Space: 1999 – A Future that Never Was.

Picture it. A Thursday night in 1975.

I ‘d made sure all my chores were done and that all my homework was done.

I’d begged for the television set that evening and I think I was granted that hour mostly to make me go away.

On that night, after reading about it for about for over a year was the premier (at least on our TV station) of a new import from England.

It’s name?

Space:1999. Space 1999 starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, both of Mission: Impossible fame.

It had a huge budget.

It had effects from some of the same people who had worked on 2001, the benchmark film for Science Fiction movies.

I was ready.

I turned it one and was treated to a scene of two astronauts on the surface of the moon. They’re inspecting a nuclear waste dump. Earth is largely powered by the atom in that story. Rather than keep the reactor waste on earth, It’s all bundled up and taken to the Moon.

During the course of checking on of these dump sites, and astronaut goes mad and kills himself. Roll to dramatic montage of scenes from “This Episode” and the date of September 13, 1999.

Enter Cmdr. John Koenig. He’s arrived to take charge of Moonbase: Alpha. Part of the bases mission is to monitor the radioactive waste dumps. The other is to provide a defensive base for Earth (the series owes a lot to old UFO series). It’s also a research post, and a training site for the Metaprobe astronauts.

It’s this last that is Koenig is looking into. Something is killing the probe astronauts. And I’ll let you watch the episode which you can reach through this link: Breakway.

Okay. the effects weren’t exactly 2001 but they were damned impressive for television. Instead of a sprawling Clavius Base, we have a similar idea but only smaller. But the Eagles were amazing spacecraft to watch. The sets were handsome, the costumes great.

And then the Moon gets blasted out of orbit.

Using high school physics and some calculus, I did a little math. Nope, it wouldn’t be that easy to blow the Moon out of orbit. Then there was the matter of sending it careening through the Galaxy at anything approaching a respectable speed.

But, hey, I let it slide. After all, warp drive didn’t exist and we have no problem buying it with Star Trek. So, I enjoyed a first season full of adventures beyond our solar system. There were space battles. There were mind bending forces at work. And it looked great. The stories were the stuff of legends.

Stories like “Wargames” gave us the ultimate nightmare of our astronauts on the losing end of a war. Or “The Black Sun” which featured a trip through a black hole. Then Dragon’s Domain which was nightmarish on so many levels.

I never missed a single episode.

Then came season two.

I can honestly say the only good thing about season two was Catherine Schell as Maya.

I saw one episode. That was one episode too many.

There has been at least one attempt to reboot it. Check it out here.

And there’s some rather good fan generated stuff out there as well. Here’s a link to one of the better ones.