Character Biography
Maya is the daughter of the accomplished Psychon scientist Mentor (Brian Blessed); her mother had died before the events depicted in 'The Metamorph'. She had one brother, also a scientist, who sat with their father on Psychon's High Scientific Council. Psychon's science and technology was far in advance of Earth's at the time of the Alphans' encounter with this planet; the manipulation and transmutation of matter at the molecular level was commonplace.
Maya recounts her upbringing as essentially idyllic. The planet Psychon had a peaceful and happy culture. Its people were all of one race, one religion and one government; with an over-abundance of natural resources, there was no separation of classes. The world of her youth was soon lost in an environmental disaster; intense volcanic activity laid waste to the entire planet. The escalation of the surface temperature to an average 180 degrees Fahrenheit made life there impossible. The surviving Psychons were forced to retreat to underground compounds to survive.
For some unknown reason, the Psychons were unable to manipulate the environment to save their world; Maya's brother and a thousand others instead opted to build spaceships and leave Psychon. All other Psychons followed their example, and ultimately Mentor and Maya were left alone on the dying planet. Mentor remained, believing he could restore Psychon with the help of his biological computer Psyche. (Maya once told John Koenig that she also knew he would never leave her late mother.)
Psyche, capable of molecular transformation, drew its power from the mental energy of intelligent beings. Unknown to Maya, rapport with Psyche left its victims brain-damaged. Mentor intimated that he may have used not only those space travellers unfortunate enough to approach Psychon as fodder for Psyche, but some of his own people as well.
The arrival in the Psychon system of Earth's wandering Moon and its 297 human inhabitants gave Mentor his best opportunity to fulfill his dream. Mentor's attempt to capture the Alphans failed; Psyche was attacked by Commander Koenig and fatally damaged. The energy released destroyed the already unstable planet. Mentor elected to stay behind and perished in the explosion, but Koenig and company managed to escape with Maya and brought her to Moonbase Alpha to live with the Alphans.
In appearance, Maya is a slender young woman with auburn hair. A brown peak extends down from her hairline and identical brown colouring under her cheekbones resembles 'sideburns'. (In the first nine episodes, Maya has dark brown ears as well; this was abandoned without an on-screen explanation as some executives felt the makeup made her ears look 'dirty'; at this time, the 'sideburns' became less dramatic as well.) Her eyebrows are a line of wart-like 'octopods' that are a distinctive genetic characteristic of the Psychon race. (Actress Catherine Schell collaborated with Production Designer Keith Wilson in the development of the Maya makeup and has stated she would have like to have seen Maya with a dark neck and a peak extending upwards from her chin and arms that were pigmented on the tops and light on the bottoms. Discarded concepts also included a curly white wig and contacts with white star-shaped pupils that the actress could not tolerate.)
Read more about this topic: Maya (Space: 1999)
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