Space 1999: Black Sun

I’ve had a fair few pops at ‘Space 1999’ in the past, mainly because I see a lot of myself in it, i.e. it under-achieves and does stupid things. ‘Black Sun’, however, a Series One episode originally broadcast in November 1975, is not just good in series’ terms; it’s good in sci fi terms, too. Actually, it’s just good – no need for any further qualification.

When Moonbase Alpha finds itself drawn into the inexorable orbit of a black sun (that’s a thing, apparently) all they can do is sit around and wait to be crushed to death. Yes, Bergman rigs up a force field he hopes (but doesn’t really believe) will save them, and, yep, Helena and five others are chosen by the computer to be evacuated, but mostly the story is just a slow, patient, thoughtful countdown to inevitable destruction, which makes for enough drama that there’s no need for the usual pyrotechnics and poorly choreographed fights the show tends to use as filler in lieu of story. The lights on Alpha slowly go out and the doomed crew just sit together and think about what might have been, or noodle around on guitars and look wistfully at each other. Commander Koening and Profesor Bergman smoke cigars and get pissed up and philosophical on sixty year old brandy.

When Moonbase finally enters the black sun, things go weird and bendy wendy: the crew become transparent, and put on plastic old person masks and freak each other out. Then an ancient looking Koenig and Bergman have a chat with a nice lady God who gives them a few free pointers about the nature of existence. These scenes are silly, but because the story has slowly built up to them, they don’t seem ridiculous. It even makes sense in a way, even though much of it is nonsensical – a sort of contextual, logical daftness which the programme most often lacks.  

Too quickly, the trip through the psychedelic unknown concludes with the Moon safely exiting the black sun through the back door and everything goes back to normal, well, as normal as it can be when you've just tripped your its off and ended up in a completely different universe. Koening and Berman don’t even have a hangover.

As a postscript, the happy ending is made even happier when Helena and the rest of the evacuees come back in a surprise return that wasn’t actually possible, isn’t really explained and definitely doesn’t matter.
After all, as a tired and emotional Professor Bergman said the night before ‘there is a thin line between science and mysticism’ and, as usual, he was absolutely right.    

Space 1999: Alpha Child

Moonbase Alpha is a tragic place, isn’t it? It’s a hermetically sealed plastic hellhole with three hundred odd miserable inhabitants who have been wrenched from their homes and sent hurtling through space on a journey from which they will never return. Whatever and whoever they left behind on Earth is lost to them forever and, perhaps worse, everyone on the base is believed dead, blown to bits. Think of the sadness of all those permanently estranged lovers, partners, husbands, wives, parents and kids: no wonder no-one seems to care how many crew members get killed each week, they’re just waiting their turn, hanging out for the relief of sudden, violent death.

Still, this is ‘Space 1999’ so, despite every episode being at least ten minutes too long, we haven’t got time for all that subtext. ‘Alpha Child’ starts with a rare happy occurrence for the beleaguered crew, the birth of a child, the first ever to be born on the base. Within two minutes, however, the tiny baby has turned into a healthy but deaf-mute five year old boy and the mother has gone into catatonic shock, so we’re back to square one on the jollity stakes (it should be noted that the baby's father is dead, killed when Moonbase blew up, so it was already fairly downbeat).

The suddenly a lot bigger child seems personable enough, really, although he has a peculiar interest in how everything works. For some bizarre reason, Professor Bergman, the cleverest bloke on the ship and the most useful, does most of the babysitting, which gives the kid all sorts of opportunity to check out all the technological stuff. All in all, the crew take to him, but not Commander Koening who hates his little guts and mistrusts him. But he’s not unreasonable:  'I know you've all accepted him,  but I have some questions' he says 'You see, I don't know why he is like he is; I can't explain it, nor do I understand it, but I'm not about to shoot him'.

As it transpires, the little big baby is actually Julian Glover in disguise, an alien criminal who, along with his mates, need host bodies to transfer into. Their plan is to simply starve the Moonbase crew of oxygen, and then just walk into their still warm but empty bodies. Sadly for the silver clad shape stealer and his pals, it all goes tits up when the intergalactic police catch up with them, a deus ex machina which proves, once again, for all their bluster, Koening and his companions are virtually helpless in the face of the infinite superiority and power of almost everyone they meet en route. On the plus side, the freaky kid turned creepy man goes back to being a proper baby - and is subsequently never heard of again in the annals of Alpha as it's just too bloody complicated to have a kid running around all over.

Going back to my first point, about the terrible mental anguish and sense of loss the crew must feel, there's a telling moment just after the baby is born when, in spite of herself, Sandra Benes begins to cry. Is she thinking of the limited opportunities this child will have, or perhaps of her own thwarted desire to become a Mother? Perhaps she has even left children behind, children who she will never see again, children who believe her to be dead. Sensing her distress, Koening intervenes, but to no avail. His reaction immediately explains why there might be a morale problem. Still, at least he's not about to shoot her.

  

Space 1999: Space Brain

So there’s this big brain out in space, yeah? A massive cerebral cortex that is apparently linked to a myriad of other galaxies, a huge intergalactic noggin nut that gives life and energy and warmth and comfort to millions of life forms, and has done for countless millennia. Yep, the good old space brain. What the space brain hasn’t anticipated, however, is Moonbase Alpha, a giant, drifting rock that cannot be steered and, even if it could, is populated with aggressive, pant suited middle aged people that don’t see why they should get out of the way of this thing that’s been there forever, so lets fire all the lasers they have and send an Eagle to blow the thing up.

That’s the basic premise of Space 1999 episode ‘Space Brain’. It’s one that sums up for me just how poorly the inhabitants of Moonbase are prepared for the unknown and how very human, i.e. moronic, their reactions to anything they don't understand can be. In ‘Star Trek’, Kirk and his crew do everything they can to follow ‘the prime directive’, non-interference with alien races and planets (this obviously does not extend to their women) but, in ‘Space 1999’ if Commander Koening can’t kick it, kill it or cock it into submission he simply drives his detached satellite through it like a drunken Bulgarian lorry driver through a low bridge whilst wild eyed Aussie Alan Carter lobs nuclear charges at passers by. When you think about it (and clearly I do) Moonbase Alpha is a terrible advert for humanity, and fashion, and, most of all, script writing. 

The space brain tries to stop it, of course, taking over personnel, talking to the computer and finally, desperately, filling the base with bubble bath, sorry, cleansing space anti-bodies, but it’s a foregone conclusion: where Alpha goes, death follows. The end result: 300 ‘just passing through’ humans are safe; millions of aliens minding their own business are doomed. Oh, and one totally fucked space brain. The End.

Marvellous stuff. Honest!    

Space 1999: Missing Link

'Space 1999’ never fails to raise an indulgent chortle and wry shake of the head, does it? It’s so inherently ridiculous and utterly loveable and, every time I see an episode, I can’t help but smile at its insane inanity.

‘Missing Link’ is a case in point. After an Eagle Transporter crash, Commander Koenig hovers between life and death, only kept alive by a plastic tray with some flashing lights on it. Doctor Russell, despite being in a committed relationship with him, seems desperate to pull the plug for some reason, and is only kept from doing so by the fact that there’s a fight every time she goes to touch the button.

Far from being in a vegetative state, however, Koenig is actually a prisoner on the planet Zenna, the permanent guest of an alien anthropologist called Raan (Peter Cushing, painted gold and wearing a silly hat and daft wig). Raan wants to study him to gain insight into humans, who he believes are the missing link in his own people’s evolution. Raan’s daughter Vana also wants to study Koenig, but from a less scientific point of view, i.e. she fancies him (she’s only alien, after all).

Choc a bloc with fantasy sequences and fights, ‘Missing Link’ is lots of fun, although slightly confusing in the way Koenig seems to so ready to abandon Moonbase and Doctor Russell in favour of a life with Vana. Interestingly, it is this burgeoning relationship that sets Koenig free: Raan might like to study humans, but he certainly wouldn’t want his daughter to marry one.

‘Space 1999’ is a fascinating show for so many reasons, not least for its incredibly ambitious attempt to bring the whole of the universe to us on a budget of £150 an episode. They try terribly hard, but it never quite works out, especially as often their efforts are undermined by sheer shoddiness and lack of attention to detail: costumes that don’t fit; monsters that have zips: life support systems with spelling mistakes… I absolutely love it.

Indestructible

A selection of end credit art from 'Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons'. As a normal, healthy, bloodthirsty child these would always cause me to scurry away to my pencils and paper, eager to recreate these perilous situations, as well as inventing my own, usually involving crocodiles. I was always running out of red pens for some reason. 

Spectrum Is Green

'Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons' featured even more stylish hardware than its predecessor 'Thunderbirds', all absolutely integral to the plot and ready to be die cast by Corgi and sold to kids in their millions.

Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons

As you might expect from a programme about an interplanetary terrorist war where both of the main protagonists are dead, ‘Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons’ is a dark and nihilistic show, full of violence and mayhem, and with an absolutely enormous body count.

The first Gerry Anderson show to feature ‘realistic’ puppets rather than the big head caricatures of previous work (technology had moved on meaning that the lip sync devices could now be placed in the marionettes chests rather than their outsized bonces), ‘Scarlet’ is glossy, sexy and full of merchandising opportunities, but is somehow much less charming than ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Stingray’, not least because it is slow, somber and utterly devoid of humour. It's also fussy, too eager to create a puppet world comparable to the real one (interestingly, 'UFO' not only expanded on the theme of war between planets, but does the odd thing of having a live cast directed as if they were marionettes). That said, it's an amazing achievement and, as a kid, I found it unbelievably exciting.  

The Mysterons are great villains, sentient computers abandoned by the race who invented them – disembodied voices and artificial minds stretching their dread hands across the universe to wage endless war against the Earth – utterly malign, totally focused, tireless, ruthless and deadly and, happily for us, quite easily outwitted.

Their biggest mistake, I suppose, was in killing Captain Scarlet in the first place. It's never quite explained how his reanimated corpse retains the indestructibility of a Mysteron agent but the loyalty of a SPECTRUM officer but, in the end analysis, it doesn’t really matter - as long as Captain Scarlet keeps sacrificing himself to save the world and his twisted and broken or burned and disintegrated body keeps putting itself together to continue the war, we’ll be alright.