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Look, you've got a phone, you go outside, you've seen the loving planet and all its bullshit, I bet you have feelings about it. I have feelings about it, too. poo poo sucks and I'll go to great lengths to find silly loving nonsense to pretend poo poo doesn't suck for a few hours before I go outside and do my best to make poo poo suck a little less. Like all of us, yeah? So me and my friend, we spend our Saturdays with our phones on the other side of the living room and we start flicking through channels. Once upon a time, we ran into a television show on the television set, and we weren't ready for it, because the production values were surprisingly good for the mid-70's and the premise was so absolutely bonkers that we could barely stand it. Grab your dicks. We're going on an adventure on the Moon.  No, the Moon is not what we're exploring. Hang on. It's much sillier than that. Imagine, if you will, a science fiction show devised in England, funded by Italians, written by peak-era Doctor Who guys, starring a guy you've actually heard of but you're mixing up with the guy from Grumpy Old Men, guest starring Literally Every Cool Motherfucker Ever, and a premise that feels like the BSG reboot but then takes a hard left turn into God Damned Bonkersville West By God. Why are you yelling dude I'm like this. Hi. Your Boy Fancy, aka Fancy rear end Ho, aka guy who's been on the forums too long, watched all of Doctor Who, listened to most of the Big Finish audios and user of too many words. I like science fiction and get laid purely by accident. My friend is equally bad about science fiction ("After Farscape, I could never love again," she's fond of saying), and we both need a respite from, well, *gestures wildly around at everything*. Comet was airing Space 1999, and boy oh boy, were we not ready. The good news? Every episode of Space 1999 is available on YouTube, and you and I can watch it and talk about it, if you like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6BXaGEuqxo Why would I click this Let me tell you why. I'll give you the premise, as set out in this episode. So it's 1999, and we have a moon base! How optimistic of us. What loving idiots we turned out to be. Nuclear atomz and things of that nature. Anyway. The moon is a nuclear waste site, because it was the 1970's and that was our going concern at the time. Nuclear atomz and that. Moon Base Alpha is the main hub of this activity, a bustling metropolis of 330-odd humans, monitoring nuclear waste and being scientists with surprisingly cool outfits for the time. Look at these loving outfits.  A little Star Trek TOS, only with bell bottoms and sleeves to indicate your department and a zipper along the shoulder. Neat idea! Anyway. That's not the important part. The important part is that the nuclear waste is causing NUCLEAR MADNESS.  The nuclear madness is causing Bad Things to happen to our intrepid space janitors, and it's a coverup! A coverup AND a concern! But wait. It could get worse. How much worse? Well, you know, there could be a  and the moon is hurtled out of orbit. Somehow, for some reason, everyone on the moon who isn't driven mad by NUCLEAR MADNESS, survives the tremendous amount of g-force that would be generated by, you know, the moon hurtling out of orbit. This is a disaster, as a newscast from Earth shows briefly as they leave the antenna range of, erm, Earth. Earthquakes! Tides out of whack! Global catastrophe! Static. So, bummer, right? You're a modern guy, it's 2019, you're ready for the grimdark consequences of being trapped on the moon as it heads toward God knows what, the Earth is likely doomed, it's some poo poo, right? Have we set the tone for the show? gently caress NO WE HAVE NOT. Because there's 47 more episodes of this show, and let me tell you right now, if you don't know what comes after this, you are not ready for the tonal shift that comes immediately. Which is, from the second episode onward, the premise of "the moon hurtles through space having adventures." This does not make any loving sense. It does not need to make any loving sense. You do not WANT it to make any loving sense, because it is September 13th, 1999, and you're about to watch some television that does not give a gently caress about consequences, continuity, emotional development, or anything other than "what if we hurled the moon through some bullshit and Brian Blessed was there on the other end, laughing?" Because that's the kinda poo poo you're in for. If you're gonna click anything in this post, click this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBtLqR5Lo7M The intro, in and of itself, is worth the price of admission. Which is free. Because this poo poo's on YouTube. We're gonna have to talk about these episodes as we go, and I'm gonna go through these episodes one at a time, schedule permitting, and I encourage you to watch these episodes, talk about these episodes, and you can spoil these episodes if you like i suppose, I'm not your dad and the show's old enough to BE your dad, what are we, savages? We are not. We are modern humans watching Space 1999. Are we going to have fun? I think we're going to have fun. Especially once we hit Alpha Child, the greatest hour of television mankind has ever produced, unless it's actually Space Brain. Also, there are episodes named Alpha Child and Space Brain. Does that put you in the mood? I hope it does. Martin Landau and his wife and the moon, hurtling through space, having adventures. nine-gear crow posted:Space 1999 is one of those shows that people keep trying to develop modern remakes of, but it keeps getting shipwrecked in Development Hell because no one can surmount the hurtle of its "this was made in the 60s by people who don't know what science is" premise. Some further notes: You might enjoy this while on drugs. I don't drink or smoke any of those things, but my favorite emotion is confused, so that's close enough, probably. You might enjoy this with friends. I heartily recommend anyone who's down to see where they blow their surprisingly large budget and where they don't. And having multiple people yell Okay What The gently caress at the television is a good bonding exercise. That model work, though. They hired the dudes from Thunderbirds to do the space models and so forth. It's actually rather good for what it is, and it certainly aged better than 90's/00's CGI poo poo. Barbara Bain doesn't seem to be able to act. This is a feature, not a bug, and you'll learn to appreciate her nonplussed reaction to loving everything, because it also brings you Martin Landau, who is NOT, I repeat, NOT Walter Matthau, and his slightly miffed reactions to all the bullshit going on around him, and will do any manner of insanely stupid poo poo because he's as smart as the plot allows him to be, and it is wonderful, and you will love him. Space. 1999.
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May 3, 2019 01:27
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:07 |
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This post reserved in case this thread is actually good and has people posting cool poo poo like reviews or art or something, I don't know, I'm optimistic
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May 3, 2019 01:27
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It's annoying that Space: 1999 is the one '70s franchise that never got a big-screen version or a high production value TV reboot. The theme song and rapid-cut intro are  I guess you can't catch lightning in a bottle twice.
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May 3, 2019 05:19
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'Force of Life' (where Ian McShane is taken over by an Unexplained Alien Force - get used to 'em, folks - and drains the heat out of people before turning into a glowing-eyed burn victim who sucks all the atomz from a nuclear reactor) and 'Dragon's Domain' (the one with the screaming space tentacle monster that eats people and spits out their steaming, slimy husks) both absolutely terrified me as a kid. Yes, I'm old enough to have seen the show on its original airing. The Eagles are among the best fictional spaceships ever. Fight me.
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May 5, 2019 07:53
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My only memory of this is that an episode had backwards evolving antimatter people, and a dude trying to make beer with antimatter hops. gently caress yeah I'm in
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May 5, 2019 13:51
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An effortpost, and it's about Space: 1999, of all loving things.  Anyway, 1999 was originally going to be the second season of the previous Gerry Anderson live-action show, UFO. Audiences had apparently reacted better to the episodes set largely on the Earth defence moonbase, so the revised premise was that the aliens attacking Earth would, through some sort of extraterrestrial woo-woo, cause the Moon to break out of orbit, taking the base and its inhabitants with it. The failure of UFO to get a US network slot meant the second season was scrapped, so the premise was retooled into a completely new show that Anderson and production company ITC hoped would be a kind of British Star Trek. IIRC, the first season of 1999 was the most expensive British TV show to date, with the pilot 'Breakaway' going massively over-budget and over-schedule. The money's on the screen, though - the Moonbase Alpha sets were huge (at least in season 1), and the modelwork was pretty much movie quality. The big issue that critics and many viewers alike had was the characterisation, or lack thereof. Martin Landau was a talented and respected actor, but Commander Koenig's defining personality trait as written was... "stern", I guess? There was little of Captain Kirk's humanism and empathy; Koenig tended to do a lot of silent brooding, then march out of his office to bark orders. The other regulars got even shorter shrift, with only Nick Tate's Alan Carter having any particular defining characteristics, even if they were merely "amiable" and "Australian". The less said about Barbara "dull surprise" Bain, the better - which considering that she'd proven in Mission: Impossible that she could act, albeit within a certain range, only goes to show how little the writers gave her. So the first season was kind of cold, with attempts at 2001-style cosmic mystery and profundity that were more on the level of Kubricks than Kubrick. It drew enough of an audience worldwide to warrant a second season (but again, not that precious US network slot) - but ITC decided that A: it had to be done for less money, and B: it needed retooling to appeal specifically to the American market. So they hired the perfect man for the job - a former producer of Star Trek! Specifically, the producer of the third season of Star Trek. The season with the space hippies, Space Abraham Lincoln and 'Spock's Brain'. Welcome aboard, Fred Freiberger. Freiberger gets a lot of poo poo from Star Trek fans, some of it justified and some in reaction to the mandate he was given by the studio to jazz things up. With 1999, though, it's basically all on him. His approach was "More monsters! More jokes! More romance! More shooting and lasers! More sexy aliens!" Profundity was out, Space Beer was in. There were some decent episodes in season 2, but there were also many truly terrible ones - including, yeah, the one with the antimatter people. (BTW, Landau hated him because his attitude to actors complaining that something in the script was out of character was essentially "I don't give a poo poo, we're on the clock so just read your lines.") The best Freiberger anecdote was that after arriving in England, he thought a place name on a road sign was tremendously exotic and would make a great name for an alien planet. That name was 'Luton'... which drew nothing but mockery in the UK because it's a very boring satellite town of London known only for its airport. Season 2 was the last, and while there have been several attempts to revive it, so far none of them have come to anything. The main problem is that the ridiculous central premise would have to be changed for a modern audience to accept it... but that ridiculous premise is central - without the Moon whizzing off into space, you don't really have Space: 1999, you just have Generic Space Show.
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May 9, 2019 11:57
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Payndz posted:
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3881603
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May 9, 2019 12:31
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No one else has replied, so here goes. Just got done with eps 1,3,4,6&8 (the others weren’t available for some reason). I remember the boring episodes from my mid/late ‘80’s childhood and Dragon’s Domain from mid nineties public access. I also had a die-cast metal Eagle toy as a kid but it was painted green on the four bulkhead things. Anyway, some questions: 1) the moon bursts out of Earth gravity with enough force to cause gravity issues to the crew but calms down enough to not be a problem for the crew, yet they bypass everything in our solar system and make contact with a fake sentient planet (does the ‘mutation’ thing ever come up again?). 2)the conceit of the moon leaving too fast to have a rescue mission be plausible keeps getting hosed up.
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May 10, 2019 06:11
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Sorry, I’m I’m a bit drunk but have some questions about this that I can’t formulate on my own.
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May 10, 2019 06:13
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Oh man, you didn’t have 5! That means you missed DEATH’S OTHER DOMINION. Which I really want to get into on a proper effort post. As to your questions: Bulgaroctonus posted:1) the moon bursts out of Earth gravity with enough force to cause gravity issues to the crew but calms down enough to not be a problem for the crew, yet they bypass everything in our solar system and make contact with a fake sentient planet (does the ‘mutation’ thing ever come up again?). How far they’ve traveled, where they’re going, and why the lack of any resources gets addressed every so often, usually because you can tell a writer asked the question and they handwaved it so hard that it connects with someone’s chest and your friend yells WOOOOO out of muscle memory. They’ve clearly left the solar system by, like, the end of episode one, and it’s on the high road to madness from there on out. quote:2)the conceit of the moon leaving too fast to have a rescue mission be plausible keeps getting hosed up. Plausibility has nothing to do with Space: 1999. As the man upthread noted, this show was trying to be Star Trek TOS, only we’re riding the god damned moon around. And flying an Eagle. I love the Eagles. Having seats that you stick your legs out fully on makes perfect ergonomic sense, the way they come apart is easily the most logical part of the show, and it gives Alan something to do (and Paul something to grouse about). As an aside, I love Paul. Of all the random secondary characters, he makes the most sense. In the midst of all the buffoonery around him, Paul is here to make faces at everyone, sock his enemies in the eye, and have a MAJESTIC mustache. He’s so rad. This show is so rad.
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May 10, 2019 06:34
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Is Paul the mustache British guy? I finally got John Koenig, Doctor-Lady, Black Dude with Accent, Asian Lady, Australian Dude (Alan?), old science guy but other than them why does nobody on the bridge crew have speaking roles? Is this the whole “see what they did and did not blow money on” thing in the op? Also, I was gonna ask if it continues being as rad as ep. 8. Ep. 9, I’m only 2/3rds through and is even better. Also also, what do they mean by “guest artist”, is it the stained glass or/and the Red interior?
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May 10, 2019 07:01
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Yep, episode 9 is not just Rad, it’s loving Rad. I love this show. Funky Star Trek hell yeah!
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May 10, 2019 07:39
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The main characters and their defining features: Commander John Koenig (blue sleeve). Stern, stoic, prone to shouting. Almost always shot from his best side. Dr Helena Russell (white sleeve). Is a doctor. Shot mostly in soft-focus. Victor Bergman (shirt-coloured sleeve): Old. Spock-analogue. Ridiculously calm because he has an artificial heart. Alan Carter (orange sleeve): Australian. Generally laid-back, but sometimes prone to shouting. Paul Morrow (red sleeve): Has a moustache. Bad-tempered. Prone to shouting. Sandra Benes (yellow sleeve): Woman. Usually worried. Prone to screaming. David Kano (brown sleeve): Black guy. Very protective of "Computer". Added in season 2: Tony Verdeschi (blue jacket): replaces Morrow. Italian. Likes beer. Prone to shouting. Maya (red sleeve): replaces Bergman. Alien with unusual eyebrows (Spock-analogue v2.0). Can morph into any creature. Probably the best character in the show who isn't played by BRIAN BLESSED!!!.
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May 10, 2019 10:25
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drat, this brings back memories. This and The Professionals were my fav tv series at the time. Loved the rayguns (staplers) they had.
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May 10, 2019 14:11
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I will have to re-watch this now, and maybe track down the STARLOST series.
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May 19, 2019 21:23
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The Star Trek thread just reminded me that Nick Tate (who played Alan Carter) became one of Hollywood's top voiceover men in the deep-voiced "In a world..." era of movie trailers.
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May 19, 2019 22:51
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20 years ago today, 311 brave souls were flung into deep space when the Moon was blasted out of orbit. September 13th 1999: always remember Moonbase Alpha. 
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Sep 13, 2019 13:29
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:07 |
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Beginning today, the show is getting a remake/reimagining from Big Finish Productions, a British company that produces audio dramas based on such programs as Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Dark Shadows, Torchwood, The Avengers, Survivors, The Prisoner, and others. Space 1999 will see new eps made in conjunction with remakes of classic eps. The series stars Mark Bonnar as Commander John Koenig. Today they released the first ep, "Breakaway", with a boxset of four more stories planned for an early 2020 release. https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/space-1999-breakaway-2127
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Sep 13, 2019 15:49
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