Upthread, I ranked the first season episodes. I've just finished watching season two, for the first time all the way through since it aired, so I thought I'd post my rankings of these episodes as well.
First, a few observations about the series overall. It's a fascinating case study of missed opportunity and wasted talent. The production standards were very high, and this is true of both seasons, with respect to costumes, sets, models, effects (sure, you can see the wires, and sometimes things look exactly like models on a table top, but you have to grade effects in the context of the television medium in its place in history, and occasionally the effects are spectacular even by today's standards), music, acting (as a general statement, though sometimes acting was quite variable), and practically every element necessary for the production of a science fiction television series. Everything was at a high level, except one element, probably the singularly most important: writing. Watching it again, I feel really sad to see so much talent and obvious effort go down the tube (ha ha), because the writing was, much more often than not, banal, cliché-ridden, and a poor example of the science fiction genre.
Season two is especially saddening, because it was the opportunity to fix the problems with the first season. Instead, they only compounded them, mainly because the writing was even worse than in the first season. Every other change could have been at least survived, were it not for the writing. Some changes actually were an improvement. The outer sections of the moonbase and catacombs were revealed, and they grew bad-ass looking laser cannons. I thought Koenig's character became better defined, and in a good way, and Tony was a good, charismatic character. However, Maya was really the saving grace. Catherine Schell to my eye was and still is extraordinarily beautiful, but not only that, she's an extremely talented actress. Her character was one I felt compelled to care about, even through the stupidest, most contrived danger. Her touch in the delivery of her lines quite often compensated for the fact that they were obviously just being ripped off from
Star Trek.
In the last few episodes, I felt that they were just starting to find their stride, ironically through the introduction of a couple of interesting minor characters, and also legitimate danger, intriguing premises, and interesting developments with respect to Maya. Even Derek Wadsworth's music, a jarring change to me at first in season two (I really liked Barry Gray's year one score a lot), actually grew on me as the season progressed, especially with the introduction of new themes mid-season or later, and as I found myself reminded more of season one music, e.g. in the way the timpani, a.k.a. kettledrums, were used (YMMV).
(Just as an aside, it was often very entertaining to see familiar actors from other science fiction series making guest appearances, from
Doctor Who, to
Star Wars films, to
Star Trek series,
Superman, and so forth. There really were quite a few.)
The grading scale is the same as the one I used for my season one ranking. Of course, YMMV. Because season two wasn't as good as season one, it's bottom heavy. The symbol [+] indicates that the Moon encountered an alien planet or that the Alphans flew to one by conventional means. This happened in 11 of 24 episodes, which with the season one stats dispels the myth that they visited a new planet every week (it was actually, on average, every other week, lol). The symbol [+++] indicates teleportation occurred to a remote planet, which happened twice overall, in 2.
The Exiles, and in 5.
Journey to Where to Earth itself.
3. One Moment of Humanity (4) [+]
21. Dorzak (4)
23. The Immunity Syndrome (4) [+]
24. The Dorcons (4)
1. The Metamorph (3) [+]
8. The Mark of Archanon (3)
15. Space Warp (3)
22. Devil's Planet (3) [+]
2. The Exiles (2) [+++]
6. The Taybor (2)
9. Brian the Brain (2) [+]
12. The AB Chrysalis (2) [+]
5. Journey to Where (1) [+++]
10. New Adam New Eve (1) [+]
19. The Lambda Factor (1)
20. The Seance Spectre (1) [+]
4. All that Glisters (0) [+]
7. The Rules of Luton (0) [+]
11. Catacombs of the Moon (0)
13. Seed of Destruction (0)
14. The Beta Cloud (0)
16. A Matter of Balance (0) [+]
17. The Bringers of Wonder Part 1 (0)
18. The Bringers of Wonder Part 2 (0)
Finally, as a further indication of the trajectory of the moon and its relativistic velocity, 18.
The Bringers of Wonder Part 2 contains the lines [
http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/main/tscript/z42bow2.html]:
KOENIG: "We've been in space for months. In earth time that's generations. If they are from Earth, they'd have to be hundreds of years older than they appear."
MAYA: "That should have occurred to me."
KOENIG: "It didn't occur to you because they wouldn't let it. The reason they haven't been able to control my mind is because..I was hooked to that machine."
Despite the major flaws, I really enjoyed rewatching the series. Right now, I'm listening to the Barry Gray soundtrack, and loving it.
Cheers.
