Space 1999 | TV BAFTAs | March Telly Picks
One of the seventies best Sci-Fi series is now available on Region 1 DVD.
Post Star Trek, pre- Star Wars and either dismissed or forgotten by critics and general audiences over the past 25 years Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space 1999 is a rare example of science fiction television aimed squarely at a more mature, sophisticated audience. However, it is neither as camp as Star Trek, Lost in Space or later Doctor Who's, nor as action packed as Star Wars and the sci-fi heroes (Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon) who helped inspire it. Space 1999 succeeds and fails on it's deliberate pace and (pseudo) hard science foundation of many of it's plots.
Conceived by the fertile imaginations of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the duo behind the wildly popular and inventive Supermarionation process that powered such hit kid's shows as Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL and others as well as the cult classic live action UFO, Space 1999 shared certain basic concepts with it's predecessor Star Trek without imitating it. Like Trek, the Space 1999'ers encountered a fantastic new extraterrestrial conflict every week. Like Lost in Space, the residents of Moonbase Alpha have little control over where they travel and like Mission Impossible their ranks feature Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Landau and Bain, a couple at the time, headed an international (primarily Anglo-American) cast, lending a certain amount of star power to the ensemble cast. Space 1999 also enlisted the talents of a number of respected writers and directors including Charles Crichton (Lavender Hill Mob, The Avengers, A Fish Called Wanda), Johnny Byrne (Doctor Who, Heartbeat), Tom Clegg (Sharpe), Val Guest (Quatermass, Casino Royale) andDavid Tomblin (asst on all kinds of films including the Indiana Jones films, Out of Africa and Braveheart)
The first set from A&E home video features the first six episodes of the series on two discs.
Vol 1
"Breakaway" The first episode establishes the basics - Laundau has just been appointed to run the lunar space station in the midst of a mysterious malady affecting the bases' workers and crewmen destined for a rendezvous with a passing asteroid. Things go from bad too worse and the Moon ends up being blown from it's Earth orbit hurtling it and the occupants of the space station into deep, uncharted space.
"A Matter of Life and Death" The second episode is straight out of the Star Trek playbook as a mysterious planet seems to offer our heroes an earth-like paradise on which to start over and build a new society, if only Dr.Helena Russell's (Bain) long dead husband hadn't suddenly appeared on board a reconnaissance flight. "A Matter of Life
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