The Interpreter by Brian Aldiss. Cover by Bruce Pennington (1973)

A bit of a classic cover as far as I'm concerned.

Steve

Adventurers and Explorers Picture card book (1973)

Free picture cards in with your tea bags.  Drink the tea, collect the cards and stick them in the book - Its the reason I started drinking the "cha", in order to get through it quicker and complete the collections.  Below is Neil Armstrong, card 50, and the last of the note worthy adventurers and explorers as of 73...It may well still be true !

 

 

Steve

Storm: The Deep World - Don Lawrence (1973)

All hail Don Lawrence

 

 Cover art in close up followed by some interior sample panels

 

For much more of this go here: http://bronzeageofblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/storm-deep-world.html

 

Big thanks to Ian for pointing me at this.

 

Cheers

Steve

Moscow-Cassiopeia (1973)

Moscow-Cassiopeia (Russian: Москва — Кассиопея) is a Soviet film directed by Richard Viktorov based on a script by Isai Kuznetsov and Avenir Zak.

Looks interesting.


Steve

Holiday Inn (1973)

Promotional image cashing in on the space race, I presume, as did just about everybody else through the back of the 60's and into the early 70's.

If anyone knows the artist or where is was used, then please share in the comments below. and I'll update accordingly

Fantastic isn't it.

**Update from Bill's comments below - Thanks Bill - Original art is ...

and the original artist is Rick Guidice

Steve

Six Million Dollar Man - The Moon and the Desert (1973)

Steve Austin is an astronaut who has made three moon landings. In a test flight accident caused by a malfunctioning centre stick, his right arm is severed, his left eye is blinded, and both legs must be surgically amputated. Steve Austin’s personal physician, Dr. Rudy Wells, has theorised about the creation of a cyborg through the installation of bionic parts. He is persuaded by an OSI agent to reconstruct his patient/friend with the understanding that Steve Austin will subsequently work for OSI.... and so it begins.  The Six Million Dollar Man.  The Moon and the Desert is the first of the TV movies which then lead into a five season TV series and ended with a further 3 TV movies as well as spawning the spin series The Bionic Woman. 

Very much a part of growing up in the 70's.  Good stuff.

 

 

Steve

The Starlost (1973)

The Starlost was a sci-fi television series devised by writer Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973 on CTV in Canada and syndicated to local stations in the United States.  I'm reasonably certain it never saw the light of day on this side of the Atlantic although with so many regional channels back then I stand to be corrected if any one knows better.

The show's setting was a huge colony spacecraft called The Ark, which had gone off-course. Many of the descendants of the original crew and colonists were unaware of this and that they were even aboard a spaceship.

The series experienced a number of production difficulties right from the start and Ellison ended up disowning it before the first episode had even aired.  16 episode were made in total before the plug was finally pulled.

Steve

Moonbase 3 (1973)

Created by Doctor Who producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dick during the break in production between series 10 and 11.   Moonbase 3 was intended as a more realistic strand of TV science fiction and dealt with the day to day problems faced by people living on the moon in futuristic 2003.

I've only watched 2 episodes so far and would agree with the general consensus that its so busy being realistic and taking its self seriously that at times it almost forgets to illustrate the wonders of living in space.  That said there's something about BBC TV and especially BBC sci-fi from this era that I  find enormously charming.

If anything unusual happens in the sixth and final episode, such as the cybermen  knocking on the airlock doors or the entire base turning out to be a testing ground for another Kraal invasion, then I'll come back and blog some more.  Otherwise I'll just mention that I quite like the space suits and that I am a little surprised that I've only found a couple of cameo appearance by them in other BBC productions.

Steve

Goodies - Invasion of the Moon Creatures (1973)

The Goodies was a British comedy series that first aired on the BBC on the 8^th of November 1970 and clocked up a total of 76 episodes over 9 series, ending its run with its final series broadcast in the early 1980’s over on the ITV channel.

The Goodies were Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.  The three men co-starred and co-wrote the series where each week quite literally anything could happen and the trio could find themselves just about anywhere as long as it provided the opportunity to cram in as many gags as possible or parody current events or trends.

In the episode; Invasion of the Moon Creatures from the 4^th series and broadcast on the 8^th December 1973, we see Bill and Tim take a trip to the moon in pursuit of Graeme’s first experimental moon rocket and its lost crew of specially trained rabbits.

The two of them then don some of Gerry Anderson’s second hand UFO spacesuits as they mess about on the moon’s surface before being captured and brainwashed by the now hyper-intelligent rabbits.  They are then returned to earth, dressed as giant rabbits, vanguards of the invading rabbit forces, and just have time for a quick parody of A Clockwork Orange’s ultra-violence before the show wraps to the sounds of its rather brilliant theme tune.

I loved the Goodies as a kid and, though rarely repeated, a recent handful of episodes that were shown over the Christmas period were still just as silly and entertaining as I recall.

And Invasion of the Moon Creatures is as fine an episode as any, cool spacesuits excluded.


Steve

Look-In #31 (1973)

I've mentioned Look-In before so I won't repeat myself  by explaining what it was - Click the label below for details - but here we have another fine cover and this time it's painted artwork, which is how I remember them always being even if that wasn't actually the case.

Pictured above is the series 1 cast of The Tomorrow People resplendent in their AE suits to celebrate the launch of the show's comicstrip within its pages.  If I've got my maths right this came out about the same time as the final episode aired and must have filled the void between that and series 2.

Look-In had been a good friend to the children's show by running a preview feature in issue 18, the week before the series began its first TV transmission.  They've also been a good friend here by visually stretching the show's budget to suggest that there was actually a spacesuit for every member of the team.  To the best of my knowledge, inhibited by his questionable acting abilities, the little chap that played Kenny, rarely got out of the underground base let alone all the way into outer space.

 Steve

The Tomorrow People - Series 1 (1973)

The Tomorrow People was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network.  This children’s sci-fi show was broadcast in its original form from 1973 to 1979.  Its basic premise concerns the “break out” of the next stage of human evolution; Homo Superior, AKA, the titular; Tomorrow People.

Being a children’s series, the main cast of the show were themselves children or young adults.  This served the story logic well as it is revealed in the very first episode that it’s during adolescence that the Tomorrow People’s psionic powers come to fruition.

Telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation and a nifty underground base are just a few of the perks of joining humanity’s elite but far more important than that is, of course, access to some shiny silver space suits!

Well now that I’ve named them such I should probably point out that in the show’s vernacular they’re better known as AE Suits which basically means that they are inclusively rather than exclusively spacesuits.  You see; AE stands for Adaptable for any Environment but in reality this translates as; this show has almost zero budget and these things are going to have to serve all elements of the plot from Arctic to volcanic wear.

The ones pictured here are only seen in the first series and were perhaps a little too tight-fitting to be practical or just too hot to wear beneath the studio lights but by series two they had been replaced by an updated design and a far more forgiving fabric.

And yes, those are modified motor bike helmets there but If I really wanted illustrate how cheap this show was, I would be posting pictures of the monsters and explaining how thinly the plot could be spread over multiple episodes.

And not that it has any real relevance to this blog but I feel compelled to add that, despite its many failings, the central premise of the Tomorrow People is a solid gold idea and that its theme tune and opening credits must rank as one of the all time classics of British children’s television.  Go You Tube it.  In actualization, it remains the best bit of the whole show.

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

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 Planet of the Daleks (1973)

Directly following on from The Frontier in Space, The Doctor and his assistant Jo Grant land on the jungle planet of Spiridon where they meet up with a group of Thal commandos on a secret mission to prevent the Daleks mastering invisibility.

Its only one scene in the first episode but when Jo discovers the dead pilot of the Thal space ship, he’s wearing  a helmet that is exactly the same design as the Earth helmet worn by the Doctor in the previous story although it’s a white one now.  We’re probably not meant to notice production details like that but there you go; the past is now trapped in digital amber.

Interestingly before watching this a couple of months back, I had always taken the Thal suits to be military fatigues or general survival suits but seeing the pilot with the helmet in place I find myself revaluating them now because you can see the ribbed bands in the arms, wrists, ankles and neck resemble so many previous space suit designs.

Steve

Doctor Who The Frontier in Space (1973)

This six part story sees the 3^rd Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee, trying to prevent a war between the Earth and Draconian Empires.  He’s also got The Master to deal with as well as the Ogrons and their secret Dalek masters, who are actually manipulating everything from a distance.

In one episode The Doctor has to do a space walk in order to get the better of The Master and thus dons this space suit.

It’s a nice green number with duel oxygen cylinders and a matching silver space helmet.  The helmet is the same as the ones used in Pathfinders to Mars but with the plastic visor left in.  There’s a big padded neck piece that seems to match the big padded wrist bands but in truth this helps to hide the fact that the helmet doesn’t quite come all the way down at the back.  This is why the Pathfinder space suits appeared to have hoods; in order to disguise this same shortcoming in the helmet’s design.

Coincidentally  this Doctor Who story is also written by Malcolm Hulke, one of the two Pathfinder writers.

Steve