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Any lovers of the old series.... Space 1999

shadow

shadow

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 9AM PST - NDB Media welcomes........... Barbara Bain. She played Doctor Helena Russell on the 70s tv series Space 1999 and also starred in Mission Impossible opposite her then real life husband fellow actor Martin Landau!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ndbmedia

Nick Tate, who portrayed Alan Carter on Space 1999 is scheduled in October.
 
One of the best pilots EVER but the rest of the series didn't live up to the great premise.

I was 10 when it came on in the US and the metaphysical stuff was way over my head. Now it's just plain boring.

With all the remakes going on in Hollywood these days...this is the property I would most like to see re-explored and updated.
 
We had a similar discussion last week. My position then: "If SHADO controlled the moonbase as originally planned, that silly explosion would not have happened. Not on Ed Strakers watch!", is unchanged. :)
 
I watched one or two episodes as a kid, but I'm pretty sure I never saw the pilot, and it's definitely been somewhere around close to twenty years since I saw anything. It's something I should revisit when I get some time.
 
Loved it as a kid. Can barely handle the silliness now.

But the Eagle is still one of the coolest spacecraft ever.
 
Space: 1999 was my first exposure to Bain as far as I can recall, and I was young at the time. So getting to see Mission: Impossible recently on the ALN cable network and via Netflix, I've been surprised at how sultry and seductive she was in the role. She wasn't as lovely as, say, Diana Rigg, but she did really terrific things with her voice and attitude.

So now that I'm getting to know what Landau and Bain were like in M:I, I'm eventually going to Netflix S1999 for comparison, and just for nostalgia's sake.
 
The first series of Space: 1999 is one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever. The second series.. isn't. Bain is very good in the first series, portraying a serious, responsible, and professional chief medical officer.
 
I'm one of the very few people who prefers the second season of 1999 to the first - the lows are a lot lower ('The Taybor' and 'All That Glisters' are utter shite, with the modelwork the only redeeming feature), but it's generally more entertaining. As Mutara Nebula said upthread, the metaphysical aspects get boring very quickly, and as a whole season 1 was humourless and po-faced, with Carter the only really interesting character.

I've been on a Mission: Impossible kick recently, and Landau and Bain are so much more engrossing to watch and vibrant than in 1999, where they mostly got to be snappish and vaguely concerned, respectively.
 
The humourlessness is really the part of Space: 1999 that has remained endearing to me. Far from the wise-asses too commonplace today in sci-fi, the crew of 1999 are a bunch of matter-of-fact professionals who were just doing their jobs.

I'm definitely still quite fond of the show, especially the first season.
 
Christopher said:
Space: 1999 was my first exposure to Bain as far as I can recall, and I was young at the time. So getting to see Mission: Impossible recently on the ALN cable network and via Netflix, I've been surprised at how sultry and seductive she was in the role. She wasn't as lovely as, say, Diana Rigg, but she did really terrific things with her voice and attitude.
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Oh, first season M:I, Bain was hot-hot-hot!
But every once in a while her yellow smoker's teeth ruined the effect. And when she'd blow smoke thru her nose - UGH!
 
I saw bits and pieces of it as a child. Even then, it never seemed as interesting as Star Trek, though I did have a model Eagle spaceship.

As it happens, I caught a few minutes of it yesterday on ITV3. It was an episode where a delusional Koenig saw monstrous aliens instead of his friends and was freaking out. On the one hand, you had impressive costumes that pre-empted Star Trek: TMP, sets that shamed all other UK tv shows of the decade (and the subsequent one, for that matter) and impressive spaceships taking off and landing. On the other hand, you had really rubbery-looking aliens which looked like they were borrowed from Tom Baker-era Dr Who.

But worst of all, the acting was either stilted or hammy, the dialogue trite and the direction and action totally naff. Twice other crew members tried to restrain Koenig by wrapping their arms round him and each time he throws them off and they bang into the wall, causing all sorts of sparks and explosions. Just seemed really risible. Even for mid-afternoon on ITV3 ...
 
I can watch the first series over and over, forever. It's a metaphysical fantasy, a spiritual fable that uses the unknown reaches of deep space as a metaphor for the unknown depths of the human soul and psyche. Quite simply, it's the tv show that has spoken to me on a spiritual level unlike anything else I've ever experienced.
 
captaindemotion said:
On the one hand, you had impressive costumes that pre-empted Star Trek: TMP, sets that shamed all other UK tv shows of the decade (and the subsequent one, for that matter) and impressive spaceships taking off and landing.
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Space: 1999 is still for me the classic space opera 'look.' It's like what I want the future to look like, pristine and white and cool.

Andrew_Kearley said:
I can watch the first series over and over, forever. It's a metaphysical fantasy, a spiritual fable that uses the unknown reaches of deep space as a metaphor for the unknown depths of the human soul and psyche. Quite simply, it's the tv show that has spoken to me on a spiritual level unlike anything else I've ever experienced.
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Then you must love the new DVD release.
 
payndz201 said:
I'm one of the very few people who prefers the second season of 1999 to the first - the lows are a lot lower ('The Taybor' and 'All That Glisters' are utter shite, with the modelwork the only redeeming feature), but it's generally more entertaining.
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Me too, for much the same reason - both seasons are basically rubbish, with all the money spent on sets and models, and none on creatures and scripts, but where season 1 takes its awful lack of science pretentiously, season 2 at least just has fun with explosions and punchups.

And there's Catherine Schell. Had a crush on her since I was seven, that shows no sign of going away.
 
Forbin said:
Oh, first season M:I, Bain was hot-hot-hot!
But every once in a while her yellow smoker's teeth ruined the effect. And when she'd blow smoke thru her nose - UGH!
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I haven't noticed the teeth, but what does undermine her looks for me in first-season M:I is her skin, which is prematurely aged by the tobacco smoke. (I've often thought you could probably get more people to avoid or quit smoking by informing them that it causes wrinkles than you could by mentioning cancer, emphysema, heart disease, etc.) Great eyes, nice lips, not so great skin.

And as much as I loathe smoking, I can't help noticing in those M:I reruns that it did have quite a few social uses back then. For instance, all Cinnamon had to do to get a man to approach her was to take out a cigarette and give him an expectant look, whereupon he'd come over and light it. Not to mention all the bits where IMF characters use lighting a cigarette to conceal some sleight of hand, or use a matchbook to deliver a secret message, or whatever. As repulsive as cigarettes are, it's interesting from a sociological perspective to see how integral they were to the social customs and nonverbal language of an earlier generation.
 
I loved Space 1999 but I remember the episode "Dragon's Domain" *freaked* me out when I was 10 years old. The sight of a tentacled alien with a glowing eye sucking a person into it's huge maw and spitting out a smoking corpse scared the crap out of me as a kid....I had nightmares for days. Even as an adult, I still have some buried fears about it. So, kudos to Space 1999 for making an episode I can still remember vividly 35 years later!
 
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