Melissa Albert

  This article is from an Out-of-Canon perspective  Melissa Albert (born 21 July, 1966 in Manchester, England) played Rebecca Tate from 1988-1991, beginning with Dreamspar and ending with Diminuendo.

Before Station Zero
Melissa was born in Manchester in 1966. Her father, Harold, was a solicitor, while her mother Eunice was a housewife. There was one older child, Jack, who was eight years Melissa's senior.

Life in the household was quiet, orderly, and routine. Albert herself was a self-contained and imaginative child; she learned to read early and could often be found sequestered alone in her room with her books. She enjoyed watching television occasionally, particularly Station Zero and similar programmes. While her first years were not idyllic, they were, at least, blissfully average. She excelled at school, though teachers remarked that she seemed "disinterested" in the idea of interacting with many of her classmates. She had a small circle of a few friends and no apparent desire to expand the group beyond a certain point.

The family moved to London in 1976, and by all accounts they adapted well to their new life. However two years later, Albert's grades showed a sudden decline and her social behaviours decreased further. Around Christmas 1978 she took an overdose of Paracetemol; while it was brushed aside as an accident at the time, she herself has admitted that it was intentional. Only her own confession to her parents saved her. She spent Christmas in hospital, though not everything was dark. Her brother Jack, wanting to help her, had written to people at Q6, hoping that some of the stars of Station Zero might send autographed pictures. The pictures were duly received, but not by post; they were delivered in person by Station Zero castmembers Mariana Graydon, Daniel Halson, and Joan Cranleigh.

Shortly after being released from the hospital, Albert began to avoid eating. At first the family assumed that this was related to still not feeling well; however, it soon became apparent that there was a "system" to her choices. She developed a severe eating disorder over the next several years.

"I was having a bad time," she would state in an interview years later. "I was trying to understand myself, why I was having certain thoughts and feelings which I thought were wrong or bad."

Eating, or rather not eating, became a punishment for "wrong" thoughts, particularly those relating to sexuality. Albert devised an elaborate system of skipping certain meals, or days worth of them, depending upon the nature of her "offense." She was hospitalised once and briefly put through a course of psychological counseling at age 15, but she lied and convinced everyone around that she had recovered.

Late in 1982, she suffered a severe collapse and was once again rushed to hospital. She remained for quite a while before being sent to an inpatient facility for counseling and treatment. She seemed to recover somewhat while there. In early 1983, while still resident at the facility, she witnessed the news coverage of Station Zero star Ruth Jones's decision to come out. She also witnessed how many then-current and past stars of the programme rallied around Jones, rather than rejecting her. This, along with help from an understanding counselor at the facility, helped Albert to come to terms with her own sexuality and thus to overcome her desire to "punish" herself.

With some difficulty, Albert had kept her education up during her hospitalisation, and she ended up finishing alongside her classmates, even managing A-levels in English literature and history. Once finished with compulsory schooling, she attended the newly-founded Kentwood Independent Drama Academy in 1985 and 1986. Just after finishing, she briefly snagged a role in the long-running historical soap opera Eustache Square. Producer Paul Kerridge, who had taken over some duties on the program, liked what he saw and invited her to audition for a small role in the upcoming season of Station Zero. She won the role of Ensign Rebecca Tate after two callbacks.

On Station Zero
Albert's first appearance was in a single brief scene opposite Ken Terrance as Commander Percy Domino in the 1988 episode Killjoy. Further appearances in the episodes Death at the Point and Legion of Mercy (a follow-up to the early episode Mission of Mercy) made Albert's character incredibly popular, and she was hastily bumped up from recurring to regular status. With this came increased attention and media invasiveness, leading to Albert's famous response when asked (as many other female Station Zero stars had been since the early 1980s) if she was gay: "So what if I am?  Would it matter?"

While Albert's abrasive nature with the media caused headaches for the producers and the network, her popularity made her an integral part of keeping the program going. She was, at the time, the regular cast member most frequently asked for interviews, and often appeared on popular children's programme Curly's Circus as well as making hospital visits to ill and injured fans.

Albert's character was made even more important to the history of Station Zero family when the early 1989 episode Sins of the Father established that she was in fact the adopted daughter of former commander David Hamilton. Albert has said that the episode, with its delicate handling of difficult family relationships, actually helped her to come to terms with the then-recent loss of her own father to a sudden heart attack, as well as the death of her brother due to AIDS sometime prior.

In late April of 1989, on her way to the studio for filming, Albert swerved her motorcycle out of the way of a car that suddenly sped through an intersection. Though she mostly avoided the other vehicle, it did tap the front of her motorcycle, sending her spinning across the street. She was seriously injured, with fractures of the right wrist, left forearm, and left leg, as well as multiple soft tissue injuries to her back. The other driver was never located, and Albert spent a month and a half in the hospital, with another several months of physical therapy required. This caused her character to be absent for a good portion of the 1990 season, though she did return for several episodes that comprised the beginning of the 1991 season.

After Station Zero
Albert found work easily after her time on the show, going on to appear in several small independent films, as well as branching out into theatre work. She also took to occasional activism, mostly relating to gay rights, AIDS and eating disorder awareness, and child abuse prevention.

Since 1987, Albert had been involved in an on-and-off relationship with fellow Station Zero alum Jessica Lawson, and the two had moved in together in 1991. By 1993 they were considering raising a family together and, after two failed attempts, Lawson became pregnant early in 1995 via in vitro fertilisation with the sperm of an unknown donor.

In March of 1995 Albert, recently returned from a Station Zero fan gathering in the United States, was stabbed outside of a London restaurant by someone masquerading as a fan. The attacker, Gregory Braithwaite, was later found to have been stalking Lawson for over a year, and had apparently been intending to attack her, but missed and struck Albert instead. The knife grazed Albert's liver, and she was hospitalised briefly, missing her first two weeks of work on the film Eligiac Allegory.

In the late 1990s, when Talking Brain Studios began their line of Station Zero audio dramas, Albert was one of the first to jump at the chance to participate. This led not only to her reprising her role as Rebecca Tate from the era in which she had originally appeared in the show, but to the character eventually becoming the eleventh acting commander of Station Zero. She would eventually play Rebecca as commander in the short 2012 webisode Deadtime.

Albert currently resides in London with Jessica Lawson and their children, Todd and Sada.