Ed Bishop: Sub-Smash Commentary – Part 1

0.10 (Opening sequence)

00.10 Opening Sequence smallThat was our resident alien that we had there , he was in every episode that they required an alien. Gito Santana and it was great to go out to have lunch with him . He’d sit there with his eyes y’know and he’d be talking about his agent or ten percent. Or whatever. This is a fantastic opening. Really grabs you.
This incidentally is one of my, very close to the favourite episode, Sub-Smash. I really enjoyed this. Very very hard work. I’ll show you when we get to the set.

1.17 Nina Barry (Opening sequence)

01.17 Nina Barry opening sequence

There are the girls (drawn out pronunciation of ‘girrrrrls’). Those guys used to always say they were going  down laundry chutes jumping down there. Fantastic opening.

 

 

02.09 Atlantca lifebuoy2.09 (Atlantica 4 lifebuoy in the water)
Boy, when Derek Meddings blew anything up there was now half-measure. Man, he really…(laughter)…….. eliminated it. Fantastic effects.

 

 

 

2.40 (Captain Waterman)

02.40 Captain Waterman

That’s Gary Myers . He was the Cadbury Milk-Tray guy. Australian. Nice guy, very athletic.

4.02 (Freeman and Straker)

04.02 Freeman and Straker

That’s wonderful George Sewell. We played together very well because our timings were very different . He had a quick London way of speaking and I had a slower kind of American delivery which……… We always seemed to complement each other and the scenes together were a lot of exploration.. exposition really. They always seemed to make sense. He was a joy to work with too. Still around, still working.

4.50 (Credits: Alan Fennell)

04.50 Credits Alan Fennell

Dear Alan Fennell passed away couple of weeks ago. Brilliant guy.

5.51 (Waterman goes below)

05.51 Waterman goes below

That’s right He was the captain of the ship, Gary was. There’s Anthony Chinn. I worked with him several times in various things. Wonderful Asian actor.

06.23 (Foster looking through binoculars)

06.43 Foster and binoculars

(Laughter) He was very good, Michael, he could make a gesture speak volumes. The lovely Dolores, at home, on Moonbase or in Skydiver.

07.11 (Lt Lewis)

07.11 Lewis
Now that’s Paul Maxwell, a very close friend of mine, personal friend. He died a couple of years ago. Paul and I were always up for he same parts. We came into competition many many times. We lost track of who had the most ‘hits’ but we were always coming up against each other.

 

 

07.45 (Straker at the bottom of the ladder)

07.45 Straker at the bottom of the ladder

Yes. Now the essence of this episode was because I suffer from claustrophobia, personally and Dolores suffers quite a bit from claustrophobia so the …….. somebody had the bright idea to use this phobia in a script in some way.

08.45 (Straker with Waterman)

09.45 Straker with Waterman
That was one of the things I liked about the series was the ………like Dolores could be on Skydiver one episode and that she could be at Moonbase on another and at SHADO Central control in another episode. There was a kind of fluidity. You didn’t see one person in one job constantly. There are a few characters like Ford, but most .. they kind of moved around. I found that interesting.

10.13 (Skydiver about to dive)

10.15 Skydiver about to dive

Michael Billington, Colonel Foster, he was also, the actor, very into physical fitness, training. Did a lot of exercising, weight lifting, running. I don’t think that they used those abilities that he had here in the series enough.

10.50 (Nina Barry listening to sonar)

10.50 Nina Barry

I think this is one of Dolores’s best episodes. And they gave her a real, real chance. I absolutely believed that she was looking at those monitors and getting information out of it. See its…( picture of monitor). Maybe she was looking forward to the terrible crawl she had to go through the pipes, but I thought this was the best episode for her in this series.

11.49 (Contact lost)

11.49 Contact lost
See now, I believed her intensity , the rest of us were just wondering what we were going to have for lunch, but somehow or other Dolores conveyed that menace, curiosity. Which is not an easy thing to do.

 

 

13.54 (Moving Chin below)

13.54 Moving Chin below

Now you see for the rest of the episode we were all at 45 degrees angles and they built the set like that. And I’m telling you it was murder to work on. It was like walking in those houses in a funfair, you know, that were off at an angle. You just, you can’t walk, you can’t do anything. You’re all working at an….. It was at least 45 degrees off the perpendicular. You felt drunk as soon as you walked on it. It was really very difficult filming this.

14.42 (Captain Waterman heads for Sky 1)

14.42 Waterman heads for Sky 1
Now this is something I don’t understand, this sequence coming up here. But he’s the captain of the ship and he’s exiting screen left. ( laughter) I thought there was some law of the sea that the captain was the last guy to go or something. I always had a question mark about this. See you later guys! (referring to Waterman’s exit and laughing.) I’m outta here!

 

to be continued

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