Luna Reviews Space: 1999 (Part 2 of 6) · 6:45am Oct 30th, 2015
LUNA REVIEWS
PART TWO
“Matter of Life and Death”, Production # 2, first broadcast November 27, 1975.
For some reason, the series originally aired out of order. I’ve been informed that the show has at least a rudimentary sense of continuity, so I’ll be sticking with the production order. I say “rudimentary”, though, because the all-important planet Meta from the last episode was not mentioned even once in this episode.
It appears that some amount of time had passed since the last episode. Moonbase Alpha had encountered at least one other habitable planet—somewhat unlikely, considering what I’ve been hearing from human scientists about the nature of your universe. But then, the baffling nature of the episode may provide some hint as to how events have been allowed to unfold as they have.
A planet had been found that seemed ideal for colonization, but there was only a limited window to evacuate before the ever-travelling Moon pulled them too far away from it. And acting as a giant distraction was Dr. Russell’s supposedly dead astronaut husband Lee (Richard Johnson), who suddenly showed up in a shuttle.
Richard Johnson as Lee “I’m Not Dead Yet” Russell.
Bain continues to baffle me with her quiet and emotionless performance. It’s like she’s transmitting her acting on a frequency that I cannot detect. The scenes between the two Russells went absolutely nowhere, while the amount of time before it would be impossible to settle the new planet grew less and less. After getting a fairly useless warning from Lee Russell before he dropped dead—again—Commander Koenig snapped and decided to lead a landing party. He decided to bring Dr. Russell (who would be considered emotionally unstable if it were possible to read anything whatsoever in that placid face of hers), Controller Morrow (his second in command), Captain Carter (the only Eagle pilot who doesn’t end up dying the moment he tries to come in for a landing), and Sandra Benes (more about her later). And then he left the dippy Pr. Bergman in charge. It was a recipe for disaster, if ever I saw one.
Planet of the Parrots
Well, the planet seemed perfect, with parrots as the highest form of life. The disgusting brown muck found in the swamp was proclaimed to be “crystal clear” water, and everybody was celebrating...until the plastic in the shuttle started to disintegrate. Then the lasers started spontaneously firing, killing Morrow, and the Eagle exploded,
Death of an Eagle (#3)
killing Carter, and then Sandra’s contact lenses apparently melted into her eyes, permanently blinding her. And then the Moon exploded, which is completely unfair—I mean, what did the poor Moon do to deserve a fate like that? There were earthquakes, and avalanches, and now Koenig was dead, and Lee Russell was back, except he turned into Koenig, and the parrots were back, which is making me think they were evil parrots,
and...and...
Wait.
I’m going about this all wrong. This series is using the Moon as a spaceship. Not because it is “the coolest thing ever”, as Rainbow Dash would say, but because it means something. It means I have to put my waking logic away, and look at this episode again with the eyes of a dreamer.
Terra Nova is a trap, a place where humanity was not meant to trod. It manifests as an illusion of a paradise, but it quickly degrades into its opposite. The characters refer to this as “antimatter”, but I’ve found that very few authors have any clear idea as to what antimatter truly is, other than as a symbolic opposite of everything good and normal in the world. What is happening on Terra Nova, if you leave out the inexplicable destruction of the Moon, follows rules understandable by magic, but not science: The transformation of matter into “antimatter” is fastest in organic matter—plastics—but only organics that are not part of living beings or included in their morphic fields. Willpower is enough to keep the process from happening in these cases until death—which is why Lee Russell’s body didn’t explode until during the autopsy. (Oh yeah—Lee Russell’s body exploded during autopsy...
I sorta forgot to mention that earlier.)
At the end of the episode, Lee appeared to his wife, explained that a strange form of radiation changed the crew of the lost Astro 7 into beings that transcended life or death, and that he came to this world to lend some of his strength to his wife, so she could leave this place. (I should note that this moment, after Koenig died and before the parrots came back, was the most emotive acting I’ve ever seen out of Barbara Bain.)
(I figured you wouldn't believe me without photographic proof.)
Near as I can tell, Dr. Russell took over the dream at this point, brought back all of the dead, and psychically ordered Koenig to cancel colonization, with no reason given.
This implies...well this could imply any number of things. It could imply that the entire rest of the series is a fever dream of Dr. Russell in the instants before Terra Nova claimed her life. It could imply that Lee Russell transformed his wife into a godlike being like himself, and she spends the rest of the series in denial of that fact. Or it could mean that the entire episode (but not the series as a whole) was a fever dream of poor Dr. Russell—we’ll have to see if anybody other than her ever refers to Terra Nova or Lee Russell again.
What it does say is that this series is willing to go beyond hard science fiction to tell a good story. Because, although I am at a loss to justify this seeming mess of a story, I honestly did like it. I’m keeping an eye on the writers of this episode, Art Wallace and Johnny Byrne, to see if they write anything else as intriguing going forward.
Castwise, we got to know a few more characters brought into focus, but no one as interesting as Koenig, Bergman or even Carter.
Anton Phillips as Dr. Bob Matthias.
He's confused in this scene because he's actually being asked to do something.
Anton Phillips played Dr. Bob Matthias, Dr. Carter’s second-in-command—he was boring.
Prentis Hancock as Paul Morrow.
He's secretly concerned that the guy next to him has a manlier mustache.
Prentis Hancock played Paul Morrow, Koenig’s second-in-command—he was so boring that I’m calling him “Number Two” until he does something to deserve a more interesting name.
Zienia Merton as Sandra Benes.
She's about to have her hopes and dreams dashed by a cardboard cutout of Steve Guttenberg.
And Zienia Merton played Sandra Benes, the wide-eyed data analyst. I sense that her job in the series is to be the one most hopeful for a happy ending at the beginning of every episode, and most one most doe-eyed when it doesn’t happen at the end of every episode—I’m going to call her “the Cute One”.
Hey, I just noticed something. What happened to Commissioner Simmonds in this episode? Shouldn’t he have been butting his head in where it didn’t belong? I’m going to say that he spent the whole episode suffering from the effects of food poisoning. In the other medical wing. The one without working lights. Or oxygen.
I really don’t like Commissioner Simmonds.
Image credits for Part Two:
* The photo of Richard Johnson was taken from this page of the Spearhead from Space:1999 blog.
* The screenshots of the alien planet and Lee Russell exploding were taken from the screenshot collection for "Matter of Life and Death" on the Catacombs site. I may have altered one of the screenshots slightly, but I doubt you even noticed.
* The photos of Anton Philips and Prentice Hancock were taken from this page and this page on the Actor's Compendium web site.
* The photo of Zenia Merton was taken from this post on John Kenneth Muir's blog.
Lee Russell: Helena! Don't go down there1
Helena Russell: Oh...your being silly. How bad could it be?
Lee Russell: Helena! I have become Schrodinger's cat, destroyer of worlds!!!!!
They just resently add new spacial effects to the series.
They have a probe,(like the on in a TomBaker episode of Doctor who, also dealing with antimater) and added more parots!
Lee, the name lee.
Similar to, the Lee of the boat or sail-the still place where there is no current or wind.
Lee of the stone, the rock, the island,,,,,
Great job.