Episode Guide: Year One
Title: "A Matter Of Life And Death"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
The runaway moon comes across planet Terra Nova, a seemingly ideal world to settle on... and the Alphans discover Dr. Helena Russell's "deceased" husband!
Production Number: 002 (Season One)
- filmed Monday, January 14 - Wednesday, January 30, 1974
Original U.K. airing week: 27 November 1975 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 16 January 1976 (syndication)
Written by Art Wallace and Johnny Byrne
Directed by Charles Crichton
Backplot
- Space programs on Earth once yielded interplanetary manned missions and interstellar probes.
- In the year 1999, lunar nuclear waste storage dumps have exploded, due to magnetic radiation, sending Earth's moon into interstellar space. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, unable to escape, are seeking a new home.
- David Kano is now seen working in Main Mission.
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
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A man returns from the dead and promise of a new civilization on a planet resembling Earth opens for those stranded on the runaway moon. But there is drama ahead.
Dr. Helena Russell (BARBARA BAIN) has believed herself to be a widow since the disappearance of her husband, Lee, on a space mission that went wrong. Locked in orbit around Jupiter, the ship burned up. All the crew must have died.
Now, sensationally, she comes face to face with Lee (RICHARD JOHNSON) when he arrives on the moon in a spacecraft that has been probing a planet, Terra Nova, which is apparently capable of sustaining human life.
But how did Lee get into the spacecraft? His condition is anything but normal and Professor Bergman (BARRY MORSE) theorises that Lee must somehow have found himself on Terra Nova and that some aspect of the planet's environment caused him to change in some way.
Commander Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) is puzzled but preoccupied with the possibilities of evacuating Moonbase Alpha personnel to the planet that has all the promise of a normal future akin to that on earth.
Alarmingly, when Helena touches her husband she is gripped by an enormous vibration which hurls her across the room, and further examination of Lee produces even more puzzling factors. He records no life, no body heat, yet his heart is beating and he is breathing. When he at last regains sufficient consciousness to talk, his plea is: "You are in danger. You must not go near the planet. You face power beyond your understanding. It will destroy you." and he dies. This time, there is no doubt. He is dead, but after death his skin shows changing atomic structure signs of reversed polarity and apparent confirmation of a theory that this is the first stage in the process towards anti-matter. As soon as the process is complete, it means annihilation. A little later, his body disappears.
Nevertheless, Koenig decides to go ahead with the landing, taking an advance party which includes himself and Helena, and Terra Nova proves to be so like earth that he is sure it can be colonized. But from Moonbase comes an ominous warning. Bergman reports trouble. There is trouble too, aboard the spaceship. And then things begin to happen to the landing party.
Koenig and Helena watch as a violent explosion rocks the moon, which disintegrates, the debris hurtling towards Terra Nova. Shock waves hit the planet. Koenig and Helena dive into a cave, but Koenig is hit by falling debris... and dies.
Helena then hears the voice of her dead husband, turns, and finds Lee standing beside her to tell her how he and his companions had been affected by a form of radiation, atomized scattered into deep space. What Lee became, what he is now, ended on Terra Nova. Just as there are many forms of life in space, so there are many forms of death. Lee is now anti-matter. He could never survive on Earth. Now Helena must leave. He can give her the strength she needs.
Lee vanishes and Koenig, alive again, comes towards her. Everything is as it was before and from Bergman on the moon comes the announcement hat everything is ready for Operation Exodus... if Koenig gives the go-ahead.
SCREENPLAY BY ART WALLACE, JOHNNY BYRNE
DIRECTED BY CHARLES CRICHTON
Guest Artist:
RICHARD JOHNSON
with
PRENTIS HANCOCK as PAUL MORROW
CLIFTON JONES as DAVID KANO
ZIENIA MERTON as SANDRA BENES
ANTON PHILLIPS as DR. MATHIAS
NICK TATE as ALAN CARTER
STUART DAMON as PARKS
Unanswered Questions
Analyses/Observations
Comments
- In an interview with John K. Muir, writer/script editor Johnny Byrne discussed some insights into "Matter of Life and Death":
Muir: "Is the planet Terra Nova in 'Matter of Life and Death' really the planet Meta, as some fans have come to believe?"
Byrne: "No. They put all the Meta stuff into the first episode, 'Breakaway,' which was being shot while I was writing 'Matter of Life and Death.' There was a strong pull to make each episode a stand-alone story because the series would have been selling in syndication, and we didn't have a clue in what order the shows would be screened. If I had been told to follow on with Meta, then I would have used Meta. Instead, I created Terra Nova, and there seemed to be some reason to do that, to actually get away from Meta. Had I been wrong to do that, Christopher Penfold or someone would have surely told me I was wrong."
Muir: "What do you remember about working on that particular story?"
Byrne: "I spent a long time with Charles Crichton [episode director] putting this into a shooting script in the most maddening form of detail. It was kind of a primer in filmmaking, and if there had been flaws that kind of stood out, Charles would be the one to spot them. I was really at the mercy of superior experience there."
Muir: "Since 'Matter of Life and Death' was a rewrite of an Art Wallace script, can you recall what your contributions were?
Byrne: "Looking back, I see the things that interested me. I was very fascinated that Richard Johnson had been cast, and I liked the idea of someone being Helena's husband. I would have looked for a level of human story there, and seeded it into the script. The problem was that nobody was sure who was having whom, or who was supposed to be having whom. At that time, Koenig was calling Helena 'Dr. Russell' and all sorts of things. It was a bit formal. Nobody had sat down and planned out in detail how it was going to develop. The Lee Russell relationship made the show special for me. I remember that."
Muir: "My problem with that story is that everybody dies in the climax and then is miraculously resurrected when Helena 'wishes' it."
Byrne: "If you kill of your main characters too often, you do have this terrible reality gap. So you have to choose your moments very carefully. I think Gerry [Anderson] is very keen indeed on waving a magic wand, and everything comes out all right in the end. I'm not sure I would have worked it out in quite that way."
Muir: "But it was a fertile time for you, those early days?"
Byrne: "Oh yes. There was something deeply subconscious working all the time and none of us were aware of it. And it only happened to those of us who were there all the time, because the writing of the individual scripts was only a step in the whole process. We were in the planning of the episodes, we were seeing the dailies, day-by-day, we were working ahead and looking at new stories. We were at starship control, looking for those unidentified little blips - which were the scripts keying into something special. But the whole thing was mostly unformulated. Chris [Penfold] and I would sit in his office and have these heightened conversations about story. We were off our rockers."
Memorable Lines
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