On September 13, 1999, in an alternate universe where Earth had already made a good start on colonizing the Moon by the end of the last century, a gigantic lunar nuclear waste dump exploded, hurling the Moon out of orbit. In the months that followed the runaway satellite somehow traversed enough space to have numerous encounters with other planets and alien species. Evidently astronomical distances and the laws of physics aren't quite the same in that alternate universe as they are here.

In the mid-1970s in our own universe Gary and Sylvia Anderson, the team behind "Thunderbirds" and other British science fiction TV series, got with Lew Grade at ITV to make the most lavishly produced sci-fi series yet. "Space: 1999" aired in syndication in the U.S. after a proposed network deal fell through. It did well enough in syndication to justify a second season. This season was presided over by Fred Freiberger, who worked the same magic on this series that he did on the final seasons of "Star Trek" TOS and "The Six Million Dollar Man."

Ever since then the series has divided sci-fi fans. Some, citing the show's ludicrous premise, slipshod scripts, and not always likeable characters, consider it an embarrassment to the genre. Others, though perhaps conceding some shortcomings in these areas, feel that its fantastic special effects and production values still made it great viewing. One can gain an idea of how polarizing the subject is from a late 1980s poll that asked fans to rate the 10 best and 10 worst sci-fi TV series made up to that point. "Space: 1999" made BOTH lists.

Like it or hate it, "Space: 1999" has historical significance as one of only a tiny handful of pre-"Star Wars" efforts to create a truly far-out space series for TV. I saw it in its initial syndicated run in the 1970s. Though the space ships and such definitely got my attention, I was so young then that it all went over my head, and I have few childhood memories of it. Some years later I caught more of the series in re-runs on AETN, Arkansas' typically Anglophile public television station. Now I have some of the first season on DVD. What's it like?

Collision Course
Moonbase Alpha's inhabitants attempt to avoid a collision with a planet. But should they?

I don't have the pilot episode in which the Moon blows up, so we'll start in media res with this episode. Actually the episode itself starts out in media res, with the Alpha crew setting nuclear charges to blow up an asteroid that's in their way. Commander Koenig and ace pilot Alan Carter have a close call, but the mission is a success. And now our heroes can see that they are on a collision course with a full-sized planet! It's far too big to blow up, but they still have a lot of nukes left (Just how much nuclear material DID they have on the Moon before September 13, anyway?) and prepare to place some more charges to set up a shock wave that will keep the Moon and the planet from colliding (A shock wave? In space? Where there's no medium to propagate it? Once again, the laws of physics in this alternate universe must be awfully different from what we know!).

That's when things get weird. Carter starts having visions of a mysterious veiled woman. Koenig comes back from an encounter with a huge alien ship with similar visions. She tells them that her people have been awaiting the Moon's arrival for millions of years, and that the two worlds must be allowed to collide in order to produce a mutation that will help her people ascend to a higher plane of existence, and set the Alphans on the road to a glorious destiny. How this is all supposed to work is not explained.

But Koenig and Carter both come away convinced that they must not let the mission to prevent the collision succeed. The others understandably think that they've gone nuts. The guys break out of sick bay and storm the bridge of Moonbase Alphe (In their pajamas! ) to sabotage the operation. And then...something happens. And the Moon proceeds on its way without being wiped out, with neither our heroes nor the audience being any the wiser as to what the whole thing was about.

I've got to say, this episode is a prime example of what the show's critics are talking about when they speak of confusing, badly-written scripts. It just plain doesn't make any sense! But it's a good-looking episode. The sets, and those Eagle spacecraft miniatures, really are impressive. They're far better than anything TOS had to offer, and many effects shots hold up quite well even now. I suppose one could say that this episode is kind of beautiful but dumb....

Did you see any of the Anderson's UFO series? In it, Earth was being visited (possibly a precursor to invasion)
by aliens from a dying world, who were harvesting some human organs for their own survival. Earth was defended
by a secret world organization called SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation).

Space 1999 was originally slated to be a series called U.F.O 1999.

It's a great show and I love it, and yet every criticism I've heard levelled at it is entirely justified. It somehow manages to succeed and fail simultaneously - there are some great performances (Brian Blessed is memorable in several episodes), and as you said the special effects, for that era, are impressive.

It's less confusing than some of the Anderson's other efforts (like UFO), and more focused on action and drama than on plot, but for all its silliness it's got something going for it. The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts, even when the parts are nonsensical. It somehow manages to be entertaining and endearing despite sometimes being completely baffling, and I think that's why I forgive it all of its many flaws.

IIRC the moon base in UFO was what eventually became Moonbase Alpha.

I've read a little bit about the UFO series. All I've ever seen of it is a few stills. IIRC I've seen one still that did indeed look like an early version of a Moonbase Alpha set.

Death's Other Dominion
The Alpha crew find lost astronauts from Earth living on a frozen planet called Ultima Thule.

In the world of "Space: 1999" the first expedition beyond the Solar System took place way back in 1986, aboard the unfortunately-named ship Uranus. Somehow the crew went far farther than intended. They also seem to have slipped backwards in time. Either that, or the runaway Moon has moved forward in time. At any rate, the Ultima Thule colonists say that they've lived there for over 800 years. In that time they've become immortal, adapted to Ultima Thule's harsh environment, and gotten to work refurbishing their ship for eventual further interstellar adventures. It's hard to see how a handful of people reduced almost to the Stone Age, with only a few bits of salvaged gear, can rebuild a spacecraft that must have taken hundreds of engineers and technicians to build in the first place. One suspects it may be centuries yet before they get a chance to see how it runs....

The Alphans are starting to come across as awfully impressionable and trusting sorts. Last episode Koenig and Carter were ready to risk absolutely everything on the say-so of an alien they'd hardly met. Here almost everybody at Alpha seems ready to leap at the chance to abandon Alpha to live forever in a barren wasteland (Surely life at Moonbase Alpha isn't THAT bad!). Except for Koenig--a brief conversation with a crazed Ultima Thule dissident has him opposing the idea at all costs. Shouldn't highly educated astronauts and scientists have enough critical-thinking skills to know not to immediately believe everything they hear? Maybe they're vulnerable to subtle mind control?

Pilot Alan Carter performs an impressive feat of survival in this episode. First, he single-handedly finds his way to safety in an extreme blizzard that his companions all survive only by being rescued by the Ultima Thulians. Then, after only a brief rest, he manages to pull off a very difficult Eagle takeoff to return to Alpha. Too bad a guy this hardy and resourceful proves as gullible as everybody else later in the episode.

It's another case of fine production values partly redeeming a confusing script. The studio-created blizzard on Ultima Thule's surface, and the sets for the underground colony, are little short of spectacular. The episode also benefits from two fine guest performances by Brian Blessed, as Dr. Rowland, and John Shrapnel, as the mad Jack Tanner. Shrapnel's compelling performance as an intelligent lunatic who speaks in grandiloquent, vaguely Shakespearean cadences actually upstages Brian Blessed. Surely not too many actors can claim to have done that! When I first saw the Thulians Jack's speech, and their home-made outfits, made me wonder for a moment whether they were supposed to be Elizabethan adventurers who had made it into outer space. The likes of Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh would probably have tried it if they'd ever had the chance!

I won't spoil this one's ending. Many sci-fi fans will probably see it coming. It really took me by surprise, in large part because of the gruesome imagery. It's startling to see something like that in a 1970s TV show.

Space: 1999 had the goofiest premise ever. I watched season 1, but never finished season 2. A space series has to be pretty bad for young Tom not to watch it.

It wasn't that bad. I love it, as I said, and this theme music was what grabbed my attention the very first time I saw the show...



This video also contains the closing title music, and it's excellent.

Of course, as with The Thunderbirds, the Andersons' TV shows always had great theme music.



That video contains a glimpse of the Moonbase.

Yes, that premise was just ridiculous. It didn't bother me when I first saw it, because I was only seven or eight when the series first aired where I lived. As I got older and more educated it started to dawn on me....

Even the show's biggest fans all seem to agree that Season 2 was awful. I saw some of Season 2 on the AETN broadcasts years ago, and haven't tried it since.

Full Circle
When an exploration team loses contact with Alpha, their Eagle is flown back by remote control--with only a recently-deceased caveman on board.

Naturally Koenig sends down more away teams. They come into conflict with the cavemen. How did the cavemen get there? We eventually find out, though as usual the explanation raises more questions than it answers. By the 1970s students of prehistory were developing a more sophisticated understanding of early humans. Traces of this showed up in such contemporary kids' series as "Korg," "Valley of the Dinosaurs," and "Land of the Lost." Here it's pretty much all old-fashioned grunting, spear-waving stereotypes, played dead straight. It's unfortunate that the depiction of the Stone Age folks couldn't have been done a little more subtly. We could also have done without the predictable musing at the end as to whether human beings have really changed all that much in 40,000 years.

Still, as an action episode this actually makes more sense than its predecessors. It's fast-moving and boasts great exterior location work in what by British standards must have been an exceptionally wild and lush setting (A far cry from all of those barren rock quarries where most of the old "Dr. Who" episodes were shot!). There's also a nice use of "primitive" percussion on the soundtrack to set the mood. If it's not a perfect episode, it really doesn't have a lot to apologize for alongside "Star Trek" TOS or most other contemporary adventure series.

Background character Sandra Benes, who combines Lt. Uhura's role on the bridge with something of Ensign Chekhov's accent, gets much more screen time than usual. Like most women in older action shows, she spends her time being a damsel in distress. She's quite convincing in that role. The viewer really does worry for her with everything she goes through. She also gets a few good lines when she's not screaming.

The redoubtable Alan Carter gets to show how tough he is by bouncing back quickly from being knocked out no fewer than three times. When, at one point, he wakes up in a deep, sheer-sided pit, he resourcefully grabs a rock and starts cutting handholds in the pit's dirt walls to climb out. He'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Cro-Magnons!

This episode showcases the moonbase's little moon buggy. It's actually a six-wheeled amphibious ATV of a sort that was popular around that time. I vaguely remember seeing them elsewhere as a child. Though you don't see it in this episode, they really can "swim." I once heard a local man claim to have crossed over two miles of flood waters in one, with a substantial load. He said that it took some very careful loading.

We also get a lot of closeups here of the "comlocks," those electronic devices that all of the Alphans were on their belts. These handy gadgets are used as communicators, as remote-control door openers, and seem to have at least some data-sending capability. Their tiny TV screens are the real thing--they're actually 1970s Japanese novelty mini-TVs of a sort that got a lot of attention around that time. If "Star Trek's" communicator was the obvious forerunner of the the flip phone, "Space: 1999's" comlock in some ways anticipated the smartphone.

End of Eternity
The crew of Alpha finds a living alien sealed in an asteroid.

Of course he turns out to be a supervillain-level threat--physically strong, seemingly indestructible, and a complete psycho. Guest star Peter Bowles makes a very effective villain as Balor. He's very tall, dressed all in black, and knows how to be menacing and creepy. Christopher Lee could hardly have done better! Early scenes in which he tosses Alpha security personnel around like dolls are made more effective through the unusual means of making them virtually silent--we hear no screaming or fight scene effects, just an unsettling musical score. Balor then pleads for a chance to explain himself (As he points out, waking up to find oneself under restraint and surrounded by alien strangers would be enough to freak anybody out). For just a little while he actually seems sympathetic. Only Koenig remains skeptical. And of course Koenig's right, as always.

All in all this is a very well done example of the standard "alien menace of the week" plot that was long the stock in trade of the "Star Trek" TV franchise. It's easily the best-written episode we've seen yet. The screenplay is credited to Johnny Byrne (No relation, one supposes), the series story editor. As story editor, Byrne presumably bears some responsibility for the mediocre and sub-mediocre quality of many of "Space: 1999's" scripts. Yet it's clear here that he could do a reasonably good writing job. Maybe some of the other scripts would have been even worse if he hadn't had a hand in developing them? That's a scary thought....

The episodes reviewed up to now have only triggered a stray memory or two from my limited childhood viewing of the series. I find myself remembering quite a bit of this one. Some of the scenes must really have caught my childish attention, even though the story and dialog went almost entirely over my head. The biggest standout (Besides what happens to Balor at the end) is a truly shocking scene in which an Alpha crewman whose mind Balor has been messing with suddenly launches a murderous attack on Koenig by bashing him in the face with a model airplane. It's shot largely from Koenig's point of view, and bloodier than anything you would have seen in most mid-1970s TV shows. I didn't understand anything at all about what was going on when I saw it as a child--and really shouldn't have seen it at that age. It's still horrifying to watch as an adult.

War Games
Moonbase Alpha faces a surprise attack by overwhelming forces from the latest planet they have approached.

An initial attack by what look strangely like "Hawk" space fighters from Earth is defeated at the cost of most of Alpha's armed Eagles. Then heavy forces move in and shoot Alpha to pieces. Ceilings collapse. Consoles catch fire. People are blown outside to their deaths in slow motion by explosive decompression. A desperate last-ditch maneuver destroys the enemy attackers, but it is already too late. Almost half the crew are dead, and Alpha has been rendered uninhabitable.

Koenig and Dr. Russell fly down to the planet's surface to speak with the aliens. The aliens try to encourage the Alphans to be philosophical about their coming extinction. Koenig, not wanting to accept this, flies back into space and orders the survivors to evacuate Alpha for the planet's surface. Another Eagle explosion leaves him and Alan Carter stranded in space with an hour and a half of air left. Koenig drifts along, starting to wax philosophical. Then suddenly he's back down on the planet's surface. Then a bunch more stuff blows up. Then we're right back where we started, just before the attack. The whole episode was an elaborate illusion by the aliens to warn the humans off and prevent contamination of their ostensibly utopian society with negative human emotions.

This may be the paradigmatic example of "Space: 1999's" paradox. On the one hand we have truly spectacular production values. The harrowing destruction of Alpha would still be practically feature film quality today. Contemporary viewers must have been stunned (And wondering how in the world Koenig and company would ever get through all this!). The spaceship battles seem awfully awkward by post-"Star Wars" standards, but we must remember that pre-"Star Wars" onscreen space battles of any kind were extremely rare.

And then the aliens show up, and everything goes straight downhill. The aliens have ridiculously stereotypical swelled heads and monotone voices that make them impossible to take seriously. I can't help thinking about the Coneheads whenever they are onscreen. There's all kinds of what's supposed to be portentous dialog that completely misses the mark. The "it was all a dream" ending actually salvages the episode by providing a credible sci-fi explanation for the whole mess. I can't help wondering whether the episode was written by a pair of teenagers with incompatible goals. One wanted to go nuts with an all-out, everybody-dies space battle. The other had watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" and was reaching for a teenage writer's idea of profound.

At least it is impressive (and even gripping, in places) to watch, and the reset button is hit at the end to avoid lasting harm. Reminds one of any number of comic book arcs over the years.

Alan Carter outdoes himself in this episode. Right when it looks like everybody is doomed, he reveals that he has been playing possum in his damaged Eagle, and uses the last of his firepower to take out the main attacker. There's just no stopping the guy! It's too bad the brief drifting in space sequence focuses on Koenig and his musings. Carter was probably already planning some way to escape the situation by signalling a passing Eagle or something.

My sole childhood memory of this episode is that image of two space-suited figures drifting in space. And I specifically recall spotting it in the rapid montage of scenes that accompanies the opening credits. It's hard to believe I wouldn't recall anything else about an episode with so many arresting images. Maybe all I got to see that week was the opening credits? When you're a child you have to take baths and get ready for bed at the most awkward times.

The Last Enemy
Moonbase Alpha is caught between two sides in an interplanetary war.

It seems that the Moon has drifted into a system that boasts two habitable worlds on opposite sides of their sun. Though the inhabitants can't directly view or attack each other, they have somehow been at war for longer than anybody can remember. One side takes advantage of the Moon's temporary presence by landing a huge warship on it and taking surprise potshots at the enemy planet. The other side naturally shoots back, and the Alphans naturally start getting nervous.

Nothing about the aggressors' strategy and tactics makes much sense. Just for starters, how does landing a warship on the Moon for the few days it's passing through the system confer an advantage over simply using the ship for an attack? The aliens don't build up their forces for a devastating attack, and it doesn't seem that the Moon provides them with any shelter or protection from retaliation. Koenig's order to everybody to lie down when missiles start arcing overhead doesn't make much sense either--if there's a hit that ruptures Alpha's airtight walls, lying on the floor isn't going to help much.

Then there's the fact that all the leaders on the aggressive side are women, while the one commander shown from the other side is a guy. No character ever references this fact. Is there supposed to be a battle of the sexes subtext? It seems mainly to be an excuse to show the women warriors in fanservicey outfits. Once again, one gets the impression that the whole thing was written by teenagers.

Speaking of fanservicey outfits, guest star Caroline Mortimer, as warship commander Dione (That's the name of a moon of Saturn, don't you know), commands her ship wearing a backless dress. She later shows up at Alpha wearing a tight black leather biker outfit, complete with full-face helmet. Naturally the helmet does not leave her hair in a mess. Wish I had one like that!

Alan Carter suffers the indignity of a literal failure to launch when the aliens zap the controls of his Eagle before he can take off. As for Koenig, he comes across as awfully trigger happy at times here. You'd think he'd have remembered his lesson about holding your fire from "War Games!" Near the end he does pull a clever move that nobody, including this viewer, saw coming. It's about the only thing clever in this whole episode. The sudden reveal near the end, and some good spaceship models, are all we have by way of highlights.

Troubled Spirit
A vengeful apparition haunts Alpha.

It's a ghost story (of sorts) IN SPACE! The beginning is certainly impressive. First we see much of the Alpha crew attending a recital of what sounds like Indian raga music. As the musician plays on, the camera pans around Alpha to the arboretum, where several people are holding what looks like a seance around a tray of plants. Odd stuff starts to happen. Then an irate man comes in and tries to break up the seance. Then a mysterious wind from nowhere blows through Alpha. Cue the opening kettledrums. It's quite an effective scene, told with no dialog and little sound apart from the unusual musical score. It also serves to highlight just how extensive and elaborate those Moonbase Alpha sets were.

The raga music serves as a leitmotif for subsequent appearances of the "ghost." It goes from appearing as a shadow, to a clearly-visible apparition of a horribly disfigured man, to starting to kill people. It seems that the "seance" was an attempt to communicate with plants--ostensibly to help Alpha's crops grow better, more likely, one suspects, because some of the staff were bored out of their heads by the long interval between contacts with new planets (Note that this was only a decade after Cleve Backster's famous experiments--which nobody else was able to repeat successfully--that supposedly demonstrated the sentience of plants). Would-be plant whisperer Dan Mateo is the focus of all the unpleasantness. Koenig and company finally attempt a high-tech "exorcism." It doesn't end well....

Although one can suggest a sci-fi explanation of sorts by invoking time-slipping and time loops, the script as usual doesn't explain anything very well. This isn't necessarily a drawback in a conventional ghost story, but in science fiction it's not a good idea. The way Professor Bergman gets the definitions of "paranormal" and "supernatural" backwards doesn't help anything. Then there's the way everybody takes the psychic angle so seriously from the start. The supervisor who objects so strenuously to Mateo's experiments does so not because trying to talk to plants telepathically is nonsense, but because he thinks it's dangerous.

Great camera work and direction, genuinely effective creepy moments, fine sets--lots of talented people doing good work here, but once again it's the writers of the script who let everybody down. This time the script is credited to Johnny Byrne. Looks like he really was a big part of the series' problem after all.

The Infernal Machine
A sentient spacecraft comes to Moonbase Alpha demanding supplies.

The ship, named Gwent, has on board an elderly humanoid whom he calls Companion. Before Companion dies, of what appears to be natural causes, he indicates that he was originally Gwent's programmer. He tried to give Gwent his personality, but the artificial intelligence's power went to his head and he became arrogant and demanding and enslaved the poor fellow. When he dies the inconsolable Gwent demands that a couple of Alphans stay behind as new Companions. He also keeps demanding those supplies he needs to keep his energy level up.

Koenig doesn't take well to being dictated to, and a battle breaks out. It's by far the worst fight Moonbase Alpha has seen, if you don't count the imaginary battle in "War Games." Three Eagles and two armed lunar tractors are destroyed, with a total of at least eight crew. Or maybe not--when Gwent first opens fire, it looks like Eagle One blows completely up. But then Alan Carter reports that they only had "superficial damage." So maybe the no less completely destroyed-looking Eagles and tractors we see later weren't actually destroyed either. One certainly hopes so. It would explain why Koenig doesn't seem as upset over the loss of life as one might have expected. And since it turns out that Gwent is running short on power, it would make sense that his weaponry doesn't have as much bite as it at first seemed.

The special effects and sets are okay, but the real standout here is guest star Leo McKern's dual role as Companion and the voice of Gwent. Gwent has a perfect super villain voice--cultured, smooth, seemingly affable, yet with an undertone of menace that soon grows overt when he doesn't get what he wants. How is it that Gwent speaks such idiomatic, even allusive, English? It's not just some universal translator program--he sounds like he has a lot of background knowledge of Earth's culture. Maybe he and/or Companion secretly visited Earth at some time in the past? We're apparently supposed to feel sorry for the poor, misguided machine at the end. And maybe we can, IF we can convince ourselves that he didn't succeed in killing all those Eagle pilots.

BTW, "Gwent" is actually a Welsh place name. Fred Freiberger, the American producer of the second season, would go on to be ridiculed for his practice of using British place names as alien names. It's only fair to note that a precedent for that had already been established here before he took over.

Space Brain
The Moon is on a collision course with a sentient cloud that has the potential to destroy Alpha.

The "Space Brain" doesn't actually WANT to destroy anybody. It's also afraid of being itself damaged by a collision with the Moon. So, after accidentally destroying a scout Eagle that flies into it, it possesses the mind of an Eagle pilot named Kelly and has him suggest that the Alphans use some more of their bottomless reserve of nuclear explosives to alter the Moon's course. They try it.

Unfortunately the operation fails, and Alpha must ride out a collision with the Space Brain's deadly substance. They hope to do this by raising the air pressure inside Alpha to counteract the crushing forces they are about to experience. The plan doesn't make a lot of sense--first, because it's hard to believe that they can raise the pressure enough to withstand what are supposed to be truly immense forces, and second because there's some kind of breach and the Space Brain's substance invades Alpha anyway.

They pull out all the stops with the climax. Especially with the music! The sequence takes place to the mighty strains of "Mars, the Bringer of War" from Gustav Holst's "Planets" symphony. It's a rousing score that sounds a lot like classic "Star Wars" music, for the very good reason that "Star Wars" composer John Williams used Holst's work as a major source of inspiration.

The more pity, then, that the visuals in the sequence show crew members fleeing from, and trying frantically not to be engulfed by, huge volumes of deadly alien--foam. The actors, direction, and music try so hard to make this sequence work. And it's not as if the production crew didn't put some serious effort into blowing foam everywhere--and, presumably, into quickly cleaning up the sets afterward. But it just doesn't work. The foam is obviously mere harmless foam. It looks like everybody's fleeing from a major goof-up in Moonbase Alpha's laundry room! Maybe the failure of suspension of disbelief is just as well. It would be pretty gross to imagine that the silly stuff really is a bunch of alien brain matter oozing all over the place.

Alan Carter gets to be a hero once again with a daring EVA to rescue a drifting fellow pilot. Kelly is played with an American accent, something we rarely hear among Alpha crew outside of Koenig and Dr. Russell. The Americans on Alpha seem mostly to be Eagle pilots. Maybe this is supposed to play to "Right Stuff" stereotypes. The number of American Eagle pilots is not so impressive, given that "Eagle pilot" seems to be one of the most common jobs at Alpha, and that they tend to be treated like red shirts.

Mission of the Darians
Moonbase Alpha encounters a crippled alien generation ship.

Some hundreds of years ago an explosion aboard ship killed many of the inhabitants, irradiated most of the rest, and ultimately reduced most of their descendants to savagery. Alpha's away team learns that a handful of Darian survivors who have kept their culture and technology have been dominating the savages by means of a spurious "god" named Neiman (We hear nothing about Neiman's consort, Marcus). They have also preyed upon them physically in order to extend their own lives. They tell themselves that they are doing this because it's the only way to preserve what remains of Daria's civilization until the long sub-light speed voyage is over.

Dr. Russell suffers the indignity of being captured by the barbarians, stripped of her outer clothing, and offered to Neiman's spirits as a sacrifice. The "spirits" turn out to be two guys in space suits. Paul Morrow and Alan Carter come to the rescue and stun one of the "spirits." Carter is captured in the process and in danger of being put to death for his impious action. But he turns the tables by revealing that the "spirit" is only a man. Good old Carter--you can always count on him to come through! Soon he is leading a gang of barbarians with lynching on their mind to the Darian elite's quarters, where they lose no time demonstrating that Neiman is only mortal after all.

I didn't particularly like the episode. I've read enough generation ship stories that they feel a bit like old hat to me. Also, the Darian elite's setup to con the savages is more than a little reminiscent of the then-recent movie "Zardoz," which featured a most unfortunately-costumed Sean Connery. The script at least doesn't have as many howlers as usual. It's solidly mediocre!

There are some good models, effects, and sets. The episode also boasts--if that's quite the word for it--an appearance by Joan Collins as a Darian leader, just a few years before she became a hit with American audiences. She looks very much here like she does in her role in "Dynasty."

Dragon's Domain
A crewman who once encountered a horrific monster in outer space faces it again.

In the mid-1990s it seems that Earth sent a mission to a newly-discovered planet beyond the orbit of Pluto. Contact was lost. Months later, pilot Tony Cellini came back alone with a wild tale of encounters with an alien spaceship graveyard and a monster that slew all of his crew. Though an inquiry vindicated him and returned him to service in space, many suspected that he had somehow lost his companions due to some blunder and then invented the "dragon" story to cover it up. Only Koenig has always stood by him.

And of course Koenig is always right. Cellini starts having nightmares about the monster, and takes off in an Eagle looking for it. Sure enough, he finds the spaceship graveyard (How? Aren't they supposed to be light years away from the outer solar system by now?) and has a rematch with the dragon. It doesn't end well. At least this time there are surviving witnesses who can attest that Cellini really knew what he was talking about all along.

The alien ship graveyard, and the deep space probe that we see in flashbacks, are both impressively done. The probe sets are full of instruments that look like they might actually do something. The actors who play the crew do a very nice job, in a brief and largely silent montage, of conveying the sense that they really are working together on a long space voyage.

Then they meet the monster. It's not that convincing a beast to look at. Its gaping mouth looks like something on a parade float, it has obviously fake lights, and its wiggling tentacles are awfully stiff. Some viewers probably have a good laugh when they see it. And yet--the actors who've done so well establishing themselves as believable and sympathetic characters treat the whole threat with utter conviction, screaming horribly as they are pulled one by one into the monster's maw and reduced to charred remains. It's an effective example of how good acting and staging can "sell" a somewhat silly monster in a way that makes the viewer care about what's happening. I found the scene quite horrific, especially since it more than ever pushes 1970s TV's limits on such content. It's truly a gruesome business.

Although the story once again doesn't make a great deal of sense, it is a pretty effective episode in places. Poor Alan Carter gets to accomplish little in this one besides being knocked out twice by Cellini, while trying to oppose Cellini's unauthorized attempts to go dragon hunting. Upon coming to after the second sapping, Carter gives voice to a plaintive "What's that guy got against me?"

According to Dr. Russell, the story begins 877 days after the beginning of the Moon's travels. That would put it taking place in early 2002. But "Space 2002" wouldn't have the same ring to it.

Testament of Arkadia
A landing party on a new planet finds evidence of ancient connections with Earth.

Specifically, they find a cave containing an inscription in Sanskrit. A member of the party just happens to know how to translate. She finds references to survivors of the planet's nuclear holocaust who escaped to what sounds like our solar system. So our ancestors (Or at least, presumably, some of the smarter ones) were ancient astronauts! The translator and another member of the team then have some kind of mystical experience in the cave that leads them to steal and Eagle loaded with supplies and set themselves up as an Adam and Eve, bringing the seeds of life back to Arkadia.

First Cleve Backster and his sentient plants, now Erich von Daniken and his ancient astronauts! Writer Johnny Byrne must have liked mining the pseudoscience of the day for inspiration. I personally have no problem with sci-fi writers doing this. It has brought us such interesting creations as Jack Kirby's "Eternals." But there are science fiction fans who take the "science" part very seriously, to the point that they get very up in arms when speculative fiction engages in speculation that goes beyond whatever they consider permissible boundaries (For example, Winchell Chung at "Atomic Rockets" has no problem with stories that feature faster-than-light travel, but do NOT try to talk to him about cloaking devices!). Something tells me that some fans of this sort had a reaction to this episode similar to that of certain serious-minded fans of Batman at the thought of their favorite grim avenger being played by Adam West.

Really, though, the episode's biggest problems have to do with the usual gaping holes that make no sense, even if one accepts the premise. For example, we're told repeatedly that if the renegade Alphans take three years' supplies for two people it will surely doom the other 300 on Alpha to starvation, At episode's end Alpha's system come back online and the crisis passes, but even if that hadn't happened surely Alpha's margin of survival couldn't be that thin. Then there's the mysterious force that stops the hurtling Moon cold in space, that strange vision in the cave, etc. It all looks more supernatural than science fictional.

Dr. Russell is again reduced to a damsel in distress, when the renegade couple use her as a hostage to extort those supplies out of Koenig. He just lets them go without a fight, and makes Carter fly out to make the exchange. Which means that again Carter doesn't get to be a hero. He must have been muttering frustrated curses all the way out to the rendezvous point....

Although "Star Wars" famously carried media franchise merchandising to a new level of success, it hardly invented merchandising. There was quite a bit of "Space: 1999" merchandising out there in the 1970s. I remember a little bit of it. For example, there were trading cards. I vaguely recall seeing some of these once, probably at my babysitter's house. I remember being impressed by them--it wasn't often that I saw detailed color stills from a TV show:



Here, among other things, we see some of those "Hawk" fighter craft, a good head-on image of an Eagle (note the heads in the cockpit), Carter turning the tables on one of the Darian "spirits," and a wrestling match with Balor. And the brilliantly-scored yet ludicrous-looking struggle with the Space Brain.

I recall "Star Wars" trading cards from a year or two later much better. My brother had a bunch of them. Some of them came with peel-off stickers. He put some of these on his bedroom door. Four decades later, recognizable remnants of them are still there. You can tell how little he was back then by how close to the floor they are.

I also vaguely recall seeing, perhaps at the same place, one of these really cool toy Eagles:



Note the detachable cargo pod--the Eagle was supposed to be a flying frame that could pick up different cargo modules, like certain real-life military heavy lift helicopters. The toy also had a detachable cockpit and rocket exhaust nozzles that could be combined to form some kind of escape pod thing:



They didn't do this on TV, but the exploration vessel in the flashback sequence in "Dragon's Domain" has a detachable nose pod that looks similar.