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to tell Australians they shouldn’t be up in space!” I was getting a bit aggressive about it, but Lee thought it was hysterical. He said, “This guy’s perfect – look at the aggression in him!” Then the Andersons said I would sound too much like a Cockney, and that really angered me, because for years Australian actors had always missed out on all the good roles to Cockney actors. I was adamant that an Australian didn’t sound anything like a Cockney, and I demonstrated that very clearly. Finally, the Andersons relented. So I went in with my broad Australian and did this character, and they loved it. By the time I got home, my agent was ringing me saying, “They want you in the series playing not Alfonso Catani, but Alan Carter.”
    A similar transformation occurred with the character of Data Analyst Sandra Benes, as actress Zienia Merton explains: ‘It was a very big series when they were starting to do it. Everybody I knew – all my actor friends – were going up for it. I said to my agent, “Look, why can’t I go up for this part?” He said, “No, no. They don’t want you”. So that was three months before they started. Finally, I was doing a television show and my agent rang me up and said, “Can you get to Pinewood tomorrow?” This was a Friday. I said, “No, because I am doing this television show. I’m in the studio.” If you’re in the studio you can’t leave, no matter what happens. So he said, “Well, forget it. It’ll be gone by Monday.” I said, “All right.” Well, Monday he rang me up and said, “Can you get to Pinewood and see Gerry and Sylvia Anderson?” Well, that Monday I went to Pinewood. Tuesday I heard that I was starting the next day, which is very quick, even in our business. And that was it for the next 15 months.
    ‘I was supposed to be Sandra Sabatini, but by that point they were so desperate that they let me do any accent I felt comfortable in. Well, I’ve got a sort of “Foreign Mark I” accent that covers a multitude of things. Eastern, western, middle Europe, anything where hopefully people won’t listen too carefully and say, “That doesn’t sound like so-and-so.” And I do still remember my first line on Moonbase Alpha, “There is a steep rise in heat levels in Disposal Area One.” And Sandra’s punch line, “This is impossible.” Boom! Next minute the Moon’s gone, right? I actually had to walk while I was saying that, which frightened the life out of me. They did ask me if I could do Italian. I could, but the thing about Italian when you hear it is that it’s a very romantic, musical kind of language. Sandra … was rather clipped. I think she was quite repressed, actually. The way I did it was kind of clipped and matter-of-fact. I thought, as an actress, if I said it with an Italian accent it would, as an ongoing character, actually hold back the dialogue. That’s what I felt. Lee Katzin said to me, “That doesn’t sound Italian.” I said, “No, no, it’s not.” He said, “What do you think you are, then?” I said, “I don’t know. What does it sound like to you?” Lee then said I couldn’t be Sandra Sabatini, because I wasn’t doing an Italian accent. So he said, “What do you want to be called?” I said, “Well, I don’t know a lot of mid-Europeans, so I’m kind of lost. So can you tell me?” He said, “Hey, there’s a great deli in Los Angeles called Benes’ – you’re Sandra Benes.” And that’s how I was born.’
    Benjamin Ouma, played by Lon Satton, was the computer expert on Moonbase Alpha. However, Satton was unpopular with some of the other performers in the cast and was replaced by Clifton Jones as David Kano from episode two until the end of the first season. Nick Tate recalled, ‘I don’t really know why Lon Satton was dropped [after the first episode] – I know it was something between him and Martin. I don’t know whether Martin said something to him, or whether Martin just felt that the mix wasn’t