Space: 1999 was that it recruited an army of fans
from all over the world, who I’ve met in the succeeding years,
and it’s rather touching to find that there’s whole groups of
people from all sorts of different countries who are brought
together and bound together by a mutual admiration for this series.
So, indeed, it had a value from my own personal point of view,
in that way, in that I’ve been able in the 30 years since we shot
that series to meet the 'customers' – the audience – in all sorts
of different parts of the world. In normal circumstances, if you
do a single television show you’re not likely to meet the audience
in the same way and with the same friendship as I’ve been able to
with fans of Space: 1999."
Episode 22: "Mission of the Darians"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Joan Collins, Dennis Burgess, Aubrey Morris
When a call for help is made on the Alphans, their landing party travels to a gigantic, crippled spaceship, where the fourteen remaining survivors of a dead planet stay alive by cannibalism.
Episode 23: "Dragon's Domain"
Directed By: Ray Austin
Notable Guests: Gianni Garko, Douglas Wilmer
Dr. Russell retells the farfetched explanation offered by the sole survivor of a disastrous 1996 space probe. Astronaut Tony Cellini baffles everyone with a story experts refuse to believe -- of a group of stationary spaceships, a space graveyard, with a terrifying monster guarding the entrance. This episode features the classical music of Tomaso Albinoni's (1671-1751) Adagio as the space probe approaches an alien planet.
Episode 24: "Testament of Arkadia"
Directed By: Charles Crichton
Notable Guests: Orso Maria Guerrini, Lisa Harrow
Commander Koenig must free Moonbase Alpha from the power-draining influence of the desolate planet of Arkadia, where the Alphans encounter what may be the origins of life on Earth. Complicating matters, though, are two specialists who are determined to renew civilisation on the dead world.
"To Everything That Might Have Been
- To Everything That Was."
Click HERE to listen to the famous quote
from the episode The Black Sun,
by Commander John Koenig (Martin Landau)
and Prof. Victor Bergman (Barry Morse)
Cast members reunited at Breakaway, the Los Angeles
convention held in 1999
Now at long last the truth behind Prof. Bergman's
disappearance has been revealed!
from "Space:1999" at SpaceCon XII
(Photo By Robert E. Wood)
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