It’s hard to convey to Millennials, let alone Zoomers, just what it was like growing up in a world where Star Trek was just a single TV show, rather than a billion-dollar franchise with more spin-offs than NCIS, CSI, and All in the Family combined. We felt lucky to have even that much to run with; it was an era when cops, detectives and lawyers sucked up all the airwaves, and science fiction hardly ever made it to the television.
The arrival of Britain’s Space: 1999, then, was most welcome. Syndicated across the Western world, it was (like Trek) off the prime-time path, and that suited fans like me just fine. My memory is that it was on early Saturday evening – perhaps 6 or 7 – when no one else in the house was watching TV.
I remember learning of the show’s impending arrival from the fanboy magazines I ponied up my hard-earned allowance for – magazines that were mercifully uncritical, really just publicity tools to keep viewers like me up to date on the latest nerd offering. I remember the day and time the show was to debut varied from market to market, so I dutifully bought TV Guide each week in the late summer of 1975, as September approached, so I wouldn’t miss it.
My family still lived in Crawfordsville that fall, and I was a freshman at North Montgomery High School - a new, ultra-modern high school that was decidedly anachronistic in a perfectly square Indiana county that looked for all the world just like Gene Hackman’s Hoosiers. It had been there in the library of that high school that I had discovered Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God”, “The Cold Equations” and other sci-fi classics.
My point in sharing that detail is that, alas, I had no one with whom I could share my excitement and enthusiasm for this new show. It would remain my private treasure until the following year, when my family would repatriate to Central Kentucky.
Even veteran Gen X nerds may be unaware of Space, so brief was its blip. Produced by Gerry Anderson, who had also done UFO five years earlier, it had originally been conceived as a follow-up to that earlier show.
The premise was as simple as it was silly: in late 1999, humankind has a huge city on the moon – Moonbase Alpha – which is basically Clavius Base from 2001. An international astronautics consortium oversees the base, which among other things is in charge of managing Earth’s nuclear waste disposal in a lunar crater. When this nuclear waste dump explodes, the moon is blasted out of orbit and begins a lengthy carom through the galaxy, encountering all manner of adventures and perils.
John Koenig, played by Martin Landau, is the commander of the base. His sidekick is the scientist Victor Bergman, played by Barry Morse; his kinda-sorta love interest is Dr. Helena Russell, played by Barbara Bain.
Landau and Bain, of course, were married at the time, having just come off several years on Mission: Impossible; Morse had played the detective pursuing The Fugitive on that show. They were joined by other actors from all around the world - notably the Australian Nick Tate11 as Alan Carter, captain of the base’s Eagle contingent.
Though there was excitement and adventure to spare, Space wasn’t at all like Trek; it was a moody, ethereal show, as much philosophy as it was action. Koenig had more in common with Trek’s somber Captain Pike than the dashing Kirk; Russell was downright morose at times. The inhabitants of Alpha rarely smiled and were seldom shown enjoying themselves.
Where Kirk, Spock and Bones would wrap up an episode in the center of the bridge with a laugh or a poignant reflection, Koenig would bring the curtain down with some mournful contemplation or weary recapitulation. Where Spock served up data, Bergman served up bad news; where the Enterprise radiated the joys and thrills of exploration, Moonbase Alpha was a graveyard of tormented expectations and dashed hopes. The two shows really couldn’t have been more different.
Even so, the tumbling of the moon through the dangers of the void was so thrilling that it couldn’t be missed; I looked forward to the show every week, and when paperback novelizations began to appear at the bookstore, I bought every one.
It would be difficult to overstate just how goofy the whole concept was, beneath the stories themselves (many of which were on a par with Trek); an explosion powerful enough to remove the moon from its orbit occurs, and the moon isn’t shattered? It floats from star system to star system, within reach of several dozen planets, in just a few years’ time? Really?
Well, quibbling was pointless; it was no more ridiculous that warp drive and transporter beams.
In any case, I was thrilled to have it; and when I learned there would be a second year of the show, I was – wait for it! - over the moon.
By the time that second season began, we had relocated to Frankfort, Kentucky – and this time, I could share the love. I had met several nerds as I started my sophomore year at Franklin County High: Jim Wampler, a budding cartoonist; Joe Lee, a tall and geeky military buff; and Bob Fields, the only one of us whose mom was willing to drive us all the way to Louisville to see Gene Roddenberry speak that September (see ***).
The second season of Space was, oddly, nothing at all like the first. Seems the brass at ITV, who produced the show, were underwhelmed by its performance, and were only willing to give it a second chance if it were retooled to be more like – well, like Star Trek.
So the Andersons brought in Fred Freiberger, who had presided over the final season of Trek itself (see “The Showkiller”, page ***). Freiberger let most of the cast go – Morse was only too happy to – and brought in some new, exciting characters: Maya, played by Catherine Schell, an alien shapeshifter; and Tony Verdeschi (Tony Anholt), Koenig’s second-in-command. Nick Tate’s Alan Carter, a fan favorite, was kept on.
The show did get more exciting, certainly, but it got reciprocally dumber. Its moody, philosophical edge was gone; in its place were more special effects. That didn’t trouble me overmuch, because those were days when fanboys were beggars, not choosers.
So great was my enthusiasm that I generated piles of blueprints of Moonbase Alpha, as well as tech drawings of the Eagle and various other vehicles.
To its credit, Space had plenty of guest star power going for it: Christopher Lee appeared, as did Trek’s Joan Collins and Jeremy Kemp (Picard’s older brother); Darth Vader himself, David Prowse, did a monster turn, and Peter Cushing did an episode. Special effects wizard Brian Johnson kept the Eagles flying, and then he went on to do Alien.12
It goes without saying that the entire series is across the room, sitting on the shelf. I haul it out every five years or so for a re-binge, but have never managed to get any of my zygotes to sit in.
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