- Martin Landau (
Ed Wood
) as Commander John Koenig
-
Barbara Bain
as Dr. Helena Russell
- Nick Tate as Alan Carter
- Zienia Merton as Sandra 'Sahn' Benes
- Barry Morse as Prof. Victor Bergman [ 1 ]
- Anton Philips as Dr. Mathias
- Prentis Hancock as Paul Morrow [ 1 ]
- Clifton Jones as David Kano [ 1 ]
-
Suzzanne Roquette
as Tayna Alexander [ 1 ]
1st Series 1975 ITV
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 1]
Breakaway
Shown 17 Oct 75
Reviewed 7th January 2006 [Sunday]
Political Commissioner Roy Dotrice (
Beauty and the Beast, B5
) assigns Commander Koenig to Moonbase Alpha.
Koenig's first duty is to discover the source
of a mysterious virus that is killing the astronauts.
It turns out that using the moon as a huge dump
for all of Earth's nuclear waste is actually a bad idea!
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 2]
Force of Life
Shown 24 Oct 75
Reviewed 20th July 2008 [Sunday]
A subspace anomaly flies past Moonbase.
Most of the crew are knocked unconscious -
but one is cursed with an awful power.
Anton Zoref (Ian McShane -
John Wick
) freezes to death anyone he touches!
Zoref needs to absorb heat in order to live.
However, if he drains the reactor of heat
then the moonbase's key systems will suffer irrepairable damage.
The Captain orders all sidearms to be worn,
and leads a team to hunt down and kill Zoref before he does too much damage.
This is technically the crew's first alien encounter.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 3]
Collision Course
Shown 31 Oct 75
An asteroid is about to crash into moonbase.
Koenig sends the shuttle codenamed Eagle One to plant a nuke on the asteroid,
in the hope of deflecting or destroying it.
Unfortunately the shuttle goes MIA during the blast.
Koenig takes the other shuttle, Eagle Four,
out in search of the first one.
He discovers an alien vessel, with an old humanoid woman aboard.
She claims to have psychic powers,
with the ability to both read the minds of his command crew
and to predict the future millions of years in advance.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 4]
War Games
Shown 25th Sept 1975
Reviewed 4th December 2005 - Sunday
Moonbase is attacked by a swarm of alien spacecraft.
Coincidentally the Aliens' technology and tactics
are identical to those used by the Moonbase personnel!
The fighters are the Mark IX Hawk,
similar to the Eagle shuttles but with twice the engine
(AKA twice the speed) and some weapon pods on the sides.
It turns out they are being manipulated by Alien geniuses Anthony Valentine (
Robin of Sherwood
) and
Isla Blair
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 5]
Death's Other Domain
Shown 2nd Oct 1975
Reviewed 11th December 2005 - Sunday
The Moonbase command crew explores an ice-planet named Ultima Thule.
Yes, like the Trek Federation they send their leader into the most dangerous situations!
Luckily the planet is inhabited. Brian Blessed (
Flash Gordon, SWI: TPM
) and a pack of fur-clad cossack-looking people are there,
looking for the secret of eternal life.
They are all English-speaking caucasians, by the way.
It turns out they are survivors of a NASA mission that was lost in 1986.
Luckily the command crew on Moonbase are a bit more diverse,
with a couple of people of colour aboard.
Blessed is best known for over-acting,
and the rest of the cast do their best to keep up with him.
His sidekick apparently has precognative ability.
It turns out that the survivors have certain unusual abilities.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 6]
Voyager's Return
Shown 9th Oct 1975
Reviewed 18th December 2005 - Sunday
Voyager, the unmanned space probe, approaches Moonbase Alpha.
However, this is not the simple 1970s probe.
This is a 1985 probe equipped with an FTL drive!
The FTL drive, AKA the Quellar Drive, is leaking radioactivity.
This is a bug rather than a feature,
since its FTL capability is based on it spewing out neutrons for propulsion.
In other words, it is so dangerous that Eagle Two is destroyed in a fly-past.
At least there are Eagles Six, Nine and Ten to cover for the loss.
Voyager must be remotely deactivated before they can recover the info the probe gathered.
Luckily for Koenig, the best scientific experts on Earth are aboard Moonbase.
One is Dr Quellar himself,
who now uses another name because of his invention's infamy.
In fact, one of his cow-orkers lost both parents in an accident
caused by the Voyager II Quellar drive's malfunction in 1986.
An alien armada is following Voyager.
They are survivors of Psidon,
the worlds that it contaminated with radiation.
They want revenge!
Basically this starts as an environmental issue against nuclear power
but becomes a metaphor for the vengeance quests against Nazi war criminals.
Should Quellar, a well-intentioned scientist,
be held accountable for the mis-use of his technology?
Should the people of Earth, whose elected leaders approved that mis-use,
be exterminated in revenge for the genocide that occurred as a result?
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 7]
Alpha Child
Shown 28 Nov 75
The good news is that Helena delivers a baby boy to Sue Crawford,
a pregnant crew-woman.
The bad news is the child has a sudden and massive growth spurt.
In reality there are many problems that a child born on a low-gravity moon-base might face,
newborn baby turning into a five-year-old in a matter of seconds is not one of them.
The boy, named Jackie, is a dead mute.
Alan Carter, the chief pilot,
tries to bond with him and teach him sign language.
However, the child has a strange vibe - like Damien in
The Omen
. Scientist
Rula Lenska
is not much help in solving the mystery.
Moonbase is approached by some mysterious alien ships.
The Eagle shuttles are no match for them.
However, Koenig plans to send out men in EVA suits
armed with hand-held armour-piercing laser weapons to take the ships out.
Jackie has another growth spurt, and becomes Jarak (Julian Glover -
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
). He has the ability to tell if someone is lying to him,
and telekinesis enough to kill someone (or make them kill someone else).
His end-game is a bit perverse, to say the least.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 8]
Dragon's Domain
Shown 23rd Oct 1975
Reviewed 1st January 2006 [Sunday]
We get a flashback, narrated by Helena (
Barbara Bain
). On the 877th day after moonbase left Earth's orbit,
when they were in empty space between galaxies
(presumably she means solar systems) ...
In 1996 a manned space probe was sent to a planet named Ultra,
the most newly-discovered planet in Earth's solar system,
which is only six months away!
The crew, led by a pal of Koenig's named Tony Chellini, included
Barbara Kellerman
and Michael Sheard (
Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
). But before they got to planet Ultra,
they encountered a cluster of abandoned ships.
This seems a bit like an episode of
Lost in Space (1965)
, where the Robinsons uncovered relics of multiple alien species on a regular basis.
Anyway, Chellini's crew investigate -
and ran into a murderous beastie ...
Koenig's pal Chellini was the sole survivor.
After being blamed for the loss of the crew,
and treated like a delusional nut-case,
he got reassigned to Moonbase Alpha.
By incredible coincidence, Helena -
one of the doctors who doubted his mental state.
Chellini seems to be having a mental breakdown,
as he is now obsessed with the monster.
When the Moon drifts near a cluster of abandoned ships,
the Dragon-slayer gets a re-match.
This episode shows its roots in UK SciFi TV.
one of the Eagles picks up a cargo pod with its middle,
revealing the reason there is scaffolding that joins the cockpit and engines ...
it is basically designed like one of the
Thunderbirds
. The other important scenes are the ones with the monster -
they are hid-behind-the-cushions scary, like something out of
Doctor Who
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 9]
Mission of the Darians
Shown 30th Oct 1975
Reviewed 8th January 2006 [Sunday]
The Moon encounters a huge spaceship,
a flying city fifty miles long that floats in the void, crippled.
Hundreds of passengers are sick, and thousands have already died.
Naturally, the senior Moonbase staff (plus a few redshirts) go to explore.
Splitting up, of course.
Koenig discovers that
Joan Collins
, one of the last survivors from a planet named Daria,
runs the spaceship.
She and her companions have the ability to probe human minds,
but they only have limited control of the ship itself.
The others encounter a gang of scraggly rejects from a medieval-era planet.
It turns out that all but one of the ship's nuclear reactors exploded nine centuries previously.
The vast majority of the ship's inhabitants are mutants.
Anyone with any visible physical deformity,
such as dwarfism or even a missing finger, is murdered.
Victor discovers that there is no protein stored in the ship's supplies.
There is only one source - the other passengers.
This seems to have inspired the works of
Peadar O'Gullion
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 10]
Black Sun
Shown 6th Nov 1975
Reviewed 15th January 2006 [Sunday]
The Moon floats near a gravitational anomaly.
Koenig sends Mike Ryan to investigate, aboard Eagle One.
Unfortunately Moonbase loses yet another shuttle.
This is not as bad as
Star Trek: Voyager
but there are only about ten shuttles -
we have never seen more than three at one time -
and by episode ten they have lost at least two.
The anomaly is a Black Sun, which can destroy the moon.
This is described as a point of incredible, inescapable gravity.
Perhaps they used the invented term to avoid confusion with
The Black Hole (1979)
.
The crew endure a buildup of tension. Nicely done!
Koenig's plan is to put a gravity-shielding force-field dome around moonbase.
While the main crew stay aboard Moonbase,
Helena and a few others fly off on a shuttle as a last-ditch backup.
Professor Victor starts to philosophise about some kind of Galactic Intelligence
that might be over-seeing the survival of the Moonbase crew.
Well, this makes as much sense as the so-called science on this show.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 11]
Guardian of Piri
Shown 13th Nov 1975
Reviewed 22nd January 2006 [Sunday]
The Moon drifts near a strange planet.
When a shuttle flies out to investigate the world, it goes missing.
Was it due to a computer glitch or pilot error?
The computer becomes so unreliable that everything has to be switched to manual.
However, the crew also become unreliable.
Koenig discovers that the planet is not merely inhabited by a forest of giant mushrooms.
There is also a strange glowing light,
and a shapely woman clad in tin-foil.
Not unlike most other worlds in this show.
The result seems an adaption of an episode of
Star Trek: TOS
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 12]
End of Eternity
Shown 9 Jan 76
Moonbase is three light years from the nearest star system,
so an asteroid coming from there must have been on the way for a thousand years.
In other words it would have covered one light-day in a year.
Nobody wonders why Moonbase has not been travelling at such a speed,
rather than at their current faster-than-light velocity.
Well, when they met Brian Blessed and discovered he was eight centuries old
it might not have been a time-warp ... but just relativity.
For Moonbase, it has been twelve episodes -
but a thousand years may have passed on Earth.
Koenig leads a team of astronauts to explore a cave in the asteroid.
They discover a chamber with an airlock, and a mutilated but living body.
When Helena patches the body up in med-lab,
she discovers it has a regenerative healing factor.
He is a creepy man in black clothes.
If he looks somehow familiar it is because
he is the young and moustache-less Peter Bowles (
), an English sitcom actor who became famous for his moustache in the 1980s.
The fact that he seems to be walkin on stilts hidden under his long baggy trousers
makes him seem even more alien.
Also, in the fight scenes his stunt-double looks nothing like him.
Luckily, the man in black can speak English.
He claims to be Balor, a citizen of the planet Frodo.
His people achieved immortality, and he is over a thousand years old.
Unfortunately immortality leads to a breakdown of society.
Balor admits he was imprisoned and exiled by his own people.
Koenig does not believe Balor's story, despite his apparent honesty.
And with good reason, as we get to see a more sinister side to the stranger.
As with the other immortals we have seen on this show,
the price of immortality is too high.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 13]
Matter of Life and Death
Shown 27th Nov 1975
Reviewed 5th February 2006 [Sunday]
Eagle One, piloted by Parks (Stuart Damon -
The Champions
) returns from surveying an Earth-type planet
code-named Terra Nova.
However, Dr Russell's husband (Richard Johnson -
) has appeared aboard the ship.
This is more than a little mysterious,
because he has been Missing Presumed Dead
since the Astro Seven mission to Jupiter five years previously!
The planet is ideal for colonisation.
Koenig has a few days to decide whether to land the entire crew there,
or to continue floating around in the confines of Moonbase Alpha.
This was directed by
Charlie Crichton
, famous for the Ealing Comedies and A Fish Called Wanda (1988).
He gives us some good shots of the subway train,
nice to see because this show has mostly treated the Moonbase crew as pedestrians.
There is also a shot of the Eagle on the launch-pad that is reminiscent of
Thunderbirds
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 14]
Earthbound
Shown 4th Dec 1975
Reviewed 12th February 2006 [Sunday]
After a staff meeting,
Koenig is criticised by Political Commissioner Roy Dotrice (
Beauty and the Beast, B5
) for not trying to return the Moon to Earth.
Of course, Koenig tells him that it is impossible.
Just then, a mysterious starship arrives from Earth.
It travels at speed 3.72 - whatever that means.
Koenig and Dr Russell board and explore the starship.
Aboard is Christopher Lee (
Dracula, LOTR, AOTC
) in a wig.
This was directed by
Charlie Crichton
, like the previous ep.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 15]
The Full Circle
Shown 11th Dec 1975
Reviewed 19th February 2006 [Sunday]
An Away Team of seven astronauts goes MIA on a jungle planet, Rita.
Their shuttle, Eagle Six, is investigated - and contains a cave-man!
Koenig and Dr Russell lead more Away Teams to search for the first one.
While Eagle One transports the medical team,
Alan takes Sandra on Eagle Two for aerial surveillance of the area
within a radius of a hundred miles.
This is forty thousand square miles,
but apparently Victor has the ability to process the data from that much photography.
More disappearances follow,
because a tribe of primitive humans is living in the caves.
What is outstanding about this ep is not the story,
which is formulaic and predictable enough, but the locations.
The explorers drive about a huge deciduous forest on yellow six-wheel buggies,
and the caves look like genuine caves rather than a flimsy studio set made of cardboard!
Their walkie-talkies are actually monochrome video-phones,
although in other episodes they are generally used as audio-only.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 16]
Another Time, Another Place
Shown 18th Dec 1975
Reviewed 26th February 2006 [Sunday]
A strange flash renders the crew briefly unconscious.
One girl becomes mentally unstable as her grasp of reality goes.
The moon turns up to orbit an Earth-type planet.
But there is a parallel Moon already there!
The crew visit the planet where they meet parallel versions of themselves,
and get to see an alternate version of what could have happened.
After all, there are worse things to happen than being stranded on moonbase,
floating into a new solar system every week.
Unfortunately the two moonbase crews cannot co-exist on the same planet.
When they confront their parallel selves, one will lose the will to live.
Not exactly a twist, but this show
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 17]
The Infernal Machine
Shown 8th January 1976
Reviewed 5th March 2006 [Sunday]
Paul has been hospitalised temporarily,
perhaps as a result of the events in
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 20] The Last Sunset.
A new officer, Winters (
), is assigned to cover for him.
Moonbase is approached by a starship with an unusual propulsion system.
It is apparently powerful enough to control the Moonbase systems.
The three main characters are summoned aboard
to meet the sole inhabitant - Companion (Leo Mckern -
The Prisoner
).
The habitat is controlled by a living machine,
a giant computer that has achieved sentience.
Its name is Gwent, and it is also voiced by McKern.
Somehow Gwent hacks the Moonbase mainframe,
which is voiced by a female.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 18]
Ring Around the Moon
Shown 15th January 1976
Reviewed 12th March 2006 [Sunday]
The moon floats by a new planet.
something on the surface takes over the mind of a crewman,
and uses his mind to hack the Moonbase computer.
The downloading burns out the human mind, however -
but not before rendering Moonbase defenceless.
All but four of the Eagle space shuttles have been immobilised,
and the nuclear reactors are on minimum output
so they cannot power the anti-gravity field.
The first victim was not a mere Redshirt -
he had a forename as well as a surname,
and they are both used several times.
The hacker next takes over Helena (
Barbara Bain
).
The hacker is actually an AI on a probe from the planet Triton,
from a distant galaxy.
Somehow Victor the Moonbase scientist knows more about this,
including Triton's destruction, than the probe does!
At least an attempt is made to show truly alien creatures,
as opposed to the putty-on-the-nose makeup in
Star Trek
.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 19]
Missing Link
Shown 22nd January 1976
Reviewed 19th March 2006 [Sunday]
Koenig is involved in a shuttle crash.
He encounters an alien species led by Peter Cushing (
Star Wars IV: ANH
). These aliens are from the planet Kryten,
which is five million light-years from Earth.
Even further than the previous aliens,
from planet Triton only two million light-years from Earth.
Both would be in different galaxies, of course,
since the Milky Way is only a tenth of a million miles across.
Koenig's comatose body is recovered.
All signs point to him being dead. Will Helena (
Barbara Bain
) switch off his life-support?
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 20]
The Last Sunset
Shown 1st January 1976
Reviewed 26th March 2006 [Sunday]
A couple of Eagles are sent to explore Planet Ariel,
an M-Class world with an atmospheric oxygen content four times that of Earth.
An alien missile locks onto Alan's shuttle,
which dissuades Koenig from further explorations.
Before long, more alien probes arrive -
and render settlement of the planet unnecessary.
The alien probes create an oxygen-rich atmosphere on the moon,
which thins out at 20,000 feet.
This will apparently be enough to protect people from the sun's harmful UV rays.
A couple of volunteers from the command crew go for a stroll.
Soon everyone is outside, having a picnic.
There is even a game of tennis,
although at no point is the moon's reduced gravity mentioned.
Koenig works out a way to open the Moonbase's windows.
Apparently they have handles for that very purpose!
The alien probe changes the weather,
so there is enough rainfall to grow crops.
Koenig points out that moonbase is in a crater,
so it will end up at the bottom of a lake.
Helena leads a mission on Eagle Two-Eight,
but the atmospheric issues cause it to crash.
Eagles One, Twelve and Two-Four are sent on the search-and-rescue mission.
This really begs the question of how many Eagles there are.
Paul Kano mentions that five or six Eagles need repairs,
and Koenig indicates they are less than half the total number.
This deteriorates into a survival story,
like Flight of the Phoenix.
The crash survivors are basically stuck in a desert,
and one of them starts to mentally unravel.
At least it gives the supporting cast something to do.
The alien gifts are all a bag of mixed blessings.
The new atmosphere means that the moon-dust gets blown everywhere.
When the moon leaves the solar system,
the atmosphere will freeze into an ice-cap.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 21]
Space Brain
Shown 29th Jan 1976
Reviewed 2nd April 2006 [Sunday]
The moonbase crew detect a strange energy field approaching.
They send out an Eagle to investigate,
and a strange super-heavy meteorite is sent back.
Victor dials down the gravity field in his lab,
so he can get the meteorite on his scales.
We learn that an Eagle weighs 320 tons,
and that moonbase uses artificial gravity.
Of course, this is a
Star Wars
technology that enables repulsorlift and tractor beams.
Koenig sends out another Eagle with his top pilot aboard.
The co-pilot, Kelly (Shane Rimmer -
The Spy Who Loved Me
), takes a space-walk and needs to be rescued.
While in med-bay, he turns out to be under alien influence.
The energy field is a Space Brain,
and the moon is flying directly into its path.
Moonbase Alpha is smothered in green soapy bubbles,
a foam that represents the space brain's immune system.
The crew run around in EVA suits.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 22]
The Troubled Spirit
Shown 5th Feb 1976
Reviewed 9th April 2006 [Sunday]
The episode starts with a musical concert for the crew.
This is just the kind of thing that happened a lot in
Star Trek: TNG
a couple of decades later.
Since the crew have no broadcast media,
they must make their own entertainment.
This time it is an electric guitar player
who plays South Asian sitar music.
This music is heavily re-used throughout the episode,
in order to raise tension in the important scenes.
Moonbase is haunted by a supernatural entity.
Not an alien, this time, but perhaps the ghost of a staff member.
Victor and Dr Russell can track energy-wave patterns,
so the supposed supernatural entity may have a pseudo-since explanation.
Agricultural experiments have been made on Moonbase,
so the colony can remain self-sufficient.
These experiments involve seance-style group telepathy
The entity kills people who have arguments with Mateo,
the scientist in charge ...
Not unlike the Ian McShane storyline in
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 2] Force of Life.
At the end, Helena is overcome by the sight of some gore
and Victor has to shield her eyes.
Since she is a medical doctor, it should be the other way round.
Then Koenig asks what is meant to be an insightful question,
but all he does is indicate how illogical the story is.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 23]
The Testament of Arkadia
Shown 26 Mar 76
Koenig records his Captain's Log,
and recounts the crew's encounter with Arkadia.
The rest of the story is told in flashback.
The moon comes into a strange star system,
and is sucked into the orbit of a strange planet.
Moonbase's energy starts to get depleted,
and the crew will slowly freeze to death in 24 hours.
They take the opportunity to explore the planet,
which is M-class and borderline habitable.
The explorers discover a cave with human skeletons inside.
It turns out they died of radiation poisoning 25,000 years ago.
A nearby wall has a sanskrit inscription
that provides exposition.
Koenig has a hard decision to make.
It will take two years for a colony to become self-sufficient on the planet.
but if they settle on the planet,
since there are over three hundred moonbase crew
they only have enough emergency rations to last six months.
A couple of moonbase crew members commune with the spirits of the dead aliens.
They plan to set up a two-person colony on the planet,
a real-life Adam and Eve situation.
Koenig refuses to help them,
claiming they will need half the moonbase supplies.
Helena accuses them of trying to kill everyone on moonbase.
In reality, this is terrible exaggeration -
they would only need four percent of the Moonbase supplies.
They take the moon buggy and one of the Eagle shuttles too,
but this is less of a worry to Koenig.
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 24]
The Last Enemy
Shown 19th Feb 1976
Reviewed 7th May 2006 [Sunday]
Moonbase floats into a solar system that contains two inhabited planets.
They are on opposing sides of their sun,
and their orbits match each other so they are never in sight of each other.
One world, peopled by beautiful women sends a ship to investigate.
The commander, Dione (
Caroline Mortimer
), wears a dress instead of a uniform - like Servalan in
Blake's Seven
. Later she wears a leather jump-suit,
to look a bit more professional.
Forty years later, her professional-looking jumpsuit
would be deemed sexist because it is too feminine.
Koenig assumes it is a warship because it is very big -
either it has huge firepower, or an army-sized landing party!
He tries to launch all the Eagles simultaneously,
although as usual we only see three.
The attackers use ultrasonic magnetic distortion
to disable the moonbase computer's ability to launch the Eagles.
Then they land their ship, deploy a sensor dish
and an internally mounted quad-barrel rocket-launcher.
Koenig tries to arrange a truce between the two warring worlds.
If he fails, moonbase will be trapped in the battle.
2nd Season 1976
-
Catherine Schell
as Maya [ 2 ]
- Tony Anholt (
) as Tony Verdeschi [ 2 ]
- John Hug as Bill Fraser [ 2 ]
- Jeffrey Kissoon as Dr. Ben Vincent [ 2 ]
- Yasuko Nagazumi as Yasko Nugami [ 2 ]
- Sam Dastor as Dr. Ed Spencer [ 2 ]
- Alibe Parsons as Alibe [ 2 ]
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 1]
The Metamorph
Shown 4th September 1976
Reviewed 14th May 2006 [Sunday]
Moonbase is back, with new faces among the crew.
Helena makes her status report,
342 days after the moon left Earth orbit.
A space warp catapulted them six light years from their previous position.
Their population is down to 297,
and they need titanium to repair the life-support system.
The Moon approaches a new planet, Cyclon.
An exploration shuttle is attacked by the natives,
and Koenig has to negotiate for the crew's return.
The natives are led by Mentor (Brian Blessed -
Flash Gordon (1980)
). His daughter Maya (
Catherine Schell
) becomes a regular crew member of Moonbase this Season.
Unfortunately, Big Brian has evil plans for the humans.
Apparently labour has high value on his world,
because rather than have machines work in their mines
the locals use alien slaves.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 2]
The Exiles
Shown 11 Sep 76
Reviewed 21st May 2006 [Sunday]
Helena (
Barbara Bain
) makes her status report,
403 days after the moon left Earth orbit.
Maya has been trained up in the last couple of months,
and now works the sensor console on the command deck.
Moonbase detects fifty objects,
possibly nuclear missiles, flying around in space.
Koenig personally takes an Eagle up to investigate.
He and Maya recover and open one -
it is a cryopod containing Peter Duncan (
Flash Gordon (1980)
). Duncan says the other cryopods are his people,
exiled from the nearby planet of Golas over three hundred years ago.
The fifty aliens need rescued from cryo-sleep.
Koenig refuses to help them,
even when offered their advanced technology.
Helena mentions that the station's life-support system
cannot handle more than about three hundred people.
Duncan offers to upgrade the wir and water recyclying units.
Koenig does not trust the aliens,
and will not take the risk they might carry a contagion.
That said, he is happy to investigate alien planets every week.
The aliens have psi-powers too. And a hidden agenda.
They are free spirits, as Helena puts it -
free from morals and compassion.
Their suspended animation involves a plastic coating on their skin.
If the coating is damaged, will they begin the rapidly age?
Maya's shape-shifting comes in useful.
She has an intimate moment with Helena and Koenig!
Tony later flirts with her,
something that would become an ongoing thing.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 3]
Journey to Where
Shown 18 Sep 76
Reviewed 28th May 2006 [Sunday]
Moonbase gets a phone call from the future,
courtesy of a neutrino transmission that allows FTL communication.
In the year 2120AD,
some Texan scientists have invented a transporter beam
that can rescue the Moonbase crew.
Koenig is initially suspicious,
and interrogates the caller (Freddie Jones -
Krull
). We learn the 1998 World Series was won by the Boston Red Sox,
and all competitive sport was banned in 2026AD.
The cities are domed over, on platforms atop huge pillars.
Unfortunately pollution has rendered the outside world unliveable.
Koenig eventually agrees to try the plan,
involving faxed plans of a transporter machine.
He, his wife Helena and the third senior crew-member test the transporter out.
Yes, no redshirts on this show!
Instead they risk the only three characters who survived Season one.
Unfortunately the transporter machine is vulnerable to earthquakes.
The three explorers end up on an unknown M-Class planet ...
It is full of medieval Scotsmen!
The strangest thing is that the medical devices on their wrists
continue to send a signal back to moonbase.
Isla Blair
has a small role, as a scientist back on Earth's space station.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 4]
One Moment of Humanity
Shown 25 Sep 76
Reviewed 11th June 2006 [Sunday]
Billie Whitelaw
beams aboard Moonbase, and takes it over.
Koenig and the crew are left with only 48 hours of life support.
Helena was trying on an evening dress.
She and Tony are taken as hostages to the planet Vega,
where the locals taunt them in hope of provoking a reaction.
The servants offer to help the prisoners.
The villains are race of robots who lack emotions,
and thus they also lack a capacity for violence.
Like Commander Data in
Star Trek: TNG
, they want to learn about human emotion.
Unlike him, their end goal is the capacity for genocide of living creatures.
After all, they view biological organisms as a threat
and it would be logical to launch a pre-emptive strike.
Helena and Tony escape back to Moonbase,
but it is now two light years from Planet Vega.
There is nobody else on the base,
implying everyone died or fled.
Helena records her log, 515 days after the Moon left Earth's orbit.
Will she work out what really happened?
Instead she assumes Tony is unstable and potentially dangerous.
The Vegans try to reenact Othello,
and drive Koenig into a murderous jealousy.
However, if the robots learn rage then they can also learn compassion.
Are emotions a strength or a weakness?
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 5]
Brian the Brain
Shown 1 Oct 76
Reviewed 18th June 2006 [Sunday]
Helena makes her log recording,
1150 days after the Moon left Earth orbit.
The computer is reviewing and updating all its files,
and discovers the moon has strayed off its trajectory.
Maya runs a scan for gravity sources,
but there is nothing within range.
They seem to be on collision course with a black dwarf star,
which seems to be their new terminology for what they encountered in
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 10] Black Sun.
Koenig orders the crew to abandon Moonbase,
although he and the command crew all stay put.
There are six Eagles in flight,
possibly all they have left by this stage.
Each could theoretically take fifty people,
although it would be standing room only without room for luggage.
They would have very limited life support,
with no sign of an M-class planet nearby to land on.
They encounter an astronaut (Bernard Cribbins -
Dr Who
), who was lost in space in 1996.
He lands on Moonbase, and is met by Koenig in person -
with a pair of well-armed security goons carrying long-arms.
It turns out he is a robot named Brian the Brain,
a cubic metre of circuits with a sensor-system head on top.
Like a large bulky R2-D2 type, with a talkative personality.
The Earthlings are all taken in by Brian's personality.
However, Maya has a bad feeling about him.
This is quickly proven correct when Brian abducts Koenig and Helena.
He subjects them to a sadistic experiment
in order to check that he can control them.
His goal is to coerce Koenig into helping scavenge nuclear fuel from the mothership,
so that Brian's thousand-year life-expectancy will be expanded exponentially.
In
Star Trek: TOS
the standard defence against killer robots was to confuse them with a logical paradox.
This time, they can use Maya's shape-shifting ability
to drive the robot insane ...
by having her appear as the robot's dead creator.
Koenig and the crew consider reprogramming Brian with the ten commandments.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 6]
New Adam, New Eve
Shown 8 Oct 76
Reviewed 6th August 2006 [Sunday]
Helena makes her log recording,
1095 days after the Moon left Earth orbit.
They detect magnetic turbulence -
and on the other side, an Earth-type world is visible.
A stranger named Magus (Guy Rolfe) appears aboard moonbase.
He has a creepy moustache, but claims to be The Creator,
and offers the crew a second chance for the human race.
They are offered a life on the new M-class world.
Moonbase must send down a team of explorers -
two male and two female.
Magus wants the explorers to act as new Adam and Eves.
However, he pairs Koenig with Maya and Nick with Helena.
Yes, this is more like a captive breeding experiment.
At least it allows the characters to talk together
outside of the normal pair-bonding.
Maya is not just good-looking and shape-shifting,
she also has the brains to deduce what Magus is up to.
His superpowers are based on solar energy.
An implant, a crystal in his brainstem,
gives him unlimited personal power.
This allows him to teleport, and create force-fields.
Not just the ones that trap the humans in place ...
but the ones that hold the planet's surface together
against the moon's gravitational pull.
The Earthlings question as to whether Magus is really Jehovah.
Later he mentions that not only was he known as Merlin,
but he was Simon Magus who met the apostles of the Nazarene
and he was the wizard who dueled Moses in Egypt.
This implies that he was defeated by real Xian prophets,
so the Xian creator-god Jehovah must be real as well.
Unless Moses and Jesus were really super-powered aliens too.
Koenig tries to save some other victims of Magus,
even though they have no useful skills or knowledge.
Evidently moonbase no longer has to limit its population
to less than three hundred mouths to feed.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 7]
The Mark of Archanon
Shown 15 Oct 76
Reviewed 13th August 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 640 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
Moonbase astronauts explore the moon's caves in search of Dylonite crystals.
They discover two humanoid, a man and a boy,
who have been cryogenically frozen.
Naturally, they ignore the warning signs, and take them to Moonbase!
There are literally warning symbols,
in this case similar to ones on the planet Cromm 2.
The aliens are 91.7 percent of human norm.
They quickly learn to speak English.
It turns out the strangers have psychic powers.
Wow, never saw that coming.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 8]
The Rules of Luton
Shown 22 Oct 76
Koenig and Maya (
Catherine Schell
) pick some berries, a breach of The Rules of Luton.
The Judges of Luton, a trio of magical trees,
do not care that berries must be eaten for the plants to procreate.
Instead they sentence the explorers to trial by combat to the death.
Our heroes are hunted by three super-powered aliens,
like Kirk and the Gorn in
Star Trek: TOS
. Koenig gets injured, and Maya has to look after him.
One of the hunters has the power of invisibility.
Luckily, Maya can use her superpower to turn into a rottweiler and sniff him out.
The resulting fight, between dog and invisible man, takes place off-screen.
Maya's powers have their limitations.
When in animal form, she has all the vulnerabilities of that animal.
Also, she can only hold that form for one hour.
But at least when she changes back she has her own clothes on.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 9]
All That Glisters
Shown 29 Oct 76
Helena's official report is dated 565 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
They have detected a planetoid that contains Milgramite,
a rare mineral that is essential for the life-support system.
Eagle Four, with a specially adapted lab section,
is sent down to investigate.
The planetoid is 2,580,000 miles from the Moon
so the crew only have three hours to scout around.
Any longer and the team, including Koenig himself,
will be trapped there while the Moon drifts out of range.
They discover a huge glowing boulder.
The geologist, an English actor (Patrick Mower -
) playing an Irishman who wishes that he was a Texan,
is unable to say what it is of what energy is making it glow.
It is Koenig himself who suggests scanning it for radiation -
the most obvious cause for a rock to emit energy.
Tony is killed by the glowing rock.
The others try to examine it,
in the hope of undoing the damage raising him from the dead.
The good news is they discover that he is not completely dead.
The bad news is that the rock has power over him.
The worse news is that the Eagle is drained of power
so they might not make the deadline to get home.
The rock is alive, and scans the lab.
It uses that old staple of cheap 1970s UK TV SciFi SPFX -
the narrow-beam torch-light.
Yes, anyone who remembers the Mysterons in
Captain Scarlet
or the creepy unknown entities in
Sapphire and Steel
will know exactly what to expect.
The rock wants to be taken off the planet.
Apparently its species drained all the water from the world,
and turned it into an arid desert.
But if water is injested, surely it would be expelled somehow.
The net amount of dihydro-monoxide in the planet's biosphere
would neither increase or decrease.
As always, Maya's super-powers are used to save the day.
She even shows off her brains as the smartest one of the crew
when she works out a way to solve the planetary drought.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 10]
The Taybor
Shown 5 Nov 76
Small items appear aboard Moonbase, teleported in from outside.
When crew members pick them up to investigate,
rather than cordon them off for Security to scan them,
the crew fall victim to unexpected effects.
The station is then boarded by Taybor (Willoughby Goddard),
an interstellar trader reminiscent of the alien-of-the-week in
Lost In Space (1966)
. It turns out that he sent the items as free samples,
and never expected the humans to be so primitive.
Taybor's ship has a hyperspace drive,
and he is willing to trade a copy to Koenig.
In return he wants Maya.
Koenig counter-offers with a robotic copy of her.
Yes, Moonbase has the ability to construct primitive androids -
not artificial intelligences, but lifelike enough.
Moonbase's crew are actually keen to trade with Taybor.
All they have to offer is hand-made goods,
such as knitted blankets and model ships,
created by hobbyists during their off hours.
Well, the only other pastimes available are sunbathing and sports.
Taybor is obsessed with trading, and winning in every transaction.
However, he is a lot more like Harry Mudd in
Star Trek: TOS
than a Ferengi like Quark in
Star Trek: DS9
. He desires beauty, rather than currency -
so he is far better suited to a post-scarcity society.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 11]
Seed of Destruction
Shown 12 Nov 76
Reviewed 19th September 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 1608 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
Commander Koenig, supreme leader of Moonbase Alpha,
visits a mysterious asteroid.
Since he has no bodyguards he is easily overpowered by a doppelganger,
who replaces him aboard the Moonbase.
Helena (
Barbara Bain
) and the other officers must work out why their boss is acting strangely.
Will they mutiny?
The real Koenig is trapped aboard the asteroid,
in a crystaline hall of mirrors.
When a pilot takes an Eagle up to investigate,
Koenig activates Moonbase's point-defence system -
a retractable remote-control laser gun.
It is not in any previous episode,
although it would have been useful on a few.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 12]
The AB Chrysalis
Shown 19 Nov 76
Moonbase detects a mysterious explosion in space.
It is too far away to identify the cause,
but the shockwave takes 143.2 seconds to hit Moonbase.
Real Praxis wave stuff, like in
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
- but with cheap 1970s UK SPFX.
Koenig orders the Eagles to launch,
so they can get somewhere that shields them from the blast.
There are eleven Eagles shown on-screen,
which is the first time we can get an accurate count on their numbers.
Helena's official report is dated 1288 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
For a week they have been travelling towards a series of spacial explosions,
which to a modern-day audience sounds like a supernova.
Koenig assumes the power of the explosions
and their regularity means they were caused on purpose.
Presumably Pulsars had not been discovered by the mid-1970s.
It turns out that the source is a planet.
Koenig and Maya fly out to investigate.
The place is run by an AI that arranges a suitable atmosphere,
and can communicate in English.
It is caretaking while the natives,
a species of chlorine-breathers,
are in their regular hibernation sleep.
When a couple of the natives wake up,
they have to take a vote on whether to spare Alpha or not.
Unfortunately
Sarah Douglas
is not happy with the actions of Alan the pilot,
so she votes to let Alpha be destroyed.
Can Koenig convince the third voter?
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 13]
Catacombs of the Moon
Shown 26 Nov 76
Helena's official report is dated 1196 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
The underground caverns have illuminated signs monitoring air pressure.
This allows the moonbase mining crew to coninue deeper into the caverns,
where they use explosives to loosen rock for ore extraction.
They need to locate Terenium,
a scarce metal essential for the life-support systems.
Patrick Osgood, the chief of the mining operation,
is injured in a cave-in.
He has a vision of his wife Michelle (
Pamela Stephenson
). She is in med-bay, in need of a heart transplant.
Helena is trying to build her an artificial heart,
based on a design perfected in 1987.
Patrick believes that Moonbase is doomed,
but that he can save his wife.
In other words, he is willing to sacrifice everyone else.
He is an explosives expert who thinks he is a prophet of doom.
No good can come of this.
Strangely, Patrick's premonition of a deadly heatwave starts to come true.
Koenig flies off in an Eagle shuttle to investigate the source of the warming.
This leaves Tony to do all the heroics on the ground.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 14]
Space Warp
Shown 3 Dec 76
Helena's official report is dated 1807 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
They have detected a derelict spaceship in the third quadrant.
The boss and the head of security go to investigate personally,
rather than delegate to expendable redshirt types.
Science Officer Maya does not go along,
because she is hospitalised with a strange mental condition.
Helena is stuck looking after her.
The Moon slips through a space warp, and ends up five light years away.
This leaves Koenig and Tony trapped on their Eagle,
with no way to return home to moonbase.
They search the derelict, which is strangely compatible with Earth standards.
The airlock matches perfectly with that of the Eagle,
something which gave the US Space Shuttle difficulties
when they tried to dock with the Soviet Mir station
Maya's condition causes her to lose control of her molecular structure.
She involuntarily transforms into a monster,
which follows its natural instincts and goes on a rampage.
It turns out that her subconscious desire
is to return to her homeworld, which has been destroyed.
Helena and Alan, the two most high-ranking officers,
have to stop her themselves.
In all fairness, Tony Osoba and the other security officers
just get their arses kicked by Maya.
We finally get to see the Eagles hangar.
The launch-pad elevator takes the Eagle to a lower level,
then a crane carries it into the hangar
where at least two others are stored.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 15]
A Matter of Balance
Shown 10 Dec 76
Tony tries brewing his own beer again.
The hydroponics girl (
Lynne Frederick
) helps him out, perhaps because of what the other women refer to as a
teenage crush on Tony.
Of course, he is completely oblivious.
When the girl feels rejected by Tony,
she starts to have creepy visions of the episode's other Guest Star:
professional rent-a-villain Stuart Wilson (
No Escape
).
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 16]
The Beta Cloud
Shown 17 Dec 76
A pilot flies off in Eagle Six,
to investigate a mysterious Space Cloud.
When the shuttle returns, it has only one passenger -
an enormous green slimy alien that looks like Dave Prowse (
Star Wars: A New Hope
) wearing a monster suit.
It starts to tear the station apart, unless the crew can stop it.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 17]
The Lambda Factor
Shown 24 Dec 76
Helena's official report is dated 2308 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
The report is about how Medical Technician Sally Martin (
) has fallen behind with her work, cataloguing all the medical supplies.
Then she fell victim to an invisible force ...
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 18]
The Bringers of Wonder (1)
Shown 4 Aug 77
Reviewed 26th November 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 1912 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
Koenig goes for a joyride in a shuttle, and ends up in a coma.
Luckily the command crew can control his Eagle by remote.
The only treatment is an experimental medical device.
An unexpected starship arrives - the super-swift FTL deep space exploration ship.
Like the Mark IX Hawk, it has design similarities to the Eagle shuttle.
The pilot is Guido (Stuart Damon -
The Champions
), Tony's brother - and the spitting image of Parks in
Space: 1999 [Season 1, Episode 13] Matter of Life and Death
. His passengers are the crew's next of kin.
Apparently a scientist at Harvard built an FTL drive
that is safer than the toxically radioactive Quellar drive.
Koenig perceives the newcomers as green slimy monsters.
He panics, which is very out of character,
and assumes they are evil just because they are ugly.
The crew assume he is halucinating.
The alien babe Maya (
Catherine Schell
) feels left out,
but does not sense anything unusual about the newcomers,
She changes shape a couple of times in the episode.
Firstly she turns into an insect,
although with regard to the differences in body mass
she remains a full-sized humanoid.
Then she becomes an insect cockroach to sneak into a room,
and a giant lizard-man while inside the room.
Finally, while dressed in her normal uniform
she turns into a Kendo player (with full body armour and fighting stave)!.
This is part one of a two-part story.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 19]
The Bringers of Wonder (2)
Shown 11 Aug 77
Reviewed 3rd December 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 2115 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
Somehow this is over two hundred days (six months) since the previous episode,
which was the first part of this two-part story.
It turns out that Alpha has been invaded by telepathic aliens.
They live off radiation.
For some reason they cannot just take it from a nearby sun.
They need it from Moonbase's radioactive waste -
but rather than just asking for it,
they fool the pilot into trying to blow it up!
Koenig must prevent the explosion ...
Koenig reminds the others that although they have been in space for months,
many years must have passed on Earth.
This is the kind of scientific observation that is often neglected in this show.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 20]
The Seance Spectre
Shown 18 Aug 77
Reviewed 10th December 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 2012 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
It turns out that Alpha has a specialist team of explorers.
Their leader is unhappy, though.
I mean, Koenig always leads the Away Teams and always discovers the planets are uninhabitable.
Naturally, this leads to mutinous behaviour.
Carolyn Seymour
breaks the team out of quarantine.
Then we discover that their special skill is to use psychic seances!
It turns out that yet ANOTHER uninhabitable world is in their path.
The only way to save moonbase is by pushing it onto a new course.
Koenig must explode the radioactive waste.
He evacuates Moonbase, leaving himself (and an untypically weak Maya) to detonate the waste.
This is the very thing they tried to prevent the aliens doing in the previous episode.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 21]
Dorzak
Shown 25 Aug 77
Reviewed 17th December 2006 [Sunday]
Helena's official report is dated 2009 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
This is three days before the events of the previous episode,
when the command centre had been in lockdown for three weeks.
None of that is mentioned this week.
Alpha encounters an alien ship from the planet of Croton.
It is broadcasting the universal signal for plague,
which presumably Moonbase understands
because Maiya is from a star-faring civilisation.
Luckily its airlock is compatible with the moonbase one.
Aboard are a couple of beautiful women, and their prisoner.
His name is Dorzak, and he is the last man of Maiya's race.
Dorzak (Lee Montague) is regarded as a dangerous maniac by the alien women.
He does not have Maiya's shapeshifting skill,
but he is a powerful telepath instead.
Richard Le Parmentier (
Star Wars: A New Hope
) is one of the moonbase crew.
He is credited as Ed Malcolm,
not to be confused with a different character named Ed in the episode,
but appears to be an uncredited character referred to on-screen as Sam.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 22]
Devil's Planet
Shown 1 Sep 77
Helena's official report is dated 2306 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
Koenig's shuttle crash-lands on a prison-planet.
The convicts are men, the sadistic guards are beautiful women in skin-tight costumes.
More than a little bit reminiscent of The Two Ronnies sketch
The Worm That Turned ...
Jelto (Angus MacInnes -
Star Wars: A New Hope
) is one of the inmates, while Bond girl
Cassandra Harris
is Seres the Controller.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 23]
The Immunity Syndrome
Shown 8 Sep 77
Helena's official report is dated 2310 days after leaving Earth's orbit,
two days after detecting an Earth-type planet in the Western quadrant.
The explorers discover an alien building.
It is sealed with molecular bonding,
and the door is powered by solar cells.
Tony has what looks like a mental breakdown,
and becomes a danger to himself and others.
Koenig tracks him down with minimal help,
on the theory that Tony might kill an Extra but not a main character.
While Helena is in command of Moonbase,
the Away team gets medical support from Doctor Sam.
The planet's biosphere turns hostile to humans,
and the atmosphere starts to corrode all metal.
The Eagles cannot land to rescue the Away team.
Luckily, Moonbase has an orbital glider made from carbon fibre.
Helena and Maiya abandon their posts
and stage a two-woman rescue mission.
Of course, the glider is a one-way trip
so they have no way of actually rescuing anyone.
Luckily the alien structure was built by previous explorers.
It contains video recordings in the English language,
so as usual Maiya is not needed for translation purposes.
It also contains a special survival suit
that is a perfect fit for John Koenig.
He wears it so he can parlay with an alien super-intelligence,
and conclude the storyline in a non-violent confrontation.
Space: 1999 [Season 2, Episode 24]
The Dorcons
Shown September 1977
Reviewed 19th June 1999 [Saturday]
Helena's official report is dated 2409 days after leaving Earth's orbit.
This ep sees Moonbase Alpha encounter a spacecraft of unknown origin.
The Earthlings are duely scanned with that mainstay of British 1970s SPFX
- the flashlight.
The ship turns out to belong to The Dorcons after whom this episode is entitled.
Their leader, Patrick Troughton (one of this reviewer's least favourite Doctor in
Doctor Who
, but now a rather competent villain) wants Maia the Zykon's brainstem
so he can replace his own with it and become immortal.
Lucky for Commander Koenig, the Dorcons have a few problems with internal politics.
The idea behind immortality in this episode,
that it requires the life of another sentient, appears in Season One of
Babylon Five
. It appears that
Blake's 7
was not the only British 1970s TV show that influenced JMS!
