Space: 1999 -- 9,132 Days After Leaving Earth's Orbit ...

this episode: Intro (Season 0, Episode 0). I commemorate an anniversary.

I have always enjoyed Space: 1999. As a kid, I thought it was great. As a teenager, I still enjoyed it, despite being aware of the howlers it shared with so many other science-fiction offerings. Star Trek had the impossibility of a transporter, so why not have a series of atomic explosions push the Moon out of Earth’s orbit on Sept. 13, 1999? “Well, the amount of energy needed to move the Moon from orbit would vaporize it.” Details. Details. Stop being such a joyless scold.

For two main reasons, the show triggers a lot more nostalgia in me as an adult than any of my other sci-fi favorites.

First, Space: 1999 not only put a near-future date (24 years away) on its events, the show’s makers doubled down on the bet by rammed that date -- a giant Sept. 13, 1999, in Futura Black font on a solid-color background -- down the viewers’ eyeholes every week during the opening credits. The only other show I can think of that comes close to pinning an exact date with such primacy is Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space, which put the Robinsons’ departure from Earth as Oct. 16, 1997, a mere 32 years in the audience’s future.

Second, Space: 1999’s theme music is tremendous. The relative quality of different musical compositions is highly subjective. The theme music for Space: 1999’s contemporary Land of the Lost was memorable and was certainly the product of people who knew what they were doing musically. But the banjo and vocals as Marshall, Will, and Holly plummet to their fate are simply no match for the dozen-plus instruments playing at orchestral levels in Space: 1999’s theme music. The former was more a case of “Okay, what have we got in the budget for the opening?” The latter was “How much do you need to do the opening theme right?” Nor is this a case of the Americans not knowing how to do theme music “right.” Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants all had exceptional openings from John Williams -- yes, that John Williams -- several years before Space: 1999 debuted. 

In the reality of this world, on Sept. 13, 1999, some of the Space: 1999 fanbase threw a convention to celebrate the show’s “Breakaway Day” even though the Moon resolutely stayed in orbit. Now, 25 years later, the fans seem to have let Sept. 13, 2024, slip through the cracks, at least as far as throwing a big event. 1975 was a long time ago, and I think people are still Covid-shy about conventions that draw people from all over the globe. 

Still … the fans have not all fallen into total silence. A small output of merchandise continues to be made. Jeffrey Morris is finishing up a documentary about the program’s iconic Eagle spacecraft and its prominence in science fiction. I look forward to seeing that documentary when he finishes it.

So, to mark the 25-year anniversary of the Moon leaving Earth’s orbit, I will revisit the show’s episodes and view them from a modern-day perspective, 25 years after each episode's initial broadcast.

next episode: Breakaway (Season 1, Episode 1). John Koenig, the new commander of Moonbase Alpha, has the worst first week at work in human history when the Moon is sent hurtling into space after an atomic explosion. Originally aired: September 4, 1975.

this episode: Collision Course (Season 1, Episode 3). Koenig engages in a faith-based initiative as Moonbase Alpha heads toward a collision with a planet. Originally aired: September 18, 1975.

"Collision Course" is described as 13th in the season in some lists. But a close watch of the episode makes that a bit unlikely. At one point, one of the security guards Helena Russell summons via commlink ask her to identify herself. You don't recognize the chief medical officer of an outpost with barely 300 people on it? It must be early days. Even more convincing? In the "climactic" scene, John Koenig has the entire complement of Main Mission covered with one hand laser. They're all acting like it's set to kill, as though the possibility of it being set to stun is an impossibility, so it's pretty likely the stun/kill duality hadn't been introduced into the prop yet.  

On balance, the whole thing is somewhat of a shambles. 

First, the special effects are terrible. I don't blame the designers. The show was made in the 1970s. Every single shot was physical. If you took 12 hours to set up a pyrotechnic effect that didn't go off right, tough. Maybe you could schedule enough time to retry it, but you are working on a timetable. The placing of the mines looks plausible, but the explosion and the subsequent radiation cloud that the Eagles go through are completely unconvincing. Almost as unconvincing as the fake eye bags glued to Margaret Leighton's face.

The major problem though? The whole episode screams, "Still working out the kinks." 

First comes the convenient jammed release mechanism when Alan Carter tries to deploy the final nuclear charge. In addition, that Eagle has engine trouble. When laid out on a table, the fix is easy. They could have had the engine trouble slow Carter's Eagle. He gets in, lays down the charge, starts to leave, while we all see that back in Main Mission, Koenig holds the countdown to give him time to get clear. Clean, effective, no confusion. Easy to maintain the tension. Or, don't have an engine malfunction. Have Carter proceeding as normal. Doo doo doo. "Oh no! It's jammed!" Then have him waste vital minutes trying to free it. He succeeds, but is now delayed from getting away. The scene could then show him accelerating away from the bomb-filled asteroid, bead of sweat trickling down his manly blond brow, engine warning lights coming on ... . You get the idea. But putting in BOTH? Halves the excitement. (Still, even with a half-this-half-that scene, Martin Landau actually gets to have some emotional reaction -- you can see his eyes get teary; it's a nice touch by the actor.)

Second are the multiple instances of "Wait? What?":

• They don't notice the asteroid until it's so close that they have to race 12 bombs out to it? Nor do they see a planet many times larger than Mars (which I can see with my naked eye) just a little farther out? 

• When Koenig, Carter, and Paul Morrow get back, Koenig races to Main Mission. Morrow stays with Carter for at least a few moments, and, somehow, Morrow walks into Main Mission just a few seconds after Koenig to let him know Carter's clear of radiation. 

• When Koenig gets to Main Mission? He goes to Victor Bergman who reports that he's been thinking about the problem. Koenig's thrilled. The next thing we see? Bergman and Morrow spitballing fixes to the situation. Wait, what was Bergman thinking then? "John, I think we should open the question up to the whole group, see if anyone has some out-of-the-box thinking to offer on this." Maybe he's letting Morrow natter on to be polite.

• In the same vein, the planet they're heading to -- the one which Koenig somehow knows as soon as he sees it is on a collision course with Moon Base Alpha -- which is over 30 times larger than the Moon, doesn't show up on the sensors at all. When they spot it, it's just over 100 hours away.

• After everyone's back on Alpha, Koenig goes up for another look. A giant ship comes up from the planet and intercepts him. At one point he announces that he's going to try "evasive action." The Eagle tilts up and down a little. Remember that scene in Star Wars where Han Solo's trick for evading patrols is to drift ever so slightly to one side? The scene also evokes memories from an early episode of the 1960s Lost in Space when the Jupiter II is swallowed up by a giant space ship. The entire shot's a dead copy of it.

• Koenig, having been convinced somehow to take a spiked dose of Space NyQuil, is awoken by Arra. He breaks out of his quarters using his conveniently available -- and still activated -- commlock. He quickly overpowers two guards, grabs a hand laser, and exits. Meanwhile, Bob Mathias is overpowered by Carter in sickbay. Carter -- who still doesn't have a bandage on the gash on his forehead -- walks out, meets Koenig, and they plan their next step. They ambush the people in Main Mission. Koenig orders the doors locked via his commlink (still functioning). As the doors begin to close, Russell and Mathias race in. Where the hell, exactly, were they that they're just racing in that moment? Why didn't they warn Main Mission? Same question for the security guards.  

• When Operation Shockwave is ready to go, Morrow doesn't detonate instantly. There's a countdown. Okay, I know, I know, the countdown is for when the charges arrive at the correct location. But that doesn't make sense either because the planet at that point is only a few seconds away. 

• Even less sense is to be found in the final standoff. Koenig has the one (apparently the only) hand laser in Main Mission. With this, he's holding off at least a dozen people who are all seconds away from being crushed by a planet. And in the big fight scene when people are straining for the button and being held back and it's all turmoil and confusion, only one or two people rush Koenig and Carter at a time. All the rest of them just stand there.  

Of course, tropes are present. The main ones being "space cobwebs" to hint at tremendous age, a character wearing a sinister-appearing costume (in this case, a black veil) for no particular reason, and (that old stand-by) the security guards who face away from the door of the person they're watching. Ask Reed and Malloy from Adam-12. As surely as there are "fight groups with chains and knives" for 1-Adam-12 to respond to, guards are supposed to take security positions that permit no blind spots.  

The audience, shortly after being exposed to the aforementioned terribly fake eye bags on Arra, gets to see the jump-out-of-your-chair-in-excitement trope, when Sandra Benes sees Koenig's Eagle returning. The scene is almost painful to watch because Zienia Merton, who plays Benes, looks like she almost broke character when she just, for no reason whatsoever, steps out of shot. It's almost as though the director was gesturing like a lunatic at her to move as an in-the-moment idea so that Morrow could get into place to deliver his next lines. All it would have taken to make the scene work would be for Morrow to say some sort of space gibberish to Benes. "Sandra, make sure all landing pads are available. I want an Eagle out there in 30 seconds if we have to." Then Merton could have exited purposefully.  

So far, I've really lashed into this episode. The whole first half of the thing is hopelessly stitched together. No one appears to have simply, you know, read the script for comprehension. I get it, productions get rushed. But this is the result. You get an idea that had potential, and you crash it. 

What I find truly unforgivable? The dialogue between Koenig and Arra. "Through the galaxies and universes of eternity," "two vital drops in the boundless ocean of time," "your odyssey shall know no end," "I go to shape the future of eternity" ... and so on. Good God! Children are watching. This is hackery at its most base. 

Still, even though the episode is badly botched in multiple ways, a few redeeming moments do slip through. At one point, Benes gets to have a genuine expression of outrage. Good. Additionally, when Koenig is delivering his "I need your faith in me" shtick, Russell and the others do an Academy Award-worthy job of pretending to agree with him. In some ways, it's actually an anti-trope to the usual gimmick of having everyone say in a slightly exaggerated fashion, "Oh, absolutely. We'll be happy to wait with you for the mothership. Would you like to take my private bus with the nice padded walls?"  

There's even a few times when whatever the hell the author was probably trying for in the original script come through. The word "faith" is mentioned multiple times, so much so that all that's missing is a flashing sign. Not in a "let's all go to this specific building at this time and do these particular things in this order" sense of faith but rather in the wider sense of the entire range of the word's meaning. In the end, the episode is about how Koenig has to take a leap of faith and put his trust in this strange alien with the terrible makeup and Goth clothes. And how his people have to take the leap of faith to put their trust in him. Placing it halfway into the season, rather than at the beginning, is a terrible idea. 

next episode: War Games (Season 1, Episode 4). The Space: 1999 team comes thiiiiiiis close to inventing the MTV music video. Originally aired: September 25, 1975.

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this episode: War Games (Season 1, Episode 4). The Space: 1999 team comes thiiiiiiis close to inventing the MTV music video. Originally aired: September 25, 1975.

Another close-but-no-cigar effort, mainly due to the gimmick that's usually the maker of a great episode: the what-if/alternate-reality effect. The original Star Trek series used this in "City on the Edge of Forever." The subsequent series of the franchise ran with it over and over to expand the Terran Empire Universe and also generated some great stories beyond that. 

The big problem with these sorts of episodes is the when/how do you let the audience knows it's a what-if/alternate. For instance, in "Yesterday's Enterprise," the episode starts with a frame scene where everything is fine. Then ... the plot device emerges, and suddenly everything alters. That's "fair" in the sense that no trick is being pulled on the audience. No "Oh, it was just a dream!" right at the end and everyone has a Scooby-Doo chuckle for "Yesterday's Enterprise" because everyone's let in on the secret before the title credits play.  

In this episode of Space: 1999, the opening immediately has the threat emerge, like in Shakespeare's Tempest. There's no margin at all. The audience is dropped right into the soup with no set up. Suddenly, three ships that look like Eagles with minor alterations -- Victor Bergman identifies them as Mark IX Hawks -- come humming toward the Moon. This is real! (Although the really astute fan might think, "All this way out in space and the ships look like Eagles?" Most who would think this would realize that budgets make for strange bedfellows, and accept the duplication as a cost-savings measure.) 

After trying without success to make contact with the alien ships, John Koenig has them shot down. Then another alien ship shows up and shoots Alpha to bits: Main Mission is in flames (watch for Koenig trying to put out a pretty big fire with what looks like a fire extinguisher the size of a can of hairspray) in about 30 seconds flat. And what did anyone expect? This is a scientific base, and the crew are scientists and technicians for the most part.

In medical, Helena Russell and the others are trying to evacuate the injured due to the dramatically necessary introduction of a cracked exterior window. Bob Mathias is using the space equivalent of putting a penny in the fuse box -- and probably drafting a note to the base designers: "Put in emergency shutters that drop down over the windows" -- by trying to paper over the crack with spray adhesive and plastic report sheets. It works, except that, as is usually the case in these things, the repair fails prematurely at just the right dramatic moment, and Mathias gets blown out through the window. 

Whenever a named character who has had more than two lines dies on a show, it's significant. Maybe not emotionally or even dramatically, but anyone who has watched television understands the implications: either the actor got arrested for something serious, the actor asked for more money (which some industry types consider something that should also result in arrest), or the show is screwing with you. So when Mathias' stunt double goes through that window headfirst into the cold, cold arms of Plato Crater, it becomes pretty clear that we, the audience, are probably being messed with.

This is confirmed when the surviving senior staff gather around the conference table to assess the damage: 128 dead (40% of the population -- in itself a lethal blow); eight days' of power and four weeks to repair the least-damaged generator; food and water recycling plants needing at least nine weeks to repair, with an additional two months after that for food growing; and the nearest solar system "at least six months too far," according to Bergman.

Koenig's plan? He's going to go down to the planet with Russell to try to talk to the aliens. Bergman's response to this brings up the whole flaw of the episode: "I rather thought that they've been trying to tell us to keep away." But they haven't! They haven't said anything, and it makes no sense at all. The aliens clearly have the weaponry to wipe Alpha out. Why go to all this ornate mayhem of a couple ships at a time? Send a flotilla, blast everything to bits, roll the end credits -- done in 20 seconds. Are you paying for each separate energy bolt? 

This is the point at which the savvy viewers are sure they're being screwed with: "Aw, Victor just asked the obvious plot flaw. Why didn't the aliens order the Alphans to stay away? It's because this is a never-happened episode. Whatever's going on will all be magically unwound by the end of the episode. Maybe Koenig is high on space drugs." And it's confirmed (not the space drugs but that it's all gonna be unwound) when Koenig and Russell reach the planet. The aliens communicate. They'll talk to Koenig to tell him they'll land his Eagle for him, but they wouldn't tell the Alphans to just keep right on going, no need to stop here? The whole thing collapses at this point because it's just too big a glitch.

But, for most of the remainder of the episode, we get one of the show's signature looks. The Alphans have a tendency to run into aliens who have a glassware-oriented civilization coupled with a wardrobe style that always makes me think of a fusion of medieval Russian and medieval Chinese meeting up to shoot a music video. Aliens in long, flowing robes, carrying themselves in a detached, hallucinogenic manner. And then there's all the psychic aliens who contact, attack, or commandeer various Alphans throughout the series. The whole thing is, depending on the viewer's mood and the success of the episode, impressive in its freshness or annoying as hell in how it's like something from a bad episode of In Search Of.

And in the end? Yes. It turns out to have all been a hallucination done to show Koenig what would happen: Helena ends up in long, flowing robes (but no bald head) stuck inside a glass case like Zoltan the coin-operated fortune teller and having just an agonizingly meandering conversation with the two aliens. John ends up destroying the aliens' entire civilization with just a hand laser. Then we're all back in Main Mission, at the start of the episode, but John and Helena can recall what happened. (I wonder if Bob Mathias recalled being blown into vacuum and dying of decompression.)  

As with dreams, it's like they got a piece of what they were trying for but couldn't carry it all forward into the light.

next episode: Death's Other Dominion (Season 1, Episode 5). After three swings, everything falls into place, and the series really hits one out of the park. Originally aired: October 2, 1975.
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this episode: Alpha Child (Season 1, Episode 7). Where do babies come from? On Moonbase Alpha, it's complicated. Originally aired: October 16, 1975.

TK