Spacemen Magazine #1 (1961)

This is the cover to Spacemen Magazine #1 which was put out by Warren Publishing in 1961.

They had been doing quite well with their Famous Monsters of Filmland, magazine and thought a similar venture dealing with Sci-fi films might prove equally popular.  It didn’t especially and the whole thing ran to only eight issues and one yearbook, although due to a very erratic publishing schedule they somehow managed to get all the way to 1965 before calling it a day.

The cover art is an early example by Basil Gogos, whose work on Famous Monsters is horrifically beautiful.... but that's for somebody else to blog about.

Reference for the painting seems to be from 12 To the Moon, a bit of B-movie fluff released the previous year. 

Steve

The Solarnauts (1967)

The pilot episode of Solarnauts was titled; Cloud of Death, and was made in 1967 with a view to becoming a series.

The show was never picked up and to the best of my knowledge the one and only episode never even got a public viewing.  Which is a bit of a shame really because apart from some cheap looking model effects there seems to be a lot of style and colour to the production and there’s an interesting enough set up to imagine that it might have developed into quite a good show for its time, if it had have been given the chance.

Thanks to the magic of the internet it’s viewable online in any number of places.  Go check it out

Steve

Doctor Who Underworld (1978)

The 4th Doctor, Tom Baker, and companion Leela join the last of the Minyans as they endeavour to discover the whereabouts of the lost race-banks that will restore their peoples from extinction.

This particular story gets a lot of stick for its less than successful CSO effects work.  It’s actually ok if not just a little bit of an average tale but it’s from an era when the shows budgets were severely slashed as to make alternatives impossible.  And this at exactly the same time that the world was getting very excited by Star Wars and its multimillion pound special effects.

For all that, the space suits worn by the Minyan crew look like original constructions and the helmets are for once not the old faithful Pathfinder standbys but something new, if not a little basic.  Shiny metallic material with lots of external tubing. Like I’ve already said; Ok if not just a little average.

Steve

Doctor Who The Carnival of Monsters (1973)

Vorg and Shirna arrive on Inter Minor with their Miniscope, a futuristic peepshow containing alien species trapped in tiny moments of time.  Unbeknownst to everybody, including himself, the 3^rd Doctor lands the TARDIS inside the machine and it’s his attempts to discover his true whereabouts that really set the plot rolling along.

This is just about my favourite Jon Pertwee story, written by the late great Robert Holmes, the master of classic Who story telling.

The space suits seen in it are dispensed with in the first few minutes of the first episode once the travellers disembark from the cargo hold of the ship that brings them to the alien world.  Story wise, I would assume that there must have been helmets worn with them although they’re never seen on screen.  The suits are of a similar style to those worn by the Thals a few stories later in The Planet of the Daleks.

Steve

Doctor Who The Daleks' Master Plan (1965)

First seen in the story’s prologue; Mission to the Unknown, this alien representative can now be seen again only this time his Pathfinder style helmet appears to have been given a coat of black paint.

Nice!

Steve

Doctor Who Mission to the Unknown (1965)

A  unique episode of Doctor Who which served as a Doctor-less prologue to the 12 part  The Daleks’ Master Plan which aired some five weeks later.  Though the story has long been lost from the BBC archives, a few stills remain which afford us a glimpse of the representatives of the 7 planets which are in cahoots with the Daleks.

And among them, if we look closely, we can see that one of the unnamed aliens is wearing a space helmet that looks a lot like the kind worn in the Pathfinder to Mars series and which, as you will have already read, goes on to feature fairly regularly throughout the whole of the 70’s Doctor Who. I wasn’t sure at first if the plastic visor was in place although the position of the air-hose does seem to suggest that it might be.  In Pathfinders it was replaced with a cross of wire so as not to muffle the actors voice although I don’t think this alien has any specific lines so that isn’t really an issue here.

I think this is most probably the first outing of the prop on Doctor Who, although having only spotted it’s use a couple of days ago, I’m not going to put any money on that.

Steve

Doctor Who The Android Invasion (1975)

The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive in the English village of Devesham, near the Space Defence Station and then they bump into these chaps;

Whilst not technically spacemen as such – but then nothing in this story is quite what it seems to be - they are sporting those ever-faithful Pathfinder style of helmet quite popular with previous Doctor Who costume designers.  This time to mix it up a bit they’ve removed the flat Perspex face plate and added a motorbike bubble visor which makes for quite an effective re-design.  I almost didn’t recognise it.

This story was made about the same time that Space 1999 aired and their space helmets also featured a similar bubble visor look, which may have been the source of inspiration.

Anyway what first appears like creepy spacemen roaming the countryside turns out to really be equally creepy faceless androids.

It’s been a lot of years since I last saw this and a DVD release is long overdue.

 

Steve