Doctor Who - The Ambassadors of Death (1970) Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes images from the 7 part 1970 Doctor Who story:The Ambassadors of Death. 

These seem to be the actors gathered in the makeup room prior to filming and of course features a reuse of the Moon Zero Two space helmets.  The suits I believe are original BBC made costumes for this show

Steve

Doctor Who - The Ambassadors of Death (1970) - A Gallery

 

Steve

Something for the Weekend #14

Well hello there!

 

Here is the lovely Linda Lusardi from back in the day when she was a page 3 girl in The Sun newspaper.  This is a cropped version of the full image because we're meant to be admiring the equally lovely space-wear and saving the internet from its self, one pair of tits at a time.

 

Linda is sporting one of the space helmets from Superman II...

Which as we've previously established was originally made for Moon Zero Two over a decade earlier.

 

Now I've a fairly good idea where this one ended up, which is here....

http://www.davidsissonmodels.co.uk/Moon%20Zero%20Two%20Spacesuits.htm

...although if anyone knows where it went in between times, to pick up the repaint, I'd love to know.

I've always assumed than anyone that knows of my blog will already be aware of David Sisson's excellent site where the final happy chapter of that particular prop can be discovered along with lots of other wonderful things but if you don't then you need to jump on that link and get over there asap.

colour me jealous

Steve

Restricted View (1975/?)

Two alien robots, a quiet country lane and cars that vanish into blinding white balls of light appearing  suddenly in the  middle of the road.  A Classic bit of 70's Doctor Who?  An episode of UFO?  Not Quite

Restricted View is the title of a Public Information Film as featured on the "Charley Says" Vol 2 DVD.  I'm not sure if that's the official title or just the one made up for the DVD - What I also don't know is the year.  I tried to be clever and date the car registration plates but the image is a bit rough after all these years and the nearest I'm going to guess at is 1975 - maybe.

I love these PIF's. As a kid back then they totally coloured my view of the world as much as any TV shows.  And they presented the outside world as a slightly odd, spooky and dangerous place to play which despite popular belief made it an even more exciting a playground, as long as you didn't do anything stupid like fly kites under pylons or swim in muddy junk filled rivers, hide inside fridges, talk to strangers, cross the road, run on the beach, play cowboys and indians on farms etc etc

I could actually remember this one from back in the day even though it's  one which rarely ever gets a mention when people get all nostalgic about them.  Although given the age I first saw it, I remember the menace and not the message.  If asked I probably would have told you it was about the dangers of silver aliens  hiding in the countryside and not blind spots when driving.

So what we have here is another appearance of the Moon Zero Two suits, with two Moon Zero Two helmets.  Were these the ones from Space 1999 or  was it the other way around.  One of the helmets has been customised to make it roboty which might offer a reason why there weren't two helmets available for the Darians to use.  In this case time  probably won't tell.

Steve

Space: 1999 - Mission of the Darians (1975)

Mission of the Darians is an episode from the end of the first series of Space: 1999.

Survivors of a dying world have been adrift in their enormous spaceship for over 900 years; so long that some of them have de-evolved back to savagery and no longer even understand where they are. But not all of them.  Take these chaps.

It's been a long time since I watched this so I don't quite recall how it all pans out but I'm sure there are some really good Space:1999 fan sites out there that will tell you all about it.  Here, we're just interested in the spacesuits.

What we have before us are a couple of Moon Zero Two spacesuits sprayed silver with some nice black  detailing.  The eagle-eyed might even spot that one of the helmets is actually from Gerry Anderson's own UFO series.  The story has it that when they came to hire them they couldn't find two of the MZT ones which isn't all that surprising given that the helmets had careers far more varied than the suits and they were separated quite early on.  Interestingly its the UFO helmet with the extra box shaped bit on the top of which I'm fairly certain there was only ever one.  This may be its latest and last appearance documented so far.

Broadcast in October 1975 but filmed in January of that same year, these dates may or may not help us with a mysterious little appearance of possibly the same two suits from one of those charming and ever so slightly spooky Public Information Films... off which more will be blogged soon.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures

Steve

Superman II and the Moon Zero 2 connection.

There it is.

It took me a moment to spot this and its not something that I've ever read documented anywhere else but that there space helmet from Superman II, as worn by the cosmonaut killed by Zod, appears to be one of the seven created a decade earlier for the Hammer sci-fi  movie Moon Zero 2.

As previous blogs have revealed, these helmets have had quite a career, often in the company of Gerry Anderson's UFO helmets, and though they had a lot of activity in the early 70's...

and one as yet unblogged appearance in 1975, the Superman guest-spot seems to be the latest thus far.  Don't you just know there's more out there waiting to be rediscovered.


Steve

Here Come The Double-Deckers (1970) - Invaders from Space - Gallery

Here are some much better pictures than I had back when I covered this episode of the Double Deckers the first time around.

Watching the episode again I noticed that the yellow and the green suits have white circular patches on the backs and I was trying to figure out where they might have been between this and their premier in Moon Zero Two and why they have this slight modification.

And then it dawned on me that these patches are most probably there simply to hide the holes made in the suits in order to connect the harnessed actors to the flying wires for the Zero G fight scenes at the end of the Hammer movie.  Get me, I'm like Captain Zep.

Anyway the only other question I have is what happened to the red and blue suits?  They're the only colours not to make it from the Moon to London Junkyard.  As speculated in the original post, I'm guessing that they were both too small to fit these actors but where did they wind up?  Surely they had a career of their own even if it was just modelling work on album covers or book jackets.  Anyone?

Enjoy the rest of the gallery.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

Smash Mash TV Advert (1970)

This is a Smash Mash Martian from the hugely influential and much loved 70’s TV campaign.  These guys appeared in a number of ads over the years mocking humanity for the lengthy and arduous process we employed when making mashed potato.  The cause of their derision was the fact that we peeled, boiled and then smashed up real potatoes when we could have been embracing the future by simply adding boiling water and reconstituting the dried potato granules available in the supermarkets.  The ads were phenomenally successful and not only did they sell a lot of Smash but they also sold a fare few plastic Martian toys as well as infecting the  nation with  the viral tag line; For Mash Get Smash.

The campaign was created by the Boase Massimi Pollitt Agency and the first of the Martian ads went out in 1974.

And what’s all this got to do with Spacemen?
Well this...

You see that isn’t a picture from Gerry Anderson's UFO TV series but the opening scene of a Smash Mash advert that precedes all of the above.

Now I’ve been trying to date this advert for a while and it’s proving difficult but I’m going to best guess it at 1970 from a process of zeroing in.

The BMP agency was founded in 1968 and one of their first contracts was with Cadbury for their Smash Mash which was launched in 1969.  This is the year of the moon landing and height of the public’s fascination with space and the future, which was used to sell just about everything.

There were two ads made prior to the Martians and this was the second of them.  (The first reveals a future in which a child is so used to eating powdered potatoes that when she sees a real potato she doesn’t even recognise it)

The space suits seen here are those originally created for Doppelganger and then reused in UFO.  The helmets are only ever a deep orange in the original film whereas here there is an orange and a yellow one which would suggest that the ad is from post production of UFO.   I also read that some of the set is recycled from the TV series too so that would confirm that fact.

Except that what we discovered in previous posts was that UFO had a 5 month break in production (November 1969 to May 1970)  while they found new studios and that during that time these  same suits were hired out and used by the BBC for their Doomwatch episode;  Re-entry Forbidden. (Filmed Feb 1970)

Also featured in this advert are some of the space helmets from Moon Zero Two that were also popping up all over the place that year in Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death and an episode of Here Come the Double Deckers.

This is the first but not the last time these two suits would come together and I feel sure that there are outings for both of them that have yet to re-surface.  There’s certainly a couple more I’ve yet to tell you about.

Which is a whole load of research and words to date an advert that hardly anyone remembers now but if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that we're talking about a couple of my very favourite space suits here so it’s a mystery I’m happy to pour effort into.

And also I would like to do my bit to remind a generation that the good spacemen of the moon were Smashing their Mash way before a bunch of condescending metal Martians came on the scene.


Steve