A For Andromeda - in Other Media

In Other Media

The prospect of novelising A for Andromeda arose early in the serial's production when Souvenir Press contacted the BBC in May 1961 indicating their interest in publishing a tie-in novel. John Elliot responded stating that while the concept had been Hoyle's, the characterisation, dialogue and plot structure was his. Elliot sent copies of the shooting scripts to Souvenir and was formally commissioned to write the novelisation in July 1961. The terms of the contract concerned Hoyle as they gave Souvenir first call on the sequel; he insisted that this could only be permitted if the sequel's novelisation was largely written by Elliot. Elliot delivered his manuscript on 28 September 1961. The novelisation was closer to the original 30-minute scripts and had much of the material required to pad each episode to 45 minutes removed. Promoting it as the story that would “out-Quatermass Quatermass”, the book was published by Souvenir in February 1962. The Mail on Sunday praised the book as “science fiction at its best” while Weekly Science Diary said, “It is a brightly written, really exciting tale with the added inducement of scientific accuracy”. It has since been translated into several languages. There have also been two alternative versions; the first – issued by Macmillan in 1964 – rewritten by Elliot in simpler English as a study aid for English language students and the second a children's version published in 1969.

A number of film studios, including MGM, the Associated British Picture Corporation and Hammer Films, made inquiries regarding the film rights to A for Andromeda. However, no film version was ever made.

In 2006, BBC Worldwide released a DVD boxset, The Andromeda Anthology, comprising the original A for Andromeda and its sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough. A for Andromeda was reconstructed using tele-snaps with on-screen captions to describe the plot set to a soundtrack of music from the serial. The surviving film sequences were placed in the narrative where appropriate and the surviving episode “The Face of the Tiger” was presented in its entirety. Extra features included a commentary on the surviving material by Michael Hayes, Peter Halliday and Frank Windsor; a specially made making-of documentary, Andromeda Memories; an excerpt from Points of View as well as a photo gallery, PDFs of the shooting scripts and the Radio Times articles and detailed production notes by television historian Andrew Pixley. Both the Italian and BBC remakes of A for Andromeda have also been released on DVD.

In 2007, footage of Julie Christie and Peter Halliday in the series is seen in Torchwood episode, "Random Shoes".