The Day After Tomorrow (TV special) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Day After Tomorrow
Opening titles, featuring "Into Infinity" subtitle
Written by	Johnny Byrne
Directed by	Charles Crichton
Starring	Brian Blessed Joanna Dunham Nick Tate Katharine Levy Don Fellows
Narrated by	Ed Bishop
Composer(s)	Derek Wadsworth Steve Coe
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	Gerry Anderson
Cinematography	Frank Watts
Editor(s)	David Lane
Running time	47 minutes
Production company(s)	Gerry Anderson Productions
Distributor	NBC
Release
Original network	NBC (United States) BBC1 (UK)
Original release	9 December 1975 (1975-12-09) (US) 11 December 1976 (1976-12-11) (UK)

The Day After Tomorrow (also known as Into Infinity in the United Kingdom) is a 1975 British science-fiction television special produced by Gerry Anderson between the two series of Space: 1999. Written by Johnny Byrne and directed by Charles Crichton, it stars Brian Blessed, Joanna Dunham, Nick Tate, Katharine Levy and Martin Lev, with narration by Ed Bishop. Set in a future where environmental damage on Earth threatens the survival of humanity, The Day After Tomorrow follows the interstellar mission of Altares, a science vessel that uses photon energy to travel at the speed of light. After leaving the Solar System and reaching Alpha Centauri, their primary destination, the crew of Altares push deeper into space; there, they encounter phenomena including a meteor shower, a red giant and, finally, a black hole, which pulls the ship into another universe.

Originally commissioned to produce a child-friendly introduction to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, Anderson and Byrne conceived The Day After Tomorrow as a pilot for a TV series, with the episode title "Into Infinity". Anderson was ultimately unable to raise funding for additional episodes, making the pilot a standalone special. With a cast and crew that included veterans of earlier Anderson productions, The Day After Tomorrow was filmed between July and September 1975; this comprised 10 days' principal photography and six weeks' special effects shooting. The visual style of Space: 1999 provided inspiration to both effects artist Martin Bower, who built the scale models, and production designer Reg Hill, who recycled sets from Space: 1999 to create the Altares interiors. The theme music was composed by newcomer Derek Wadsworth.

The Day After Tomorrow was first broadcast in the United States in December 1975 as the third episode of NBC's after-school series Special Treat. In the UK, it was transmitted on BBC1 as a special, first in December 1976 and again in December 1977; a re-edited version aired on BBC Four in November 2014. Critical responses to The Day After Tomorrow have been mixed: while its model effects and music have been praised, it has divided opinion with its "psychedelic" images, which have been compared to the visual style of film director Stanley Kubrick. In addition, the story has been criticised for lacking suspense due to the fact that it was devised primarily to educate, rather than entertain. A novelisation by Douglas R. Mason was cancelled after the planned TV series failed to appear; a new novelisation by Gregory L. Norris was published in 2017.

Plot

In the future, human survival is threatened by rising pollution, environmental damage and depletion of the Earth's natural resources. A narrator (Ed Bishop) introduces the science vessel Altares as the first spacecraft to "harness the limitless power of the photon". This allows it to move at the speed of light, potentially causing "effects predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity – effects that could shrink the very fabric of space, distort time, and perhaps alter the structure of the universe as we understand it."

Altares and a crew of five are due to depart Space Station Delta for Alpha Centauri to seek out Earth-like planets for colonisation. As astronauts travelling at light speed age more slowly than their families on Earth, the crew is made up of two whole "family units": Captain Harry Masters and his daughter Jane, and Doctors Tom and Anna Bowen and their son David. Docking at Delta in a United Nations shuttle, Tom, Anna and David board Altares and Jane leaves her dog Spring in the care of station commander Jim Forbes prior to departure. Captain Masters engages Altares' photon drive and the ship begins its 4.3-light-year journey to Alpha Centauri. As Altares leaves the Solar System, Jane and David observe how Pluto turns blue, then red, due to the shortening and lengthening of light waves caused by the Doppler effect.

Arriving at Alpha Centauri, the crew launch a series of satellites to transmit data back to Earth. Having completed their primary objective, they agree to push deeper into space. When Altares encounters a star cluster, Anna tells Jane of Einstein's discoveries in special relativity and unified field theory. Shortly after, the ship is hit by a meteor shower that damages key systems and causes the photon drive to re-activate, hurling the ship through space at incredible speed and knocking the travellers unconscious. A fail-safe halts the ship within the gravitational field of a red giant on the brink of supernova. Captain Masters dons a heat suit and enters the reactor core in a dangerous bid to repair the photon drive by hand. He succeeds, and Anna and Jane pilot the ship away from the star before it explodes.

After detecting a signal from Delta, the travellers are able to calculate their position and set a course for Earth. However, disaster strikes when Altares is caught in the pull of a black hole. Although the ship cannot reach the faster-than-light speeds needed to break free, Anna believes that the hole may lead to another universe and urges her companions not to give up hope. Crossing the event horizon, the travellers experience mind-bending space-time distortions. They emerge on the other side of the hole safe and well, albeit unable to return home. As Altares approaches an unknown planet, the narrator concludes: "One thing is sure – this is not the final word. Not the end, but the beginning. A new universe, a new hope? Only time will tell."

Production

After filming on the first series of Space: 1999 came to an end in the spring of 1975, producer Gerry Anderson was contacted by NBC executive George Heinemann with an idea for an educational science-fiction TV series. This would comprise seven one-hour episodes designed to teach children science in the form of an action-adventure. NBC intended to promote the series by distributing information leaflets to schools. To launch the series, Heinemann commissioned Anderson to produce an episode about Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, which holds that the speed of light cannot be exceeded and remains constant whether an object is still or moving.

By 1975, Anderson's production company, Group Three, had received no assurance from distributor ITC Entertainment that it would order a second series of Space: 1999. Faced with the prospect of cancellation, Anderson and Space: 1999 story editor Johnny Byrne conceived Heinemann's episode, which they had named "Into Infinity", as a pilot for a new series, provisionally titled The Day After Tomorrow. Anderson was ultimately unable to secure the funding needed to make further episodes, leaving "Into Infinity" – now more commonly known by the series title – as a one-off special.

Writing

Anderson prepared for the production by researching Einstein's work; he later said that he had not understood any of the theories and suggested that some of Einstein's ideas are essentially impossible to demonstrate on TV. Byrne wrote the script, which instructed that the equation E = mc² – Einstein's formula relating mass to energy – should appear on screen at intervals. According to Anderson, the writing process was "extremely difficult" as it was a challenge to "get over in a few words the problems of time changes that affect long-distance travel. You also have to do it in a language that young people can comprehend."

Byrne – who, like Anderson, did not have a scientific background – found the central concept hard to grasp: "Once I got the go-ahead I suddenly realised I knew very little about the theory of relativity ... I went out and read Relativity for the Layman, and realised I was in deep trouble because there were so many aspects of it." Struggling with the plot, Anderson and Byrne engaged Professor John G. Taylor of the University of London, an expert on black holes, as a scientific adviser. However, according to Byrne, "there wasn't an awful lot [Taylor] could do. In the end the story simplified itself down by necessity. I gave an illustration of the Doppler shift, and gave an idea of how planets destroy themselves, and how they can become a black hole. Then we tried to duplicate the effect of sending people into the black hole."

Despite the focus on relativity, the special also discusses time dilation: an effect whereby time decelerates at a rate proportional to an object's acceleration. For the crew of Altares, which travels at light speed, the journey to Alpha Centauri takes only a few years; during this time, whole decades pass on Earth. Recognising that the child characters Jane and David would serve to represent the young audience's curiosity and ask questions on its behalf, Heinemann wanted them to be "just like real children" rather than "[coming] across like kids do on Saturday morning programmes." Byrne wrote the dialogue so that the characters give only partial explanations of the phenomena that they encounter, the aim being to encourage the audience to study the topics in their own time and develop their research skills.

Casting

Most of the cast had appeared in earlier Anderson productions. Nick Tate had played regular character Alan Carter in Space: 1999, while Brian Blessed and Joanna Dunham had both appeared as guest characters on the same series – Blessed in the episode "Death's Other Dominion", Dunham in "Missing Link". The credits billed Blessed first, Dunham second and Tate third. Don Fellows had played an uncredited role in Space: 1999's first episode, "Breakaway".

Ed Bishop had voiced Captain Blue in the puppet series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons before taking on the role of Ed Straker in Anderson's first live-action series, UFO. Neither Katharine Levy nor Martin Lev had substantial acting experience, though the filming at Pinewood Studios coincided with that of Bugsy Malone, in which Lev played the role of Dandy Dan. The Masters' dog, Spring, was played by Byrne's pet, called Bones.

Filming

Inspired by designs used in Space: 1999, special effects artist Martin Bower built a six-foot-long (1.8 m) scale model of Altares (shown here above the model of Space Station Delta). His work has been praised.

Filming began in July 1975 and ended that September. The production was budgeted at £105,000 (about £635,000 in 2021). Principal photography was conducted at Pinewood Studios and completed in ten days, while the special effects shooting, which took place at Bray Studios, ran for six weeks. The special was directed by Charles Crichton, who had directed eight episodes of Space: 1999. Other members of the crew – including effects director Brian Johnson, editor David Lane and cinematographer Frank Watts – had also worked on the series. As Anderson's regular composer Barry Gray had other commitments, newcomer Derek Wadsworth was contracted to produce the theme and incidental music (the latter in collaboration with Steve Coe). Wadsworth would later be appointed composer for the second series of Space: 1999, replacing Gray.

In the absence of Bob Bell and Keith Wilson, who were working on The New Avengers and Star Maidens, Anderson's business partner Reg Hill assumed the role of production designer. The Altares interiors were the first sets that Hill had designed for Anderson since the production of Fireball XL5 more than a decade earlier. They were built from parts of the Ultra Probe set originally made for the Space: 1999 episode "Dragon's Domain", along with design elements from other episodes. Other sets and props were also recycled from the earlier series.

The scale models of Altares were designed and built by uncredited model-maker Martin Bower, who took inspiration from the various spaceships that had appeared in Space: 1999 and was initially under the impression that his work was to appear in that series. A three-foot-long (0.91 m) model was used for long shots; close-ups used a larger, six-foot (1.8 m) version, which was fitted with a powerful light for the photon drive as well as freon gas-powered jets to simulate exhaust. The 10-foot-wide (3.0 m) Space Station Delta model was adapted from the SS Daria model that had appeared in "Mission of the Darians". Some of props that were newly made for the special would re-appear in Space: 1999's second series.

Similar to the title sequences of Anderson's earlier productions, The Day After Tomorrow begins with a fast-paced montage of action shots from later in the episode, giving a preview of the story to follow.

Broadcast

The Day After Tomorrow was first broadcast in the United States on 9 December 1975 as the third episode of the NBC anthology series Special Treat. In the UK, it was first shown on 11 December 1976 on BBC1. In the original cut, the opening scenes showed two titles: the series title, The Day After Tomorrow, superimposed on a starfield, followed by the episode title, "Into Infinity", on a model shot of the lift transferring the Masters and Bowen families from Space Station Delta to Altares. As it would be transmitting the programme as a special, rather than an episode of a series, the BBC edited the title sequence to remove the series title, believing that the appearance of two titles would confuse the audience. (In any case, deleting the episode title would have been more difficult as the lift shot was dynamic and had multiple elements.) Consequently, the special was listed in Radio Times and other press as Into Infinity.

The special was repeated on BBC1 on 6 December 1977. In 1997, the BBC deleted the master tape from its archives but retained an edited copy for future repeats. The same year, clips from The Day After Tomorrow and the Space: 1999 episode "Black Sun" were featured in "Black Holes", an instalment of the Channel 4 documentary series Equinox. On 9 November 2014, the special was repeated on BBC Four under the title The Day after Tomorrow: Into Infinity. It was introduced by Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester, who stated that he had been a fan of the special since he was a child and praised its scientific accuracy.

Other media

Douglas R. Mason, an author of several Space: 1999 novels, wrote a novelisation of the special for Futurama Publications. As The Day After Tomorrow was conceived as a pilot, Futurama intended Mason's book to be the first in a series. However, when it became apparent that no further episodes would be made, Futurama cancelled the novelisation, which to date remains unpublished. In 2017, a new novelisation by Gregory L. Norris was published by Anderson Entertainment.

The special has been rated U by the British Board of Film Classification since 1997. In 2002, a DVD of The Day After Tomorrow and Star Laws, Anderson's 1986 pilot for a series that would later be made as Space Precinct, was released by Fanderson as part of its members-only merchandise range. In 2015, the special was re-issued on DVD as part of the compilation release "The Lost Worlds of Gerry Anderson" by Network Distributing.