I *loved* this show as a kid, split personality seasons and all, though I do prefer Year 1. I think it was really the first SF series to have strong roles for women, especially Year 2 with the Helena-Maya combination. Yeah, the science was for shit, but oh, did it bring the pretty. I'm still dazzled by the Piri sets, even if a lot of it was styrofoam and ping-pong balls. And "End of Eternity", with Peter Bowles as Balor, may be one of the most disturbing hours of television ever created. So, anybody remember: Alan Carter, fainting Sandra Benes, computer nut Kano, beer-drinkin' Tony Verdeschi, Tanya, Lovable Victor, fabulous Maya, brittle Dr. Russell, and "Whoops, I blew up the moonbase!" John Koenig? Anybody?

I loved this show as a kid, find in nigh unwatchable as an adult, barely remember any specific episodes, but to this day think "Alan Carter!" whenever I see Nick Tate in anything (such as episodes of Lost, Farscape or ST:TNG).

The Eagle was one of my favorite spaceships, right up there with the Viper from BSG. Many was the class I would spend doodling those two ships in the margins of my notebook. I was so jealous of my friend Sean, who had the toy Eagle. I'm always tempted to try and get one off of eBay but have resisted so far. And the guns they had were way cool, too. I did have the toy for that (it shot little colored disks, IIRC) and wish I still did. I refuse to get rid of the single issue I have of the Space 1999 comic book, featuring some of John Byrne's earliest work.

I too have several of the old charlton comics Space:1999 comics and loved the series as a kid, even though my mom would watch it with me and mutter about it being a crappy Star Trek rip off. Then I saw it again as an adult when the SciFi channel was rerunning it and was horrified. I sat there saying over and over, "I had no taste and judgment as a kid. This is crap." My mother on the other hand took the position that it wasn't nearly as bad as she remembered and she was actually enjoying it. Go figure.

Who did Nick Tate play in TNG?

I used to have an Eagle, a Viper, and X-Wing models as a kid. Back when it first aired my favorite character was Maya. I haven't seen the show in twenty years so I don't know how much I would enjoy it now.

Nick Tate had a couple of Trek roles. In TNG he was the shuttle "captain" that crashed with Picard and Wesley in Wil Wheatons last regular episode. He also showed up in DS9 as Bilbey, the Orion Syndicate guy O'brien befriended when the Chief went undercover. The O'brien's got his cat at the end.

Space:1999 is a childhood favorite. The first year really confused me though. Lots of surreal episodes and the like. Year 2 was more "regular" sci-fi, and I did like shapeshifter Maya and had a big gay crush on Tony. I did miss Professor Bergman that 2nd year, though. I used to have the Moonbase Alpha Technical Book (or whatever it was called), and there was a timeline in it that said Bergman died when his spacesuit malfunctioned.

This show has my two most traumatic t.v. moments ever. That's what I get for watching this as kid.
One eye, tentacle, Doppler sound, hypno mummifier critter in the derelict ship field scared the bejezzus out of me. Yeah for post traumatic stress guy giving it the heroic whacking with the fire axe.
Then the aliens on their way to earth needing a passenger for the stasis cube. That end scene was so Poe. Slow buried alive style death for the politician. Shudder.
Victor's senseless death made me cry.
How many packs of hairspray did Helen have in storage on that base? But I loved it when she put her foot down to the commander.

There's an article over on Michelle Erica Green's website (not sure of the URL, but a search on her name should produce it) in her reviews section on Space:1999 and comparisons to ST:Voyager's premise. It's a nice tribute to 1999.

I also remember having the stun gun and comlink toys. The stun gun I had didn't shoot discs, though, it was all electronic with flashing lights and sounds. I built many eagles and had the moonbase alpha kit also.

I rememeber liking the show as a child, but upon viewing it as an adult... peeyew!

Come to Moonbase Alpha for the disco-age futurism; stay for the shippiness.

Qwho, thanks for mentioning the Green article. I had never read it before; it's terrific.

I too had a crush on Tony as a young'un-- and, even more embarrassingly, on John Hug (Fraser). Neither do much for me as an adult. On the other hand, Nick Tate... improves as I age.

For those who haven't seen it: Zienia in Message from Moonbase Alpha.

I grew up in the UK -- if memory serves (and it doesn't always), I think Space 1999 was on its first run when I was a wee one in south England. I loved it. Then we came to the US, and about the only bit of Britannia left for me was Space 1999, Dr. Who, and Tarzan -- okay, Tarzan was American but I wasn't even 9 yet, I didn't understand that. I loved Space 1999 right up to the point I checked out the videos from the library and couldn't get through them. It was like all the vitality and wonder had been drained right out of them in the intervening 25 years.

I still like Maya, though. The episode where someone wanted to harvest her brain stem freaked me out for years.

I would love to see this show again to find out if I'd still like it... I remember the somewhat cheesy sets, but in spite of them I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was something my father, brother and I could all agree on. One other thing: I don't remember Martin Landau's character ever smiling, and I thought he was the sternest, crabbiest guy in the entire universe. Geez, Koenig, lighten up.

This will make some of you laugh: I had absolutely no idea that Martin Landau and Barbara Bain had ever done anything before this! ("No, Dad, I never heard of a show called Mission: Impossible. Are you sure?")

Me too. I think Space 1999 was responsible for the first nightmare I ever remember having, and that tentacle creature had a staring role. I couldn't watch the entire episode; I kept running in and out of the room.

Other than that, I remember nothing about the show, except that the moon was set adrift, and there was some alien/psychic woman or something. I'd love it if my local SF station started running this show again, though, if only for the cheese.

I like season 1 of Space:1999, because I think it was the last big tv sci-fi series made before Star Trek finally conquered the world. Back when 1999 was being conceived, you could tell that the templates the producers were looking to were 2001, Solaris, all those late 60's/early 70's films that tried to use sci fi as a metaphor, not just cowboys in outer space. That's why there are so many episodes in season 1 that are about the Alphans coming into contact with a 'thing' of some variety that has a profound experience on them. But by the time season 2 was being planned, Star Trek had become so wide reaching that everything had to be made the same way. So suddenly there's a friendly alien, fistfights with the bad alien species of the week, and almost every episode ended with a forced group chuckle.

I was given a book that was published in the early/mid 80's where various big name American science fiction writers and fans had got together to vote on the worlds top 20 and worst 10 sci fi series. Space: 1999 was top of the worst list with a bullet, and when you read the comments that the critics made, they basically boiled down to 'This is not Star Trek'. It's like at that point Trek had become so much the blueprint for a certain type of science fiction programme (enclosed group of military/scientific types exploring space) that if anyone tried to make a series that used this premise in a different way, people just couldn't make the mental adjustment to deal with it. And in a lot of ways, it's still the same. The creator of Babylon 5 tells a great story about a letter he got in the early years of the series from a sci fi fan saying he had tried to watch the series but had had to give up, as he couldn't accept people using communicators attached to the back of their hands when it is well known that in the future chest communicator pins will be the norm. What chance did poor, solemn, slow moving Space: 1999 have in this market?

Having said that, I do have tremendously fond memories of staggering out of a pub with a bunch of friends at 9.13 pm on 13th September 1999 to make sure the moon was still in orbit.

I'm pretty sure Star Trek original series pre-dates Space:1999. My recollection is that it was ITV's attempt to replicate Trek.

I always thought the theme music was pretty nifty.

Oh God yeah, Trek ran 1966-1969, and Space: 1999 kicked off around 1972. What I meant was that it was the last big tv series made before Trek dominated the sci fi world, because despite what some of the more militant Trekkies would have you believe, it did take a while for Trek to sink in, first to the US pop culture, and then globally. I don't think it was an out and out attempt to recreate Trek, more of an attempt to put a positive spin on UFO, Gerry Andersons previous live action series, and when you look at the list of movies that Gerry Anderson showed investors, and Landau and Bain, to get a gist of what the new series would be like, it's clear this was not some Wagon Train To The Stars. It just really annoys me, to see a tv show that really tried to do something meaningful in its first year turned into a shoddy rubber monster show in its second because networks execs didn't want anything that might disturb the viewers and make them think.

Heh. That's the kind of thing I like to do too.

Much as I liked Star Trek, it seems ridiculous that all sci-fi shows of that general era were somehow expected to conform to that so-called "ideal". Not doubting you in the slightest, HauntedBathroom, just sorry to hear it.

I have to dissagree; replace the Enterprose with a runaway moon and their pretty much indistinguishable.

Space: 1999 aired from Fall 1975 to Spring 1977, just as the Star Trek phenomenon was catching on world-wide, and just before Star Wars took over the universe and changed the rules forever. Maybe if Gerry Anderson and Co. had hung on for just one more year, the post-Star Wars sci-fi wave would have carried it to new heights. Who knows?

I sort of agree with Haunted Bathroom about Space: 1999's willingness to go for the poetic and transcendent in the first season. It succeeded far more often than you might have been led to believe. Since the Alphans were destined never to find a home (because, duh, end of series!), the door was more open to poignancy and tragedy. I loved first season eps like "Another Time, Another Place" (the duplicate moon and the pyrrhic victory of their "return" to Earth), "Black Sun" (the omniscient entity), "The Last Sunset" (the ever-so-brief terraforming of the Moon), and "Collision Course" (a fascinating study about the concept of faith). It helped that Barry Morse's Victor Bergman gave the proceedings that extra touch of gravitas they needed to avoid cheese-dom.

OTOH, those monster of the week eps were pretty darn awful more often than not, and Season 2 kept the wrong part of the Space: 1999 forumla, tossing the more intellectual material out the airlock. (Still, I thought Catherine Schell was yummy as Maya, and I didn't complain too loudly. Even if she did develop a romantic crush on an utter schmuck.) The only S2 ep that duplicated the kick of S1 was "Bringers of Wonder," which included the hilarious and creepy sight of brainwashed Alphans thinking they were "vacationing on Earth" while they were actually setting up the nuclear waste dumps to go boom. The plasma monsters of BoW still give a friend of mine nightmares. (Question of the day: would you rather have the illusion of a lifetime of happiness in a single moment before you die or a lifetime of misery in reality?)

Don't miss Space: 1999 at all, hope they don't go for a revival like Galactica--but it had its moments.

In its second year certainly, but to begin with Moonbase Alpha was a very different place to the Enterprise. They had no support mechanism to back them up, so rather then boldly going, Space: 1999 had an ethos of 'dig in, endure and eventually survive'. Rather then a group of similar minded people who had chosen this lifestyle, the Alphans were forced together with the realisation that this was it, these 100+ humans were going to be all you had for the rest of your life, so you had to grit your teeth and put up with them. Actually, one of the few episodes from year 2 that I like kind of looks at this angle - in such an enclosed community, how do people deal with the break up of relationships, and seeing their ex move onto someone else? Of course, it was much too soapy an idea for a sci fi series to really explore in any depth in the 70's, but if the proposed Space: 1999: The Next Generation ever happened, this would be have to be a part of the ongoing story. Of course, for that to work they'd have to make sure they used the same actors every episode, not just for the leads, but for all the extras in the background. I used to get such a chuckle seeing a different set of extras each week, and trying to contrive reasons why we hadn't seen these people in Main Mission before.



I don't know if I'm being clear about what I mean espie, but I had a big clear out of old books and magazines a while back, and it does seem that up till around the mid-80's there was a herd mentality in viewing this type of sci fi, and if it wasn't trying to be Trek, it was no good. That's why so many Trekkies had trouble with Next Gen when it first appeared - it was too talky, not enough fist fights that lead to the Captains shirt being ripped off, where was the threatening-to-destroy-the-Enterprise-at-the-drop-of-a-hat tactic? It was called Star Trek, it was created by Gene Roddenbury, it was set in a logical extrapolation of the 23rd century, but because it wasn't primary coloured and push buttoned, it took Trekkies around three years to learn to love the show.Of course, it didn't help that Next Gens first two years were full of shit stories, but there you go.

Back on topic, was there ever an explanation for where Paul Marrow and Kano went between seasons? I used to adore Kano and his love for C.O.M.P.U.T.E.R., and that episode where Prentice Hancock ate magic mushrooms and thought he was God was a joy to behold.

So it was kind of like "Lost", but in space....

(...I'm really sorry for that...)

For what it's worth, I recall that the "Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual" reported that David Kano and Paul Morrow were killed in an Eagle crash.

I've been watching some eps I downloaded recently. Wow, I guess I was kinda dumb as a kid to have liked this...

I vaguely remember watching this as a kid, but even then the whole 'moon knocked out of orbit and visits other solar systems' bit made me giggle too much to appreciate anything else.

oops...

This was up there as a momento of my childhood. I also went insane in the membrane and bought the entire A&E DVD collection and wasted my adult time rewatching my wasted yout.

Came to several conclusions/opinions after almost 3 decades between viewings.
1) Season 1 was the best season.
2) Maya is the hottest alien hottie with side burns ever.
3) Allan Carter should have invested in taking karate lessons. It seemed almost every episode, he got the crap beat out of him.
4) The best episodes were the weirdest. One eyed life tentacle beast freaked me out. Same with the Seance episode with the over the top 70s era guitar musak--half fried Italian actor with craw, er, claw.
5) Season one was pretty depressing.
6) Barbara Bain was a hot mama, but she was better in Season 1 where she didn't strain her acting skills by playing a cold fish.
7) Barry Morse aka Bergman was great with the gravitas (as mentioned earlier) but his science sucked. "Ultrasonic magnetic radiation" WTF?
8) Season Two sucked because it totally made a mockery of season 1. Instead of deep (for TV) philosophical issues (kill or be killed) we had wrestlers in rubber suits of the week. Only good episodes were the invasion of the space spaghetti (Bringers of wonder.)
9) Barry Gray captured the 70s with his theme music. Guitar with orchestra works.

I still watch the DVDs from time to time, but I find myself focused on Season 1 and its depressing weirdness. I seem to watch Season 2 episodes if I want to see Allan get shitkicked or a good laugh.

A common problem with a lot of 1970s British sci-fi that I've seen is the horrible over-emoting by the actors in 'dramatic' scenes.

Anyone who's also seen Doomwatch (1970) and Survivors (1976), two wonderful British sf series, might agree. On Space:1999 it was all the weirder because here you had these very antiseptic, clinical sets, and normally everyone was very chilly (one of the main criticisms of the show, and not just at Barbara Bain, was that everyone seemed to hate each other)...

...but when they were understressed they were clamping their hands to their ears and EMOTING in extreme close-ups that were far more frightening than any rubber monsters that might show up.

Yep. I don't know how canonical it can be considered, but apparently..."On 16th July 2000, four days after the Moon left the planet Arkadia, Morrow died alongside David Kano when a booster on their Eagle failed and the ship crashed on the launch pad."

Speaking of which, did they ever explain what became of the good doctor played by Barry Morse?

Dr. Bergman's mechanical heart crapped out between S1 and S2. Real reason (according to my fading memories of an old interview with Ed The Sock) was that Barry Morse was sick of the stupidity and wanted a better written show or he'd quit. Didn't happen so Bergman died. The producers were annoyed with him and basically zeroed him out out of spite.

Too bad, because I liked him. Victor was one of the better characters on the show. He gave it some intellectual oohmph (even if his science was awful) like Spock did on ST.

Now that you mention it, I think I remember that from an interview of him in StarLog magazine. I had mixed feelings about him. He seemed like the friendly Mr. Wizard of the group but he always seemed to have the stupidest lines of technobabble before the later versions of Trek came along.

Barry Morse always struck me as the prototypical Englishman (even if he was a Canadian transplant) actor who doesn't take to kindly to fools on or off the stage. I got the feeling during the Ed the Sock interview that he was going on the impression that 1999 was going to be SF Shakesphere.

Considering that it was an Anderson Production, that wasn't going to happen. Don't get me wrong, I like most Anderson shows, but I also know that their shows were pretty low on the intellect scale lacking in basic skiense and littered with incomprehensible tacknobabble. Part of the problem, I suspect, was that they used the same writers who wrote their kidvid puppet shows to write their live action "adult" shows.

I would not be surprised if he turned to someone on the set after reading one of the scripts and said, "What is this shit?"

Faulty memories, but the question that got the loudest laugh from me during the Ed the Sock interview was when Ed asked Barry:
"Did you ever catch Koenig and Russell doing it in the Eagle?"

Probably how his poor mechanical heart crapped out in the first place.

ETA: Oh. Heh. He blowed up real good, though, right?

Actually, I read that Bergman's absence was never really explained, but that an excised line of dialogue indicated that he blowed up in a faulty spacesuit.

Midnight Creeper,

You might be right, but I got my info from what was called an "official" 1999 fan group faq. I'm not sure it is canon, but it makes more sense to me (considering his mechancial heart was mentioned more than a few times) than Victor doing an Outland...

Of course, one point in your favor is the number of times in the series that a helmet visor popped open in space. Damn lowest bidder.

Badly remembered Quote from Mad Magazine spoof of Outland after another guy blows up from explosive decomp:
"Sob, sob, sob..."
"Are you his friend?"
"No, I'm the janitor and I have to clean this up."

Just found Space 1999 on dvd. God Bless Netflix. Keep kicking myself and faulty memory because I completely forgot that the whole moon was blown out of orbit. For some reason I thought it was just part of the moon. Loved Maya as a kid and can't wait to get to those eps even though it seems the consensus is that Season 2 sucked compared to Season 1.

He did in one of the eps I watched last night and he's one of those guys that just looks better when not smiling.

Watching this as an adult I can't get Martin Landau's Bela Lugosi from Ed Wood out of my head. Very distracting.

1999 - top cheese. I'm one of the very few people in the entire world who actually prefer S2 to S1. Yes, S1 is higher quality (relatively speaking, at least) but S2 is more fun. Well, except for the episodes that make you want to rip out your eyes and hurl them at the TV ('All That Glisters', 'The Taybor', the brain-dead 'runaround' shows where some random monster invades Alpha for no particular reason).

I've even got the Derek Wadsworth S2 score on my iPod. It's Seventies jazz-funk-tastic! Far more entertaining that John Barry's usual Thunderbirds-y/atonally experimental stuff from S1.

Landau looks somewhat threatening smiling, because he's got a big downturned mouth and a lot of teeth. Kind of shark-like.

And don't forget--there's been a fairly recent series of novels:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/096772801...ce&n=283155

Hopefully they feature regular beatings of Tony Verdeschi.

I'm fairly certain that's how I saw it as a kid. The more I watch the more its coming back to me that I used to moan and groan when "the old guy" (the professor) was on instead of Maya. Now I don't mind it so much, the professor kind of reminds me a bit of a Captain Picard and Data type guy.

Post-Futurama, I now find it impossible to take stereotypical SF 'professors' the remotest bit seriously. "Pass me the speech centre of the brain!"

Space 1999 fans should check out this site. The webmistress has decorated her house to look like Moonbase Alpha!

Holy shit! That's like the definition of having too much time and too much money! Although, to be fair, it seems to be more in the style of Moonbase Alpha then a staight rip of the sets. I suppose you could claim you were a huge fan of that particular style of decor then a mad fan obsessed with living in your favourite tv show. It's still a million miles better then that Star Trek house that was on eBay.

What Star Trek house?

Space 1999 - surely there's never been a show with such an identity crisis?? Never before have I seen a series that makes such a leap from one stylistic extreme to another.

The first season is a moody, philosophical, fatalistic, intentionally drab and obviously 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired series, whilst the second was cheap and cheerful, straightforward pulp adventure.

Martin Landau always seemed rather wooden and dull next to William Shatner's Captain Kirk, but now his performance comes across as a rather more subtle and layered. And then there was Barbara Bain's somewhat "minimalist" acting approach as Dr. Russell.

I agree that Year 1 did have a story arc of sorts. There's plenty of incidents during season one ("Black Sun", "Collision Course" and finally "The Testament Of Arkadia") that suggest the Alphans' course was predetermined. I remember feeling that the show represented a genuine alternative to the cosiness of Star Trek, in that the Alphans would never make it home or find a new one, and frankly, some of the episodes were somewhat depressing.

It's therefore easy to see why Year 1 wasn't a commercial success. People watched the exhilirating titles sequence with the fabulous "wah wah" theme tune (one of the best ever, IMO) and then they got this moody, cerebral, philosophical stuff. It was probably a little ahead of its time and certainly wasted on kids watching on Saturdays.

My favourite character was definitely Maya, and she is indeed the highlight of the otherwise mediocre second season. Catherine Schell brought a great deal of poignancy to the part, and brought out the innocent, vulnerable side to Maya's character rather than simply playing the token alien, and she gave her heart and soul to the scripts no matter how dire they were - and some of those second season episodes were pretty lousy e.g. The Rules Of Luton. The American producer saw the name Luton on a sign whilst driving on the motorway and thought it would be a good name for a planet!! Which rather sums up the creative regime in place during the making of Year Two.

It was something that was floating around eBay a while back. Someone had decorated their house in the style of the Enterprise from Next Gen, so basically lots of those touch responsive panels with interior lights, lots of moulded furniture and a shitload of beige carpet. If I'm remembering correctly he had his living room decked out as a bridge, so there were lots of free standing panels and consoles in it. Basically, the difference between the Star Trek house and this one was the Space:1999 house is inspired by the design of the series, and the Trek one was created by someone wanting to live on board a starship. I can't remember why he was selling it, but I think he wanted some ludicrous price and it failed to sell.

Marking the tenth anniversary of the day---September 13, 1999--when the nuclear waste dumps on the moon exploded and hurled the moon out of Earth's orbit.