Paul's Spaceship Pictures

With the Willie Llewellyn memorial, I get the toys - he was five when he died up there in 1913. I get the coins - it's something you might have in your pocket, if you happen to pass it and feel like you should leave something as a votive offering.

But what's up with the fake jade statue of a pregnant woman sitting cross -legged? Is someone doing some, like, sympathetic magic and they used the statue to represent Motherhood?

Last time I was there, there were a pair of glasses - which could have been intended to be represent watching over someone but could also represent you're old and forgot your glasses. But you're not just going to happen to have a fake jade statue of pregnant woman in your rucksack on a hike, are you?

Philip Madoc, the Welsh actor who played Moonbase Alpha's Russian Commander Anton Gorski in "Breakaway", he looked a bit like Korolev.

1) Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Worship", 1943, published in the Saturday Evening Post, one of his "Four Freedoms" series;

2) Rockwell's "Apollo 11 Space Team" , commisioned by Look magazine, 1969;

3) NASA Artemis publicity video.

Moonbase 3's lunar shuttle seems inspired by the Phase B LM-B spacecraft.

The Welsh commander of Moonbase 3 was played by Donald Houston. Moonbase Alpha's commander prior to the arrival of John Koenig was also played by a Welsh actor - Philip Madoc as (the presumably not Welsh) Anton Gorski.

Special effects were by Mat Irving, doing his best with a BBC budget. The lunar transport craft seem to have been based on NASA's proposed LM-B space tug.

The final episode of the six-part series saw life on Earth wiped out by a nuclear accident, leaving the Moonbase personal isolated and adrift (but metaphorically).

The many lives of the Matt Jeffries-designed Leif Ericson model kit:

The OG Leif Erikson

The UFO Mystery Ship

The Pegasus from Gene Roddenberry's proposed but never made War Of The Worlds TV series

The INSS MacArthur from the Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle novel The Mote In God's Eye, as illustrated by Rick Sternbach

I reckon (with no evidence) that Chris Foss based this ship on the Leif Erikson

Bob Larkin book cover

Original art by Frank Hampson, Sydney Jordan, Cam Kennedy, Rons Turner and Embleton, Carlos Esquerra, Steve Dillon, Dave Gibbons...