Director And His Space Muse 3 (1968)

Jane Fonda and the director Roger Vadim on the set of Barbarella.

This might be considered strange behaviour but he was her husband at the time so that makes it all perfectly acceptable.  This is the shot he was going for I imagine....

...which makes you wonder if he was there all the time, just below frame, gently breathing the aroma of secondary croissant up her helmet in order to inspire the dreamy faraway look he was after.  What a star.

 

 

Steve

 

Doctor Who and the Moonbase (1967) again

We've already been here the once and looked at these

That's a much clearer image than previously shown, of the spacesuits used by the Tardis crew when they went for a frolic on the future moon.

This

and this

Are images of the slightly different (cheaper looking!) suits worn by the crew of the titular Moonbase.  

The story is one of the lost classics from shows history but I remember reading the Target novelisation many many years ago and now have a huge urge to mount an expedition into the loft to see if I still own a copy.  I seem to remember it had some nice illustrations in as well as being a cracking bit of 60's sci-fi about the Cybermen mounting an attack on the Earth using it's own moon based weather control system against it.

Steve

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

The second of the Austin Powers films is still very much spoofing James Bond, Derek Flint and Jason King.  All of which are fairly easy targets but what you have to love about this sequel is the inspired invention of the Mini-Me character as played by Verne Troyer.  That was worth the cost of admission alone.

There's a plot in there somewhere but its not really important as its only a vehicle to hang the gags and 60's visuals off. Smashing!

Any way here are the spacesuits which have very nice retro fish-bowl helmets and a suit design that has more than a passing nod towards Kubrick's; 2001.

Steve

Despicable Me (2010)

 

There is a lot to love about Despicable Me, so much in fact that its barley worth mentioning the rather nifty pink spacesuit.....but I just did so there you go.

 

 

Go watch the movie.


Steve

Strange Adventures #240 (1973)

Strange Adventures #240 from February 1973.  That's the last of the Strange Adventures archive of spacemen covers and what have we learnt?  Well regardless of whats going on around them in the real world or what innovative design is being cooked up in the movies, your average comic artist is perpetually drawn to a the classic fishbowl style of space helmet simply because it allows him to illustrate the human face and its many expressions.  Although I'm not entirely sure which one this is meant to be.

Name checking of the artist in the comments below by Mister Snitch!  Many thanks, Sir. 


Steve

Strange Adventures #150 (1963)

Strange Adventures #150 from March 1963.  I have little more to add to that except to say that it's a bit of a lovely looking cover, this one. And I'm strangely drawn to the colour scheme of the suits.


Steve

Abbot and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars....only they don’t actually but then this is a comedy so why would they.  Everybody knows the big laughs are on Venus!

So it goes like this; Orville (Costello) winds up stuck inside a truck sent to a top secret laboratory where he meets Lester (Abbott).  The pair get tasked with loading supplies onto a rocket ship and guess what happens next.  That’s right; the rocket is accidentally launched and flies off to ...New Orleans!

But its Mardi Gras and the duo mistake the costumed celebrants for aliens, erroneously concluding they must be on Mars.
Meanwhile two escaped convicts join the action and after a bit of confusion and mistaken identity, the four end up back in the rocket and heading off to....yes that’s right; Venus, a planet run and inhabited solely by women who.....

Nope, it’s no good!  I’ve lost interest.... which usually happens about two thirds of the way through an Abbot and Costello movie

Anyway, we’re here to look at the space suits aren’t we?  And now we have and they look like almost about every other space suit around in the 50’s.  The longevity of this design is quite impressive actually and if it hadn’t have been for the markedly different development of the real world space suits in the 60’s, then I can’t help feeling we would have been admiring these tubular padded suits for ever.

Steve

Blake's 7: Dawn of the Gods (1980)

From the third series of Blake’s 7, episode 4; Dawn of the Gods sees the use of these rather spiffing Spacesuits, worn by a number of the Liberator crew whilst popping out side to explore the artificial planet of Crandor.

I kind of like them.  The gold colour is unusual, they look much better than you would expect a BBC budget to run to and there’s a touch of the retro and the futuristic all mixed in together.

 

 A good effort.

 

Steve

The Net (1953)

The Net is a British film about the goings on at a secret aviation research base where they’re developing the M7; a prototype aircraft capable of travelling at speeds up to 2,000 M.P.H.  There’s murder, betrayal and intrigue and there are these pressure suits.

With the pressure suit being the progenitor of the space suit in fiction as well as fact, I notice that these are almost identical to the space suits used in the BBC Radio’s;  Journey into Space, publicity pictures the following year.  I did wonder where the Corporation had got them from as it seemed unlikely they would have gone to the time or expense of manufacturing them for the promotion of a radio show when they actually look far better than most of their televisual space suits.  Costume hire then.  The question is; were they made for The Net or did they have a life before the film?

Steve

Journey Into Space (1953)

This is what spacemen on the radio look like...

Journey Into Space ran for 3 original series and 1 remake from 1953 to 1958 on BBC radio.  The costumes seen here being worn by the cast for publicity pictures are allegedly genuine prototype suites made for Britain's potential incursions into space. (I'm a little sceptical of that but I'll look into it and report back at some future point).

So successful was the show that there were novelisations for each of the three series, the picture above coming from the back of one of them.

To publicise the start of the second series The Radio Times went with this rather wonderful cover image of the now classic fishbowl style of helmet and rippled suit which must have been so very potent back then.  This look and feel for a space suit was in keeping with the thinking of the time and, I believe, left an impression upon some of the designers that would go on to work on future television productions in that and the oncoming decade.

Steve