Origins Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts had been working together, as script editor and producer respectively, on
Doctor Who since 1970. Dicks had begun his television writing career on
The Avengers and
Crossroads before joining
Doctor Who as its script editor in 1968. Former actor Barry Letts had changed career into television direction in 1967 and had worked on series such as
Z-Cars and
The Newcomers before being asked to take over as producer of
Doctor Who in 1970, where he first met Dicks. In 1972, looking to move on from
Doctor Who, the pair started considering a number of ideas for other shows they could collaborate on. Their first idea arose from the successful collaboration they had with the
Royal Navy on the
Doctor Who serial
The Sea Devils which led to them considering pitching a serial set on a
frigate only to find they were too late – the BBC had just commissioned a series,
Warship, with that very premise. In late 1972, they developed the concept of
Moonbase 3, as an anthology series set on a lunar colony that would "provide intelligent, realistic drama rather than Science Fantasy", and submitted a pilot script, titled "Departure and Arrival", to
Shaun Sutton, the Head of Drama at the BBC. The series was formally commissioned in December 1972 and would be made, as a co-production between the BBC and 20th Century Fox and the ABC network in America, during the break in production between Seasons 10 and 11 of
Doctor Who. The final two scripts, "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Gentle Rain" (later renamed "Castor and Pollux" and "Achilles Heel" respectively), were commissioned from
John Lucarotti, a prolific writer whose credits included
The Avengers,
Doctor Who and
The Troubleshooters. Lastly, Letts and Dicks retrospectively commissioned themselves in late May 1973 for their pilot script "Departure and Arrival". Burke decided that 2003 would be a realistic date for bases to have been established on the Moon, telling the
Radio Times that "Men won't go back to the Moon until the 1990s. Neither the Russians nor the Americans have any plans at present and no-one else can afford it. [...] As for the base itself – it should look exactly as it would if they built one tomorrow. [...] They'd be small, supporting 30 or 40 men and running on a shoestring. [...] It'll be like life on a nuclear submarine". Cast as David Caulder was Donald Houston, an experienced character actor, who had appeared in
633 Squadron and
The Longest Day, and was known for playing authority figures. Ralph Bates, who was cast as Michel Lebrun, had first made a name for himself playing the Emperor
Caligula in the
Granada Television series
The Caesars but was best known as a regular actor in the
Hammer horror stable. Fiona Gaunt, playing Helen Smith, had been in a television adaptation of
War and Peace while Barry Lowe, playing Tom Hill, had been a regular on the police drama
Z-Cars. Two directors were assigned to the series –
Ken Hannam and
Christopher Barry. Hannam had previously directed such series as
Colditz and
Paul Temple while Barry had worked extensively on
Doctor Who, having directed some 31 episodes at the time, including the stories
The Dæmons and
The Mutants for Letts and Dicks, as well as episodes of
Out of the Unknown,
Paul Temple and
The Onedin Line. Hannam and Barry alternated directing the episodes between them with filming on
Moonbase 3 beginning on 24 April 1973 at the BBC film studios in
Ealing. The Ealing filming mainly centred around the scenes set on the lunar surface which proved a difficult experience for the actors. Star Donald Houston told the
Radio Times that the spacesuits got "hot and claustrophobic. In the end they had to have oxygen standing by. [...] the dust rose in clouds and the cameramen all wore surgical masks. The actors just choked". Filming continued at Ealing until 30 May 1973 Simpson composed the main title theme that accompanied the opening and closing credits as well as approximately 60 minutes of incidental music.
Archive status As was normal procedure at the BBC at the time, the original
PAL master tapes of the series were wiped some time after broadcast and, for many years,
Moonbase 3 was believed to be lost forever. In 1993,
NTSC copies of all six episodes were found in co-producer Fox's archives and returned to the BBC. The series was subsequently released on
VHS videotape over three volumes in 1994 by BBC Video and on
DVD in 2002 by Second Sight. ==Legacy==