Soon after production concluded on Space:1999‘s second season, Gerry Anderson and Tony Barwick collaborated on a screenplay for a sci-fi fantasy feature film entitled Five Star Five. Pitched as The Magnificent Seven in space (with more than a dash of Star Wars thrown in) the film was due to enter production in 1979, but sadly the project fell through and the script was forgotten…until now!
Writer Richard James has adapted the original Five Star Five script into a novelisation! 5 Star 5 – John Lovell and the Zargon Threat follows the story of the original script, and brings to life the characters and settings that were devised by Anderson and Barwick back in the 1970s. You’ll meet a cast of Anderson heroes and their machines that never made it to screen, and experience a story created in the long gap between Space:1999 and Terrahawks.
Richard (whom you may also recognise as the co-host of the Gerry Anderson Podcast and the man behind the mask of Space Precinct‘s Officer Orrin) explains; “I had previously read an excerpt via the Gerry Anderson website and was immediately struck by the pace and excitement of the opening scenes. It was something I was determined to retain in the novelisation. I regarded Five Star Five as something of an historical record, and I felt duty bound to preserve it as best I could. As I read through the script, I was surprised to see it full of humour as well as the expected thrills; the result, no doubt, of the involvement of regular Anderson collaborator, Tony Barwick. The action sequences seemed to lift off the page and it’s easy to imagine effects supremo Derek Meddings turning his hand to the explosive finale. Who knows how Five Star Five would have been remembered had it been released as a film? As a classic or as a mild curiosity from the late 1970s? Well, with this novelisation, you finally get to make up your own mind.”
You can now pre-order 5 Star 5 in hardback book form, or on CD in an audiobook reading by Terrahawks and New Captain Scarlet voice artist Robbie Stevens, with delivery expected June 2021.
5 Star 5 hardback book
5 Star 5 audiobook
THE TIME: THE FUTURE THE PLACE: THE UNIVERSE
The peaceful planet of Kestra is under threat. The evil Zargon forces are preparing to launch a devastating attack from an asteroid fortress. With the whole Kestran system in the Zargons’ sights, Colonel Zana looks to one man to save them.
Except one man isn’t enough.
Gathering a crack team around him including a talking chimpanzee, a marauding robot and a mystic monk, John Lovell must infiltrate the enemy base and save Kestra from the Zargons!
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