- This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 14 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Ever wonder how you put together a prequel?
What’s even more interesting is what if it’s a prequel to a prequel?
Resurrection had two scenes that took place on Progron — Balor and his people invading a city, and then Balor basically standing trial. A third flashback scene took place on Balor’s asteroid where the Alphans found him, so I’m not counting that one.
Those two scenes became the foundation for Eternity Unleashed.
Then, we had Balor’s paintings — who painted them? Well, that was something we figured people would want answered.
Then we come up to Balor’s motivations — we knew he was a dark character, with pretty sinister motivations, so where does immortality ultimately come from dark motivations? Naturally, if you’re “creating” immortality for a selfish reason, and in this case, it was all about Balor’s affection for someone who was ill.
We had a character called Talian from the flashback scenes, who was ultimately Watson to Balor’s Holmes — coming up with a friendship for Balor (since he didn’t seem the type of guy who’d have too many friends) starts to create some character conflicts, and introducing a sister for Talian made it all complete.
Balor’s relationship with women is fairly complex. Even though his primary adversary in “End of Eternity” was Koenig, Helena Russell is really his nemesis in Resurrection. And Helena and Talian’s sister Milsa have some interesting traits in common — I’ll let somebody else analyze that.
From an imagery perspective, though, it’s interesting to note that there are three characters in Eternity Unbound who ultimately “go up in flames” — Balor’s mother, Milsa, and Balor himself. Only Milsa rises from the ashes (although you could argue that Parese, Balor’s mother, becomes even more powerful after her ending). Believe it or not, there was no intent there — fire as an elemental force just seemed to work in the three scenes in which it was depicted — that’s one of those things as an author that you only notice after the fact.
If I had to describe Balor, after all of my dealings with him, I’d say his mother basically put his mind into a perpetual loop of self-hatred sent outward. Every good feeling in him warps into something bad. He is totally blind to the effect of his actions on anyone, but he can project his own evil onto others (he essentially turns Koenig into a copy of himself in Resurrection, while Balor himself attempts to model Koenig’s behavior, at least on the surface, and only for a very brief period of time).
Anyway, here’s my little contribution to the forum. Anybody want to ask anything? Go for it.
I really enjoyed this book! First off, it was the first of the new SPACE:1999 publications from Powys that I have read and, besides the two novels published through Fanderson of which I’ve only read one (“Earthfall”), it was a real pleasure to have a, more or less, all new adventure based on the TV series. It actually managed to combine two of my favorite subjects/genres: horror & sci-fi. If this were made into a film, it would likely get an “R” rating…maybe even “NC-17”, it was THAT bloody! There are probably some fans of SPACE:1999 who won’t appreciate globs of gore mixed in with the already established premise but, I don’t mind at all. I really enjoy it when familiar characters are thust into storylines that would probably NEVER see the light of a filmed production. To this day, my favorite “Star Trek” novel is “Planet Of Judgement” by Joe Haldeman (1978) because, not only did it tell the “backstories” of the main characters, including McCoys’ divorce, it placed the characters in VERY un-TV like scenarios. It also lead me to read other works by the author. If you don’t mind a bit of blood smeared all over MoonBase Alpha, read this book!
It’s interesting to note how much genuine horror there is in the original series (quite a lot!) but many fans don’t like the horror aspects, while others do. I know just looking at the photographs in the old novelizations, you’d think this was a straight out horror series. Cabot Rowland’s final appearance is as bad as most stuff in Resurrection! Granted, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. I think Space:1999 has a lot of Professor Quatermass lurking around in its subconscious, and the Quatermass stories certainly didn’t shy away from horror.
Balor, however, is definitely a horror character, not a science fiction character — Balor’s intent is to create fear, the very essence of horror. But I think you could make an argument that we pushed the gore in Resurrection a little to see what we could get away with, and when it was approved, that set the bar for us. Old Hollywood trick — always leave the censors something to trim by going just a little overboard.
I think Balor was an inspiration to John Carpenter when he created Michael Myers for the original Halloween. Let alone Thomas Harris(?)when he created Hannibal Lector for the Hannibal novels.
When you get right down to it, Balor has the same qualities as those two characters. Even though Balor came first.
🙂
Just started reading Eternity Unbound. i think it’s quite a brillant idea to tell the life story of a major villian in the Space:1999 universe Balor. It’s a bold experiment. I hope the sale figures for this book were good enough to warrant doing another book of this type. Hint Mr. Latham you have written so many Space:1999 books where do you get the time to get the books out so fast while stiill keeping the fantastic quality u?. 🙂
I suggested that Mr. Latham write a prequel to “Space:1999” combining the format with “UFO”. In other words, something like Commissioner Dixon (“Dragons’ Domain”) gets canned by Ed Straker who then appoints Simmonds who appoints Koenig. The “UFO” aliens could possibly be from the “alternate universe” Mr. Latham details in his “Alpha” & “Omega” novels, and maybe they had a role in blasting the Moon out of orbit as a means of weakening the SHADO defenses. Anyone have any thoughts on this idea?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.