Luna Reviews Space: 1999 (Part 1 of 6) · 6:40am Oct 30th, 2015
Editor's Note:
As you may remember, "At the Inn of the Prancing Pony" was accompanied by a series of blog posts wherein Princess Luna of Equestria would review whatever pop culture ephemera caught her fancy. Well, the story may be over, but Luna's still reviewing.
Seeing how this series of six essays has only a minimal connection with the story, I'll only be linking the first one with "Inn". If you like what you read here, you can find the remaining essays on my blog over the next couple of days. My favorite one is #3.
—McPoodle
LUNA REVIEWS
PART ONE
Greetings, past and present readers.
I have recently received a request from a human (or possibly an animate weather balloon) named Arn for my opinion on the television series Space: 1999. It turns out that McPoodle has a complete collection of this series on DVD, which he informs me that he obtained “for research purposes”.
Feel free to let that unnerving statement sink in.
I began by doing some research of my own. The series was made as a joint production between British television producers ITV and Italian television producers RAI in 1975, and was intended for American import. The creators of the show were Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who were best known for creating a series of popular puppet programs for children, such as Thunderbirds (1964) and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterions (1967—McPoodle appears to have been quite taken on repeats of this show when he was but a pup).
Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, surrounded by their totems
I...am not a fan of puppeteers. The art form of puppetry may have been an innocent one in other times and places, but in the years before my banishment and in our old capital, puppet shows were primarily put on by order of the various noble families. They used the shows to influence and manipulate popular opinion. No puppet ever called for a coup or revolution, but the groundwork for them was often set on the puppeteer’s stage. In was on such stages that public support was wrenched away from me, with false stories of my apparent incompetence in protecting my ponies from the evils of the night, stories that accused me of deliberately causing the very nightmares I vanquished in the minds of the fillies and colts, stories that originated the very name of “Nightmare Moon”, which I would take on as I prepared to unleash my vengeance upon the deserving heads of those—
Well, suffice it to say that I went into Space: 1999 with low expectations.
“Breakaway”, Production #1, first broadcast September 4, 1975.
It’s not a puppet show. Rather, it’s a live action science fiction program like Doctor Who, only with much better special effects. Many of these effects are via miniatures—in other words, the kind of special effects which the Andersons had perfected in their earlier puppet shows.
The tone is definitely more for adults than for children: there’s lots of talking and speculating, and the actors are more inclined to underact than overact, especially Barbara Bain in her role of Dr. Helena Russell.
Barbara Bain as Dr. Helena Russell, right before blowing away
the villain in a fit of righteous anger—can't you see the incandescent fury burning behind her eyes?
There’s a lot going on here. The setting is Moonbase Alpha, in the then future year of 1999. The base appears to be presented to the public as a setting for scientific research, but in fact it is mired in politics, used for coordinating showy deep space launches like the Meta Mission that could easily be handled from Earth or from an orbital station. Behind that facade lies the true reason for the base’s existence: to fillysit the dumping of nuclear waste, as no political power on earth will put up with having such dangerous substances buried under their sovereign soil. As a result of a fatal mixture of bureaucratic bumbling and a lack of scientific imagination, the situation with the waste deteriorates to the point where the entire dump explodes, propelling the Moon out of the solar system with over 300 humans trapped as involuntary explorers.
Oh, and two of their Eagle spaceship thingees blow up.
Not that I'm counting or anything.
I shouldn’t like this. Regardless of effects, this series is asking a lot of me, and me in particular. I have to assume that there is a perfectly working artificial gravity system in place under the base, so the actors can do most of their acting without trickery being involved. Explosions without an atmosphere don’t look like that. Explosions under the Moon’s gravity don’t look like that. A spacecraft crash on the Moon wouldn’t look like that. An explosion sufficient to propel the Moon out of Earth’s solar system at the speed shown should have ruptured any human-made structure and rendered a large portion of the crew of said structure into jelly even before the lack of oxygen became a factor. Captain Carter in his Eagle probe observing the explosion from straight overhead? No chance of survival.
Nope, it just doesn't work out.
And then there’s the Earth—the tidal effects from losing the Moon that quickly should have been enough to rearrange continents! There would have been no human to exposit the situation to Moonbase Alpha at the end of the episode, because no human technology capable of broadcasting into deep space would have survived. Humanity, what’s left of humanity, should have been thrown back into the Stone Age.
And yet, despite all those impossibilities staring me straight in the face, I ended the episode with a big fat grin on my face. The Moon—not quite my Moon, but still, the Moon—was setting out to explore the cosmos! And the best of humanity was on board to witness it. I’m excited to see what happens when the Moon reaches the mysterious wandering planet Meta, home to some unknown form of life.
Bye, Tia. The satellite's been really good lately , so I'm taking her on a field trip.
Let me take this moment to look over the characters, at least the ones that have made an impact on me so far:
Martin Landau as Commander John Koenig.
Here, we see him figure out which button makes the pretty lights.
Commander John Koenig (Martin Landau) had just taken over operations when everything fell apart. He made a very good impression in the way he balanced political responsibility with scientific curiosity. Landau stands out as the best actor of the cast thus far. His character’s drawbacks are his need to jump into danger instead of delegate (a flaw of every space commander in the history of television, it would seem) and the need to preach to his crew in times of panic instead of making the right decision then and there and justifying it afterwards (which I would take as being required because it makes for better drama).
Bain as Dr. Russell is, as I said before, underacting. Russell had been silenced by her political enemies, and finally found in Koenig somebody willing to listen to her—this should have been communicated far better by her performance. Despite this fact, she and Landau have great chemistry together—no surprise, as the actors were married to each other at the time the series was being made.
Nick Tate as Captain Allan Carter,
the manliest man who ever manned.
Nick Tate played Captain Alan Carter, the chief pilot. I got pretty easily that he’s the designated action hero of the series. I also note that he did a better job of playing the duped victim of a political cover-up than the too-quiet Dr. Russell.
Barry Morse as Mad Scientist Professor Victor Bergman.
In this shot, he's either just saved every man, woman and child on Earth, or else he's just doomed them.
It's hard to tell the difference with mad scientists professors.
Barry Morse played Professor Victor Bergman, the resident science advisor. He did his job competently, but I think he should have showed more remorse at how he failed to come up with the correct explanation for the deaths of eleven astronauts sooner (and potentially the majority of the human race back on Earth...). Nevertheless, he did seem a bit eccentric, given how he refused to wear the same uniforms as anybody else on the station, so I’d like to learn more about him. After all, I’ve encountered his type before, and despite a worrying lack of empathy for their fellow beings, such types have always had an odd attraction to me. It’s like you know they’re going to end up blowing up half the planet and try to excuse it with a cute little “Oops!”, but you can’t help encouraging them, if only to watch the pretty colors in the resulting apocalypse.
Is that so wrong?
Philip Madoc as Commander Anton Gorski.
In the time it took you to read this, he's already taken your job.
A character appearing for less than a minute, Commander Anton Gorski (played by Philip Madoc) managed to have quite an impression on me, as another type of individual who I have encountered more than once over the years: somebody who is quite pleasant to work with, and gives an impression of being useful and indispensable, until such time as you finally come to your senses, and see that everything they did was for their own benefit, at your own expense. The actor has appeared numerous times in Classic Doctor Who, always as a villain.
Roy Dotrice as Commisioner Simmonds.
I don't like him.
One part I expected to be a throwaway role was earthbound Commissioner Simmonds, played by Roy Dotrice. Simmonds was clearly the mastermind behind the disastrous cover-up in the episode, yet because of his position of power, no one could act openly against his wishes and even the heroic Commander Koenig was reduced to voicing his objections in private only. At the last moment, Simmonds showed up on Moonbase Alpha, to keep the truth from damaging his reputation, and thus he was caught with the rest of the crew on the runaway satellite. Will he be used as a perennial villain in future episodes, or is there a chance that he might actually be forced to reform with no political base to support him? Only time will tell.
Image credits for Part One:
* The title image of a blue Moon with planets and nebula was taken from the closing credits of every episode, via this page from the Space:1999 Catacombs website. The Space:1999 logo was from this page on the Fanderson web site. The tiny blue Eagle that was in the screenshot was removed, and another Eagle image (from this Catacombs page) was tinted blue and used instead. Finally, the image of Luna comes from "Luna on a Cloud", by The-Intelligentleman on DeviantArt, with the cloud removed.
* The photo of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson was taken from this IMDB page.
* The screenshots of Eagle explosions were taken from the screenshot collection for "Breakaway" on the Catacombs site.
* The diagram of the Moon's trajectory during the events of this episode was taken from this article on the official Space:1999 website.
* The screenshot of the Moon appearing to leave the Solar System was actually taken from the opening credits of this episode, specifically the "Also starring Barry Morse" credit. I removed the text and tinted the sun from its original red to yellow.
* The photo of Martin Landau was taken from this Writeups.org page.
* The photo of Nick Tate was taken from this Flickr page.
* The photos of Barry Morse, Philip Madoc and Roy Dotrice were taken from this, that, and the other Catacombs pages.
Alright Ambassador Luna consuming more Earth pop culture! Love these blog posts!
McPoodle you should bring her to a convention and make a fic out of the trip ;)
EEEEEEEEEE! More Luna!