The Andromeda Breakthrough

The Andromeda Breakthrough
Genre	Sci-Fi Serial
Directed by	John Elliot (Eps 1,3,5) John Knight (Eps 2,4,6)
Starring	Peter Halliday Susan Hampshire John Hollis Mary Morris
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	6
Production
Producer(s)	John Elliot
Running time	6x45 Minutes
Release
Original network	BBC
Original release	28 June – 2 August 1962
Chronology
Preceded by	A for Andromeda

The Andromeda Breakthrough was a 1962 sequel to the popular BBC TV science fiction serial A for Andromeda, again written by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot.

Kidnapped by Intel representative Kaufman (John Hollis), John Fleming (Peter Halliday) along with Professor Madeleine Dawnay (Mary Morris) and Andromeda, the artificially constructed female humanoid (Susan Hampshire), are brought to Azaran, a small Middle Eastern country.

Upon arrival, the group find a duplicate of the machine Fleming designed has been built by Intel. After many dangers, Fleming finds both the reason for the original message having been sent and the means to bring the machine under human control.

Things take a deadly turn when Fleming discovers the politically unstable leader's hope to make use of his and Dawnay's skills and Andromeda's other worldly abilities...

The title star of the previous serial, Julie Christie, was unavailable due to other projects. As a result, the role was recast with Susan Hampshire succeeding Christie as Andromeda. To tie in with the recast, Andromeda is reconstructed with some minor facial differences.

The complete TV serial survives in the BBC archives and was released, alongside the surviving episode plus material from A for Andromeda and various extra features, as part of The Andromeda Anthology DVD set in 2006.

Hoyle and Elliot's novelisation was published by Harper and Row in 1964, as Andromeda Breakthrough by arrangement with the BBC, and paperback editions followed from Fawcett World Library (1965) in USA and Corgi (1966) in Britain. Judith Merril reported that although the novelisation suffered from "routine writing, stereotyped characters, and an apparent belief in the Ian Fleming school of international intrigue," the scientists-protagonists were "anything but stereotyped," and "a fair cross-section of the kinds of people who are attracted to scientific work." Merril concluded that the cliched elements "provide a reasonably amusing background to a genuinely intriguing scientific puzzle."

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Wikipedia