The Avengers observation

[mb2000]

I was watching an episode of The Avengers, the 60s series with Patrick McNee on BBC4 earlier. The episode was "From Venus With Love". There were a couple of things that seemed familiar about it.

First, there were several astronomers who were killed under mysterious circumstances. One of these was sat at a big observatory telescope (one of those that goes out through the ceiling), when he started feeling ill and collapsed dead after staring at the planet in his telescope (in this case, Venus). That reminded me straight away of Dr. Breck from CS's "Shadow of Fear".

Second was a sound effect they used when these people were killed. I couldn't place it at first, but I eventually realized it was the same sound used in "Attack on Cloudbase" for the Mysteron ship's weapons.

All three episodes where made within a year or so of each other as well. Weird or what!

[shaqui]

Second was a sound effect they used when these people were killed. I couldn't place it at first, but I eventually realized it was the same sound used in "Attack on Cloudbase" for the Mysteron ship's weapons.

All three episodes where made within a year or so of each other as well. Weird or what!

Not weird but economics. The sound effect for the 'Attack/Venus' is actually a gun ricochet played backwards, in much the same way the sound of the Hawk weapons from 'Space:1999' were a sub machine gun played backwards.

There was also a pulsating whining sound in the background of 'Venus', which sounded very similar to the sound inside Skydiver from 'UFO'.

A lot of these effects get created, archived, and pulled out for reuse by other companies. Apparently a number of sound FX used in latter Anderson productions originated in the film 'The First Men In The Moon', which was made in 1964. Listen to the opening minutes of the 1984 SF film 'Enemy Mine', and you'd swear (sound FX wise) it's an episode of 'Space:1999'! They've re-used the lot!

[steviep]

A lot of these effects get created, archived, and pulled out for reuse by other companies.

Not only sound effects but props and sets were shared around too. UFO props turned up in Doctor Who and Space 1999 amongst others.

I remember seeing the space uniforms from Forbidden Planet used in another film but can't remember which one.... And of course, the robot turned up in other films too.

Let's not mention Barry Gray's incidental music pieces!

[Kinggodzillak]

The Mysteron saucer laser noise can also be heard in the Fireball XL5 episodes 'Prisoner on the Lost Planet' and 'The Firefighters'.