A for Andromeda

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.

Following instructions transmitted from the Andromeda Galaxy, John Fleming (Peter Halliday) builds a highly advanced computer that in turn creates synthetic lifeforms, including Andromeda (Julie Christie) a beautiful clone of Christine, a recently deceased scientist (also played by Christie). The computer and the clone are embraced by the government when they prove themselves capable of advancing Britain's military capabilities to the global forefront while Fleming begins to fear that the alien machine and its gynoid have ulterior motives. Sadly, most of this early BBC science fiction teleplay has been lost, leaving only stills (which encompass much of the series) and episode six of the original seven. The story, written in part by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, is intriguing, especially considering that radioed instructions from Andromeda would take a minimum of 2.5 million years to get here, suggesting that if aliens are planning on colonising Earth, they are playing a very, very long game. Julie Christie is quite good in the titular role, but Halliday is less impressive and the scenes where he is trying to 'awaken the woman' in the passionless blonde simulacrum are weak (but foreshadow Captain Kirk's numerous attempts to elicit similar emotional epiphanies in Star Trek (1966)). The initial premise and first episodes are great, but the story drifts into a routine industrial espionage yarn and the final act is a bit predictable (although perhaps less so back in 1961). Although not as good (IMO) as the BBC's previous sci-fi teleplays (the three excellent Quatermass series), 'A for Andromeda' was sufficiently popular to warrant a sequel ('The Andromeda Breakthrough' (1962)). Unfortunately the BBC had neglected to put Christie under contract and, as the star was filming her breakthrough role on 'Billy Liar' (1963), she was no longer available for low-budget sci-fi shows to be shown on the telly. The version I recently watched on-line was a well-done ~150 minute annotated compilation of producer Michael Haye's 'telesnaps', some video fragments, and the intact sixth chapter. Worth watching for genre aficionados as well as anyone interested in the history of the BBC or British sci-fi in general.

I first watched this TV series when I was nine years old, it terrified me, especially the scenes when "andromeda" gripped the bars and seemingly was electrocuted. I carried the images with me to school the next day and tried to engage anybody who had seen it to see if they felt as scared as me. Through IMDb I have been able to revisit the essence of the production (actors, director) A stunningly "realistic" production for it's time. I have rarely been genuinely affected by small or silver screen but " A for Andromeda" remains in my memory 45 years later, and I had no idea that the yet to be great Julie Christie was Andromeda. Does anybody have remotely the same memories as me?

John Carr

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!

Well, part of it is. The good news is that there is now a BBC DVD set containing what remains of "A for Andromeda" (the whole of the last episode, and stills from the others linked with text commentary plus a few scenes which were probably taken by people filming their TV sets, or possibly from copies of copies sent to TV companies abroad) and the whole of the sequel "The Andromeda Breakthrough". The bad news is that it is now extremely unlikely that we will ever see the 'lost' episodes, unless some alien race intercepted the TV transmissions from 1962...

Having been a bit too young to watch them when they were originally televised (I was only 6 at the time, and only just remembered that they existed when I found the novelisations as a teenager) but having read and reread the books many times, I was thrilled to find the DVD set. I just wish that more of the first series had survived with Julie Christie (don't get me wrong, I've completely fallen in love with Susan Hampshire's Andromeda, but I wish I had more of Julie Christie's for comparison as well).

Dr. Fred Hoyle has a special place for me, he was the author who first got me interested in computers (through his book "The Black Cloud" which contains a description of programming in those days, as well as AforA). Many of his themes were very advanced for the time and still relevant. Some of his scientific ideas are currently discredited (for instance he supported the "steady state" hypothesis, that the universe has always existed, instead of the "Big Bang") but both his fiction and nonfiction was among the best at the time. Unlike many modern SF authors his romance was low-key and suggested rather than explicit, and his plots are thoughtful rather than full of action, but I find that a nice change from modern Hollywood and TV productions, and many modern SF writers.