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.    

Don't Get Excited...

...but 'Space 1999' will be here at midnight!

Steady!

I'm not absolutely barking mad for Tom Baker, but 'Revenge Of The Cybermen' has a lot going for it in Dr. Who terms.

It features an established enemy (the titular man machines), the threat of nuclear destruction, location filming at the aforementioned (i.e. yesterday) Wookey Hole in Somerset and it has a Carey Blyton score for saxophone and radiophonics...but it doesn't have Jon Pertwee in it so I'm afraid it just doesn't quite do it for me.

What does, however, is the bit when a Vogon nearly falls off the little train. It may be childish, and it's not even particularly funny, but there's something so essentially human and British and Dr. Who-ish about it that it it makes me smile every time...

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.

  

Never Too Young To Rock

How can one describe ‘Never Too Young To Rock’ without using the term ‘rubbish’? Actually, let’s just get it out of the way: it’s rubbish. That said, it’s not offensive, just shoddy and cheap and scruffy and worn out, the perfect snapshot of Britain in 1975, in fact.

For all that, the story is set in the near future, and provides a dystopian vision of a world that looks and feels and smells exactly the same apart from the fact that pop music is now banned. One man (Peter Denyer: thick gypsy Dennis out of ‘Please Sir!’; nerdish Ralph from ‘Dear John’) wants to challenge this, and so sets out in a ‘group detector van’ to locate bands for a concert that will prove to the powers that be that they are wrong and that pop is mindless fun. Yes, you’re right, it’s ‘It’s Trad, Dad!’ with moonboots on.

Interestingly, the detector van is driven by Freddie Jones - yep, our Freddie Jones. I honestly don’t know what his character represents, but he has a fair amount of fun with the role and it’s nice to see him enjoying himself under what must have been difficult circumstances for him. 

As you might have already guessed, the film exists purely as a way to present lots of performances from the country’s most popular groups (or at least the most popular groups who would agree to appear in something like this) so we get Mud, The Rubettes, The Glitter Band and Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band (no, me neither, but they're in 'Side By Side' as well). With the exception of the up and coming Midge Ure fronted Slik (who immediately came and went), these are old lag’s bands, made up of men who had been knocking about the music scene since the sixties and finally found success in a period where standards weren’t quite so high. Mud are an undemanding but likeable enough group, for instance, but three of them look like a plasterers on their way to a Bill Haley concert (the fourth, Rob Davis, takes gender bending to a level Bowie could only dream of); The Glitter Band, no doubt traumatised by what they have seen while on the road with The Leader, just look indescribably weary, and all the Bacofoil and mascara in the world can’t disguise their exhaustion and disgust as they unconvincingly pump their fists to one of their repetitive and clumsy hits. These are the damned.  

The finale, in which all the groups unite after a triumphant concert to sing a simplistic ditty (about never being too young to rock) is just awful in its arms around shoulders, leg kicking bonhomie, and, much like the end of ‘Side By Side’ shows just how old fashioned these glittery hipsters are. Tatty, tacky, and best tolerated in the company of friends and a crate, no, two crates, of Bass.  

If you wish to do that now, by the way, you can watch the whole thing on You Tube here. Good luck, especially as the person who put it there seems to be the world's biggest Gary Glitter fan.

Side By Side

'Side By Side' is pretty poor, a collection of unsubtly stuck together bits of comic schtick and hoary old music hall routines interspersed with terrible music from the very worst the 1975 UK pop industry had to offer (yes, Kenny, I do mean you). That said, it's unpretentious and silly and, although I can't say that it has its moments, it doesn't make me want to smash the telly in with a platform boot.

It stars dear old Terry-Thomas (not long off retirement due to ill health) and future Ronald McDonald Billy Boyle as rivals who own adjacent clubs, one variety, one 'rock'. When a jobsworth copper (Frank 'Captain Peacock' Thornton) reports them for various infringements, an ancient town charter is unearthed that states the town should only have one place of entertainment, so the rivals have to prove which club is the best and should have their licence renewed . I'm not going to say any more, as the plot takes third place to broad humour, slapstick and, yes, fucking Kenny - twice - so I'll skip about an hour and say it all works out in the end, as a riot knocks down the dividing wall between the two establishments and they learn to live 'side by side'. Yep, and that story took two people to write.

The music is uniformly terrible, and although its nice to see Mud drummer Dave Mount in an acting role, it's never explained why he spends most of his time working in a shitty club under an assumed name, even when Mud turn up and he starts playing the drums for them. The best bit is a strip tease and bullwhip display from sexy Jennifer Guy, and even that is ruined by the presence of Barry Humphries, who genuinely makes my skin crawl (especially here when he blacks up and sings a song about a 'chocolate covered c**n').

So, not great, but what can you expect from a film starring Stephanie 'I Was Born With A Smile On My Face' De Sykes. Altogether now: 'la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la la', etc. Still smiling?

The Adventure You Will Never Forget

‘The Land That Time Forgot’ is classic school holiday fodder, a rip-roaring adventure full of dinosaurs, spear chucking and volcanic explosions. This one even has a submarine which, I must admit, I always find a bit exciting. I love submarines.

Set during World War One and based on a book by pulp colossus Edgar Rice Burroughs, the action takes place on the mysterious island of Caprona, an uncharted place which, despite being near Antarctica, has a tropical climate. It also has a unique eco-system where pterodactyls rule the skies and stegosaurus’ are forever getting into scraps with tyrannosaurs. Chuck in some Neanderthal type people, some lost German sailors and Doug McClure at his most McClure-ish and you’ve got yourself one hell of a film – if you’re about eleven. Happily, that’s my mental age.

One of a number of films that Amicus produced aimed firmly at a younger audience, ‘The Land That Time Forgot’ is cheap, unpretentious fun – but not without imagination, perhaps even style. Pulp source material of a certain vintage often throws up something odd – some bizarre theory or pseudo-scientific viewpoint (usually insanely right wing) – and here it is hinted that the unusual properties of the island mean that its inhabitants evolve not over time but over distance, i.e. the further north people go, the more sophisticated they become. It’s pretty suspect (people from warmer climates are more primitive?) but it gives the narrative an edge of strangeness and mystery, which it needs. Man does not live by pterodactyl attack alone, you know.

The Land That Time Forgot

Biology 103

A final selection from the 1975 BBC Schools programme 'Biology: Fertilisation'. Despite being nearly forty years old it remains current, especially in the way that the man who fathers the children is clearly not the same man who looks after them. I'm sure that there were some suppressed giggles in class at the time, but I found it very informative, especially as it helped me to finally understand how that kid who lives with us got here.

Biology 102

The rules of attraction, and wolves shagging. This is gold!