A for Andromeda

I concur with author Martin Dench. I was only ten years old when A For Andromeda was screened but I remember vividly being riveted to the TV screen. A For Andromeda dealt intelligently with the discovery of extra terrestrial intelligence and its social and political consequences. The serial was totally believable and way ahead of its time. It is one of the great tragedies of television history that the BBC wiped this series. If this had not happened it is likely that A For Andromeda, and its sequel serial, The Andromeda Breakthrough, would have become world wide cult series like The Prisoner.

There are informative articles with episode synopses in the British TV fantasy magazine Timescreen of March 1987, and the American TV science fiction magazine Epi-log of March 1992.

I had thought that the BBC had wiped all of A For Andromeda, but a whole episode, The Eye of the Tiger' is now on Youtube.

Another beloved time-capsule for "fossils" such as myself who walked the earth in what must seem quasi-Jurassic times now - the early sixties. The Beatles with Stu Sutcliffe were still in Hamburg, Arnold Schwarzenegger was 12, Steven Bradley had just been convicted in Australia of the murder of 8 year-old Graeme Thorne and I was about to sit for my final school exams.

Like half of Britain I watched the opening episode of this eagerly awaited and promoted sci-fi series which promised everything and delivered perhaps 50%. Problem was, it screened not long after QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, a totally impossible act to follow!

Long before the inauguration of S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) A FOR ANDROMEDA concerned itself with the discovery of a radio emission from the Andromeda galaxy that appeared to be a blue-print for creating life itself. (Not too much was made of DNA double-helixes and the like in 1961). This pitted scientists Dr John Fleming (Halliday) and Professor Madeleine Dawnay Morris) against one another, since neither were sure of the moral, social or scientific implications of pursuing the seeming opportunity. Naturally, stupidity won out and a being was created. Does this all sound rather familiar? Yes folks, SPECIES was a total conceptual rip-off....and no-one ever noticed!

The 'being' however (Andromeda, as she was named) was one awesomely pretty and excessively young Julie Christie, in her first screen role (It catapulted her to international success in just a few years). As always happens. the authorities fear what they don't know and Miss Christie was soon very much in harms way, much like Natasha Henstridge in SPECIES thirty five years later.

This was never GREAT sci-fi as it was way too talky and a tad low on action. However, the concluding episodes WERE good and if this exists anywhere on video in an abridged form even, it would be well worth a look, if only to see why Julie Christie broke so many hearts, one of which was Stanley Kubrick's....but that is another story!

This was a very poorly made sci fi series which was of enormous historical importance because of its central ideas, which came from joint author Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous cosmologist and astrophysicist. When this series was broadcast on the BBC in 1961, twelve million viewers were glued to their screens. They did not notice the cheap sets, bad direction by Michael Hayes, corny story lines, inferior camera work, or terrible performance by Julie Christie as the character Andromeda, who was fresh out of the Central School of Speech and Drama because rumour had it that she might 'become the British Bardot'. No, none of these things deterred them. Because what they were gripped by (apart from Julie Christie being glamorous, whether she could act or not at that stage of her career being immaterial to the lustful) was Hoyle's idea that a signal might be received from intelligent beings on a planet in another galaxy, in this case, the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 31, two million light years away. In the story, this signal is detected and it turns out to contain a message which is decoded and leads to the construction of a super-computer. The message continues and, using the computer, it instructs biochemist Madeleine Dawnay (who in the novel had been a man but was changed into a woman for the series), excellently played by Mary Morris, how to make a living creature with a single eye which lives in a tank as a kind of palpitating lump of protoplasm. This clearly isn't good enough, so a secretary named Christine (played by Julie Christie in a black wig) is killed by the computer and 'replicated' into a fabricated humanoid, whom they call Andromeda, who is Julie Christie with her white-blonde hair of that period of her life. They actually mention that the computer got the hair wrong. (As far as I could determine when I briefly knew her in later life, Julie's hair was naturally a rather dark blonde. And, by the way, she is a charming and interesting person, and very far from being just a humanoid.) Christie was instructed to speak in a monotone and act like an automaton, so this partially explains her performance, of course. After all, she was supposed to be a fabricant under the control of a computer. Enter a young heroic scientist played by Peter Halliday, who does very well throughout this series and its sequel (see my separate review of it), 'The Andromeda Breakthrough'. Halliday, like Hoyle, is a rebel who hates authority and insists on thinking for himself. He has to run the computer, and Julie Christie gets him all romantically excited, when he isn't worried that she is trying to destroy humanity. Now I have to explain that, as the BBC has always contained a great number of morons on the payroll, most of this series does not exist anymore because it was 'wiped', as so much important early material was by the in-house thickos. One entire episode survives, as well as the last fifteen minutes of the final episode, and bits and pieces of the rest. The remainder of the series is 're-created' by stills and narration, so one gets a good idea of it. A great deal of work went into this, and the series is for sale in the same DVD (set of three discs) with its sequel and a documentary of 'Andromeda Memories'. It is a pity that it does not also include the astronomical documentary presented by Fred Hoyle of which brief clips appear in the 'Memories'. What this series is really all about is Fred's provocative thinking and his genius. I knew him pretty well, and everything he ever wrote or touched was original, stimulating, and magnificently brilliant. He was one of the great scientific geniuses of twentieth century Britain. And he was a very unaffected and modest man, with a gruff Yorkshire accent and a one hundred percent straight talker. You always knew where you were with Fred, until he started writing down his equations, of course, and then he tended to leave everybody behind, because he could never understand that other people weren't as quick at math as he was. He should have shared Willie Fowler's Nobel Prize, since Fowler was Fred's junior partner in working out the production of chemical elements in the interiors of stars, but Fred was blackballed by the Nobel Committee and denied the chance to share the Prize since he had publicly criticized them in the press in earlier years. So watch out, if you ever want to win the Nobel Prize, never criticize the Nobel Committee publicly, as it is in their constitution that they can never give the Prize to anyone who has attacked them. But for all those who knew Fred and know his work, he 'won it' really, because his work was awarded the Prize even if he individually was not. The preservation of what is left of this TV series is a worthy addition to Fred's legacy.

It was probably 1963 before we saw A for Andromeda "downunder" and I thought it was the most exciting show I'd ever seen. I could feed and bath 4 kids and be in time to watch each episode (my husband was at work). There had never been anything like it on Australian TV before. Don't remember much about the actors and reading the cast list was amazed to find just who was in it. I was intrigued with the actor who played the female professor. Is there a photo of her? I thought the part was played by Patricia Hayes but obviously I was wrong. Had no idea Julie Christie was Andromeda. Would love to see it again but maybe it would be disappointing. Sorry I can't add any more, after all it is over forty years since I saw it. Have only just found IMDb and am enjoying it very much. Please someone put A for Andromeda on DVD soon - my time is getting shorter!

'A For Andromeda' (AFA) is renowned as one of the great science fiction series of the 1960's. Produced by the BBC in 1961 and co-written by revered and controversial scientist Fred Hoyle, the programme made a star of Julie Christie and also featured a superb performance from Peter Halliday as the scientist with a conscience, Dr John Fleming.

AFA is basically the story of the events following the receipt of a message transmitted from the Andromeda galaxy. The message, once decoded, gives instructions for building a massive and very advanced computer. Once built, it is clear that the computer is not a gift, it has its own agenda and after giving instructions on 'building' a giant eye, it then gives out some DNA coding which leads to the creation of a beautiful girl called 'Andromeda' (Christie). What makes this even more sinister is that she is a blonde replica of a brunette lab assistant who apparently committed suicide in the computer block....

What follows is a superb drama, and the interplay between Mary Morris' Professor Dawnay and Dr Fleming is something that is impossibly rare in modern science fiction - superb characterisation, superb dialogue, and genuine unease being built through the discussion of ideas alone. Is it good, is it evil, or is it just so far beyond our understanding that we can't hope to grasp what is happening? Dr Fleming, whose scientific curiosity was instrumental in its creation, cannot come to terms with what is happening and is burdened by guilt. The other side of the coin is Dawnay, who is driven by her scientific curiosity to see what will emerge, regardless of the outcome.

The story is complicated by the world situation. It is set in a near future where a large corporation called 'Intel' (spooky!) calls the tune and Britain is a minor power. The British hope is that the computer will help to increase their position in the game of world politics.

The story has often been criticised by devotees of the 'Quatermass' school of science fiction for being too slow and wordy, but this is a sad comment on the critics rather than a valid flaw in the series. AFA is not just a 'sci-fi' story - it deals with many concepts and ideas, as well as the basic human struggle of everyday survival. We don't even know if the enemy is an enemy - it is a story of ideas and suggestion, and such it is superb. If you want to know how good it is, just compare it with two recent films that have blatantly stolen its initial premise - 'Species' and 'Contact'. I rest my case!

Sadly, like so much TV produced by the BBC in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's, it doesn't exist anymore, having been wiped. There are some extracts remaining, mainly filmed inserts and the last 15 minutes or so of the final episode. There are also rumours of an episode existing in the hands of a private collector, but this has yet to be confirmed. It is a terrible loss, for which the BBC can have no valid excuse, but for them it is just one of many.

However, the series was remade in Italy in 1971, as 'A Come Andromeda', so it is possible to see it and visualise what went on, even if you don't speak Italian. And, perhaps more importantly, the series writers Fred Hoyle and John Elliott turned out a novel that is a superb work in its own right, and is a worthy substitute for the series itself. Combine the Italian series and the book and you might at least feel you have gained a glimpse into what was a ground-breaking and superb series.

The story doesn't end here, however. What is less well known is that there was a sequel, 'The Andromeda Breakthrough'. This featured the same cast, with the exception of Julie Christie, who, for whatever reason, was replaced by Susan Hampshire. This series does exist in its entirety in the BBC's vaults, but they seem unwilling to release it, which is a shame because it is a seamless and logical progression of the original story, leading to a revealing and satisfying conclusion. There is also a Hoyle and Elliott novel of this story, which is every bit as good as AFA, so if you can't get to see the series, then the book is, again, a worthy substitute.

In summary, AFA was epoch-breaking television, the like of which has rarely been seen since, and also features one of the most under-rated and underused actors of the late 20th century - Peter Halliday, whose performance as Dr John Fleming is not only superb, but is perhaps a defining role in science fiction.