Actress known for Space: 1999

Born: December 11, 1945

Died: September 14, 2018

ZIENIA Merton, who has died aged 72, was an English-Burmese actress who enjoyed a career in television which began in the early 1960s and continued until the 2010s. She was particularly known for her guest roles in Doctor Who, Jason King and the more recent Who spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, and also had small parts in a number of British classic series including the Benny Hill Show, Grange Hill, Casualty, EastEnders, Coronation Street, The Bill and Wire in the Blood.

Yet her most enduring role was that of data analyst Sandra Benes in the UK science fiction series Space: 1999, which was the final series co-produced by the Thunderbirds team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson prior to their separation, and which was at the time the most expensive series produced for British television. Aired over two series from 1975 to 1977, the show was a rough transatlantic analogue of Star Trek, and told the story of Moonbase Alpha – a human colony set adrift in space alongside the moon itself, when a store of nuclear waste explodes and blasts the satellite out of orbit.

Starring the married American actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Space: 1999 saw the Moonbase’s crew encounter strange alien cultures on their journey through space. Originally intended as an Italian character named Sandra Sabatini (as one of the co-producing companies was Italian), Benes was redeveloped when Merton was cast, with her surname being taken from one of the producers’ favourite Los Angeles delicatessens.

A regular throughout the entire first series, Merton’s Benes was one of the few characters who survived Lew Grade’s cancellation and revival of the show between its two series, although her return was piecemeal; she would play a major role for a couple of episodes, and then not appear for a few weeks. Correctly realising the show was to be cancelled after its second series, Merton quit before it finished to take a film role. Yet – with 37 episodes to her credit – only Landau, Bain and Nick Tate appeared in the show more.

Born in Burma in 1945 to a Burmese mother and a French-English father, Zienia Merton was raised in Singapore, Borneo, Portugal and finally England from the age of 11. She went to the Arts Educational School in Tring, Hertfordshire – eventually graduating to the London branch – and studied dance and drama, making her first professional appearance in the Royal Festival Ballet’s Nutcracker Suite aged 12. Four years later her first screen role came as an alien in the Saturday morning sci-fi serial Masters of Venus.

Although often cast in early roles which made generic use of her looks (as Ping-Cho in the historical 1964 Doctor Who series Marco Polo; as a high priestess in the Beatles’ 1965 film Help!; as the wife of Benny Hill’s racially questionable character ‘Chow Mein’ in 1972), Merton also took on some very notable projects. She was in the Dave Clarke 5 film Catch Us If You Can (1965; John Boorman’s directorial debut), played opposite Gregory Peck in The Chairman (1969), appeared in Lewis Gilbert’s The Adventurers (1970) and took a key role in the Dennis Potter series Casanova (1971). Her last screen appearance was in the CBBC show Wizards vs Aliens in 2013.

DAVID POLLOCK

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