Date sent: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 18:16:19 0700
From: jbyrne@xxx.xxxxx.co.uk (Johnny Byrne)
Send reply to: jbyrne@xxx.xxxxx.co.uk
Subject: Missing Story Children Of The Gods
To: The Space 1999 Mailing List 

>Please tell us, if you would, the basic premise behind 'The
>Children of the Gods'...and any other stories that might
> have existed that were not produced...

Anthony

When the first series ended, while it was highly probable we'd go again, it wasn't certain. I stayed on at Pinewood during the long hiatus that followed. During that time, I wrote Into Infinity The Day After Tomorrow an after school special for NBC. We shot it around some rescued some of the sets from series one. Main cast included Nick Tate, Brian Blessed, two kids and, in one shot, my dog, Bones, which the space voyaging families were leaving behind.

I was also commissioned to write two scripts. One was The Biological Soul. It's the same story as The Metamorph, but without Maya, who later arrived in Freddy's mental baggage. The other was Children Of The Gods. Later, when the second series started up, had I known that it was the last, I'd have pushed for its inclusion as the very last episode of Space. But see what you think...

The story starts with the gradual disappearance of Alpha Moonbase. By the end of the hook it's completely gone to the accompaniment of what sounds like the voices of kids playing some bizarre game. Alpha fetches up on some exotic planet where they meet two futuristic human kids brother and sister and their super intelligent, civilised, aristocratic companion called Mentor. The kids have stupendous powers at their disposal, and knowledge of other space civilisations, including earth. But they are spoiled, capricious, very tempermental. The kids reveal themselves to be mini Caliguas and put the Alphans through a series of challenges, some deadly, some humiliating, some heart wrenching.

An Alphan dies and we see that the kids are not unmoved. They are particularly non plussed by the reactions of the Alphans to the loss of one their people. Throughout Mentor indulges their every whim. And in the full knowledge that what the children are doing is unethical, immoral, and often evil. Later again we learn that Mentor and the children have travelled back in time with the sole intention of finding the Alphan.

As the theme develops, we sense Mentor's mixed feeling of distaste and strong, almost unacknowledged love for the kids. And also a deepening sadness as they almost instinctively abuse the miraculous power they have at their disposal . Instinct allied to fabulous power has apparently brought out the very worst in the children's human nature. Presently we learn that this spells doom for Alpha and even the children.

We already know that Mentors advanced and enlightened civilisation is in the far distant future time. Towards the end, we discover that his people are on the brink of making contact with a new expanding race of earth people. They are, in fact, the descendants of the small Alphan colony founded by John Koenig after they had eventually found the perfect world. Time had passed. The earth Alphans grew powerful and colonised space. And, in Mentor's time, they are now on the brink of making their presence known.

Mentor's people fear these encroaching Alphan descended earth people. While willing to coexist with them, they are a people still driven by instinctive forces utterly alien and frightening to Mentor's people. Their solution was to take two Alphan descended earth children at birth and allow their innate natures to develop in a moral and ethical vacuum. They also gave them free access to marvelous technology, which the children were allowed to use as the mood prompted.

The final test was for the children to confront the Alphans. If the nature of the earth children was proved to be irredeemably evil, Alpha Moonbase and everyone on it, along with the children, would be destroyed. In this way, the biological source of the threat now faced by Mentor's people in future time will be removed at a stroke. In essence, the salvation of Koenig et al depends completely on the innate human instincts of the kids.

Throughout the story the children have been engaging with the Alphans. It parks complex and disturbing emotions which the kids find difficult to handle. And all seems lost. By their actions, the children have proved beyond doubt to Mentor that earth Alphans are innately unfit to coexist alongside his people. He's particularly upset at the thought of having to destroy the children through Koenig he learns that the unfamiliar emotions they have aroused is called love.

At the end, the children cause a potentially disastrous situation for both Alphans and Mentor. But through interaction with the Alphans, along with a newly discovered sense of their long suppressed innate humanity, and the knowledge that Mentor loves them, they demonstrate beyond doubt that the earth Alphans are worthy of existence. But by then they are dead, both having instinctively sacrificed their lives so that others may live.

It sounds complex, but, thinking back, it seemed to play out simple on the surface, complex within.

I'm not aware of any stories from the first season which never made it to production. But this all IMSMR. I believe so because the time factor was largely against it happening. Also, the scripts were being written consecutively in series two, the scripts were mostly written concurrently. Some of series one scripts should have been binned problems in scripts tend to magnify when they show up on screen. Also, under this regime, too many resources were spent putting indifferent scripts right, instead of making good scripts better. On series two, I don't know if Freddy binned anything, but, knowing Freddy, I suspect maybe he did. :)

Johnny Byrne

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