Space 1999 (1975-1977)

For my very first post, I thought I'd blast off with my favorite '70s Sci-Fi series, "Space 1999."

The premise, summed up far more succinctly on IMDB than I could ever manage, is:

In 1999, Moonbase Alpha, nestled in the Lunar crater Plato, is a scientific research colony and watchdog over silos of atomic waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side. On September 13, 1999, magnetic energy builds to cause an explosive chain-reaction of the waste, blasting the Moon out of Earth's orbit and off the plane of the ecliptic, out of the Solar System. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive on their wandering Moon as it is displaced further into unknown space...

Martin Landau plays Commander John Koenig (I've always had a soft spot for him, because he looks so much like my dad!). He had only just arrived on the the moon base when everything went south, and now he finds himself tasked with leading these men and women when none of them knows where the moon is taking them or how long they can survive.

Barbara Bain, Landau's wife, plays Dr. Helena Russel. She is not my favorite character, because she's so flat. She has almost no affect at all, even when the computer is telling her that someone's life signs are tanking.

 

There is also Prof. Victor Bergman, played by Barry Morse, who is like an old hippie. His is the measured voice of wisdom.

"Space 1999" wasn't "Star Trek" and didn't aim to be. It wasn't a crew aboard a space ship bouncing from one adventure to the next; it was men and women who would never see home again, who never got to say goodbye. There is an episode where they are facing freezing to death on the moon, and John and Victor sit and have a drink together and talk about what each thinks happens when you die. In another episode, a crew member goes crazy and beats John bloody with a model airplane, all the while grinning maniacally.

The thing is, dark and depressing is a tough sell. "Star Trek" had that fun, cheesy factor going for it. Tribbles. Styrofoam boulders. Hippies looking for the planet Eden. It was empty calories - like McDonald's french fries. And it worked.

For the second - and final - season, "Space 1999" changed its formula, perhaps hoping to draw in more viewers. Everything is literally lighter. The computer is all but bedazzled with colorful buttons and blinking lights. Dr. Russel is no longer chill bordering on dead; now she runs everywhere.

And then there is Maya. Played by Catherine Schell, Maya was my favorite character as a kid - she could morph into any animal she wanted to! - and my least favorite as an adult. No, that's not true. Maya was cool, but she took all of the interesting conflicts away. Where once Koenig and the rest would have to really work to survive different situations, now Maya could just turn into a tiger and bail them out. Oh, and there was a love interest for her, Tony Verdeschi (played by Tony Anholt), who literally came out of nowhere. Suddenly he is Koenig's younger, cuter, more English right-hand man. (I say this now, but as a kid I used to just love Maya and Tony!)

In the first season, Schell was the show's "guest artist" in "Guardian of Piri." The moon passes the planet Piri, and Koenig sends some eagles down to check out whether or not it's suitable for colonization (they can't survive on the moon forever). They don't return. He sends some more eagles down to investigate what happened to the first, and they don't return. Pretty soon, everyone is packing up their kit bags and heading down to the planet (very similar to the "StarTrek" episode "This Side of Paradise"). Piri's main computer, represented in alluring female form by Schell, offers them a life of ease. They can just lounge around all day, never having to worry or work again... Koenig (like Kirk) is  the only one who isn't affected (or is it infected?) by a giddy sense of well-being. Eventually he straight up blows the guardian of Piri's pretty face off, revealing that "she" is nothing more than a hollow machine, offering an even more hollow existence. (On a side note, Schell is stunning in a filmy low-cut ivory dress and liquid gold body jewelry.)