Space 1999

[Candlelight]

Just caught the pilot episode Breakaway. Been years, maybe decades since I'd seen any of it.

It's such a good pilot. Traces of Gerry Anderson's trademarks are present, Martin Landau instantly shines as Koenig and the explosions are in typical Thunderbirds fashion.

The science is a little hokey, but I never cared. A single (combined) nuclear blast knocking the moon out of orbit would've ripped it apart, but it's all fun. If I can watch Voyager's Threshold, this is nothing! It was made at a time when scinece fiction plots could stay as science fiction plots and didn't have to be rationalised or explained in great detail. Plus Eagles crash real good.

Have also managed to catch a random assortment of episodes (really should watch them in order), including Another Time, Another Place (where the moon is duplicated and they arrive back at Earth), The Last Sunset (in which aliens give the moon an atmosphere), War Games (which is filled with lots of 'splosions) and the infamous Dragon's Domain, which features the freakiest alien creature I ever saw as a kid.

Also dipped briefly (and probably the only time) into season two territory to watch Space Warp, in which the moon is hurtled five light years away from Koenig and Tony whilst exploring a derelict, and Maya goes batshit crazy on the base. I really don't care for season two stories but this one was one of my favourites as a kid. Might also watch The Bringers of Wonder two-parter just to see the jellies and David 'Gan' Jackson.

Anyone else enjoy this show? Can anyone recommend any other episodes that are worth watching? I hear Collision Course and Black Sun are quite good. Heck, most of the first season is good.

 

[Leroy]

I love the first season of Space 1999 it looks excellent on Blu-Ray the quality has to be seen to be believed. I love the dark brooding nature of year one as well the things each episode makes you think about. I also liked how the goal of the crew was to find a new place to live rather than quest for a way back to Earth or find something specific (like Earth in nuBSG). I recommend most of the first season my favorites are War Games, Dragon's Domain, Voyager's Return and The Last Enemy.

 

[Gojira]

I have not seen this show in decades either. Time to revisit it.

 

[MANT!]

The science was hokey, but if one wishes to see 2001 quality special effects but with explosions, there simply is no other way...

War Games, Dragon's Domain, Voyager's Return and The Last Enemy

let me add Alpha Child and Force of Life,



Season 2 was disappointing

 

[Gary Mitchell]

The teaser for Alpha Child gave me nightmares when I was a kid and still freaks me out.

There was one second season episode that I remember liking: The Dorcons

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

Breakaway is one of the best opening episodes of any series ever. It's tremendous, laden with a sense of impending and really cranking up the tension to the explosion.

Space: 1999 is the greatest space opera type show I've ever seen. I can actually look back to the day in April 1992 when I rediscovered the series as one of the pivotal events in my life. It really did change everything for me. The first season is the best thing Gerry Anderson's team ever did - oddly enough, because it doesn't really feel like a Gerry Anderson series. Season 2 is a very different beast though, and I can certainly see that as belonging in the same fun hoky sci-fi tradition as things like Fireball XL5 and Stingray.

Season 1 though is something amazingly special: it seems more like literary sf than most other tv shows, dealing with complex ideas without neat resolutions. The science can be a bit awry, but I don't think it's any worse than other sci-fi shows before or since. What's interesting about Space: 1999 is that it doesn't seek to justify its implausibilities like other shows do by inventing technology that can circumvent the laws of physics. There's a suggestion that the deeper into space they go, the less they can understand about the universe - that the physical laws we understand on Earth perhaps don't work in other parts of space. There's also a mythic quality about the whole thing. If you see the show as a sci-fi equivalent of an ancient myth where the Alphans are a lost tribe cast out of their homeland, the actual scientific mechanism of the Breakaway doesn't seem so important. The impossibilities of earlier myths are covered by such things as the Greek gods causing storms to afflict the courses of the epic heroes - or Jehovah parting the Red Sea during the Jewish exodus. In that light, an inexplicable nuclear explosion pushing the Moon out into space is very comparable. The show itself addresses the very issue, when Victor tries to suggest that there is some purpose to these events, that there might be some cosmic intelligence looking after them. Koenig, as a Jew, equates the notion with God.

Anyway, recommended episodes: Collision Course and Black Sun are two of the best episodes (of anything). Death's other Dominion, The Infernal Machine, Earthbound, Guardian of Piri, The Trouble Spirit, Mission of the Darians, End of Eternity, The Testament of Arkadia.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Of course, the second season suffered from the Fred Freiberger problem. I read somewhere that he was responsible for the laughable title of the 2nd season episode - "The Rules of Luton" - after seeing a sign to Luton while driving on the M1.

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

It's hard to blame Freiberger though, since he was engaged to revamp the show and did it as he saw fit. So he was only doing what they asked and what they were paying him for.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, let's not start an FF argument. I've been down that road before and it's not productive.

 

[MacLeod]

I have not seen this show in decades either. Time to revisit it.

Might I suggest the 13th September as a good day, after all that is the day when the moon was supposdly blasted out of Earth Orbit.

But back on topic caught the odd episode over the years when I've been channel hopping, and I think S1 was better than S2, oh and only 1 thing crashes better than the Eagle Transporters, Starfleet Shuttlecraft. :P

 

[RAMA]

Is this the "remastered" version you are watching?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The Blu-ray of season 1 is a complete remastering, I believe.

 

[spooky spice]

Used to love that show, nearly wet myself at Dragon's Domain!!

 

[Marc]

one of the things that people have take aim at the series was hokey science like how did the moony travel so far are the initial nuclear blast.

I was googling about the initial pilot (which ran for nearly 2 hours) and found something I didn't know. Journey Through A Dark Sun was intended to be the second episode which would have covered two issues a) that there was some sort of cosmic power influcing the course of the moon and b) how it started coming across alien planets etc etc.

But it ended up being the 10th episode so was to an extent negated by what had been seen already.

 

[Galileo7]

SPACE:1999 is my favorite non-Star Trek science-fiction series. I watched it first-run, as a young boy, in the '70s when it debuted September 1975. Episodes that I would recommend of the 24 episodes of season 1: Breakaway, Earthbound, Dragon's Domain, Another Time Another Place, Guardian Of Piri, Force Of Life, Last Sunset, Voyager's Return, Death's Other Dominion, Full Circle, War Games, Infernal Machine, Mission Of The Darians, Testament Of Arkadia. Episodes that I would recommend of the 24 episodes of season 2: Metamorph, Exiles, Journey To Where, All That Glisters, Mark Of The Archanon, Rules Of Luton, Brian The Brain, Bringers Of Wonder(part 1 & 2), Catacombs Of The Moon, Seed Of Destruction, Space Warp, Beta Cloud, A Matter Of Balance, Devil's Planet, Seance Spectre, Immunity Syndrome, Dorcons.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

I haven't seen these in years. If the quality of the remastering is that good, I think I may save them for that day in the far flung future when I convert to Blu-Ray.

 

[23skidoo]

Of course, the second season suffered from the Fred Freiberger problem. I read somewhere that he was responsible for the laughable title of the 2nd season episode - "The Rules of Luton" - after seeing a sign to Luton while driving on the M1.

Yeah, but it's no sillier than the origins of many other titles. There's the legend (debunked but repeated many times) that Terry Nation took Dalek from the spine of an encyclopedia (DAL-EK or something like that). To be fair to Freiberger or whomever, the only people who cared or even realized the significance of Luton were the relatively small number who actually know what Luton is. That's the same as me being ridiculed 35 years from now if today I wrote an episode called "The Rules of Rouleau". And I'll leave you to figure out what Rouleau is.

That said, it's still a crap episode!

Funnily enough, though, I never warmed to the first season episodes. I found them eerie and atmospheric, but I never really started enjoying Space: 1999 until the second season. Part of the reason is Maya. She was the saving grace of that second year, IMO, though Barry Morse rocks. Although originally from Britain, he was a bona fide Canadian icon in his later years.

Alex

 

[Admiral2]

I remember watching reruns of the show vaguely as a kid but it wasn't one of my "must see" shows like BSG, Buck Rogers and Trek. I did have a couple of issues of the John Byrne-drawn comic that I valued...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

one of the things that people have take aim at the series was hokey science like how did the moony travel so far are the initial nuclear blast.

I was googling about the initial pilot (which ran for nearly 2 hours) and found something I didn't know. Journey Through A Dark Sun was intended to be the second episode which would have covered two issues a) that there was some sort of cosmic power influcing the course of the moon and b) how it started coming across alien planets etc etc.

But it ended up being the 10th episode so was to an extent negated by what had been seen already.

I believe the planet Meta was meant to be controlling their journey through space. I expect that it would have turned out to be a predestination paradox with the Alphans turning out to be the inhabitants of Meta. Something like that.

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

Journey Through A Dark Sun was intended to be the second episode which would have covered two issues a) that there was some sort of cosmic power influcing the course of the moon and b) how it started coming across alien planets etc etc.

But it ended up being the 10th episode so was to an extent negated by what had been seen already.

I think that's just idle fan speculation. It's pretty clear that no episode was "intended" to be second. Byrne and Penfold are pretty clear on this point in interviews, etc. It was designed, as most episodic film series were in those days, to have no set running order, beyond Breakaway being first. Black Sun was shot as the third episode. The cosmic intelligence is certainly raised as a possibility in the finished episode, and they definitely meet an alien entity of some kind which is suggested might have helped them survive the black sun, but it's all nicely ambiguous.