Space: 1999 (ITC Entertainment, 1975-77) is a British science-fiction television series. In the series, nuclear waste from earth is stored on the moon. The waste explodes in a catastrophic accident on September 13, 1999, which knocks the moon out of its orbit and sends it and the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha hurtling uncontrollably into outer space. The series was the last produced by the partnership of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, famous for the TV series Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, and UFO. Contents [hide] 1 Series overview 1.1 Special effects, set design, costumes and music 1.2 Format 1.3 Casting and guest appearances 1.4 Original broadcast 2 Basic premise 3 Regular cast and characters 4 Episodes 5 Other media 6 Series flaws and criticisms 6.1 Scientific inaccuracy 6.2 Rise and fall of Year 2 7 The abortive year three 8 Message from Moonbase Alpha 9 Bibliography 10 External links 11 References 12 Footnotes [edit] Series overview Space: 1999 was the first attempt since the demise of Star Trek in 1969 at producing a large-scale weekly science fiction series, and the show drew a great deal of visual inspiration (and technical expertise) from the Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The show's special effects director Brian Johnson had previously worked on both Thunderbirds (as Brian Johncock) and 2001. Space: 1999 is the last in a long line of successful science-fiction series that the Andersons produced as a working partnership, beginning with Supercar in the early Sixties and including the famed marionette fantasy series Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Joe 90, as well as the gritty live-action alien-invasion drama UFO. Space: 1999 owes much of the visual design to pre-production work for the never-made second series of UFO, which would have featured a more extensive Moonbase. Space: 1999 has since become a cult classic, and is available on DVD. [edit] Special effects, set design, costumes and music The special effects in the show were highly regarded. The show featured many well designed and intricate scale models including the Eagle and the Moon Buggy. Dozens of models for the various alien spaceships, along with the Mark IX Hawk from the "War Games" episode, were built by model maker Martin Bower, who would later also work on Alien, the 1980 production of Flash Gordon, and Outland. Special effects director Brian Johnson and most of his team went on to work on Ridley Scott's Alien, followed by Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Many of the spacecraft were designed around their prescribed functionality rather than being glistening starships, adding a sense of realism that would be replicated in future science-fiction features. The "moon city uniforms" for the first season were designed by Rudi Gernreich, while other costumes were designed by production designer Keith Wilson, who was also responsible for set design. The opening credits for the first season featured a dramatic fanfare composed by Barry Gray; it was Gray's final composition for Anderson. The second season was scored by composer Derek Wadsworth. Unlike the darkly lit sets often used in more modern science fiction, Space: 1999's Moonbase Alpha set design was typically bright, white, acrylic and quite unusual among the science fiction genre, clearly influenced by the futuristic sterility of Kubrick's 2001 sets and George Lucas' subterranean environment in THX-1138. Signage in a space-age font, rarely seen today but popular in the 1970s, was used throughout the sets to create the impression of a computerized environment. Despite this, the first season was able to generate a moody feel by the use of light and shadow. [edit] Format In common with many Lew Grade presentations vying to break the American market, the first season of Space: 1999 used a teaser, sometimes called the cold open, popular in US action-adventure series. This was followed by an economical title sequence that managed to convey prestige for its two main stars (both separately billed as 'starring'), give the audience some 30 plus fast cut shots of the forthcoming episode, and explain the premise?all in just over a minute. The second season of the series eliminated this montage. [edit] Casting and guest appearances Space 1999 Year 2 castThe headline stars of Space: 1999 were American actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who were married at the time and had previously appeared together in Mission: Impossible. In an effort to appeal to the huge US television market, perhaps to sell the series to one of the major American networks [1], Landau and Bain were cast at the insistence of Lew Grade against the strong objections of Sylvia Anderson, who wanted British actors. Also appearing as regular cast members were Barry Morse (as Professor Victor Bergman in the first season) and Catherine Schell (as the alien Maya in the second season). The program also brought Australian actor Nick Tate to public attention. Over the course of its two series the program featured guest appearances by many notables including Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Peter Cushing, Ian McShane, Leo McKern, Patrick Troughton, Sarah Douglas, Stuart Damon and Brian Blessed. (Both Damon and Blessed appeared in two different episodes portraying two different characters.[2],[3]) Roy Dotrice appeared in the first episode as Commissioner Simmonds, and at the end of the episode it appeared that he would be a regular character, however by the second episode the character had vanished without a trace, only to appear midway through the first season in the episode "Earthbound", his only other appearance on the show. [edit] Original broadcast The series premiered in 1975, although the first episode had actually been filmed in 1973. Live action was filmed at Pinewood Studios and special effects at Bray Studios. There were two seasons of 24 episodes each made by Gerry Anderson for ITC Entertainment. The first season was co-produced by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI. As part of this production agreement, various episodes featured Italian actors in guest-starring roles. In Britain the series was originally seen on ITV stations but never simulcast nationally. In the US, efforts to sell the television series to the major networks failed and as a result it was syndicated to local stations. In the months leading to the beginning of the fall (autumn) 1975 television season (in the US, September is traditionally the month in which new TV series begin), Landau and Bain participated in special preview screenings in select cities [4]. Landau is said to have personally contacted editors of the widely read and influential TV Guide magazine in some markets to secure coverage of Space: 1999 in its pages upon learning of ITC's somewhat poor promotional efforts. While most of the US stations that aired Space: 1999 were independent (such as powerful Chicago station WGN-TV, Los Angeles station KHJ-TV, and New York City's WPIX-TV), a handful were affiliated with the major networks (such as San Francisco's KRON-TV, at the time a strong NBC affiliate) and sometimes pre-empted regular network programming to show episodes of the series; most US stations broadcast the episodes in the weekday evening hour just before prime time or on weekends. The series was broadcast in 96 countries, mostly from 1975-79. However, it aired in its entirety in very few countries. Often there were long gaps between first run and rerun or even within first run, and rarely were episodes shown in a coherent sequence. It was shown in Italy as Spazio: 1999, France as Cosmos: 1999, Denmark as M?nebase Alpha, Portugal (broadcast in 1976 and 1977, it gathered a vast audience) as Espa?o: 1999, Brazil as Espa?o: 1999, Germany as Mondbasis Alpha 1, Spain as Espacio: 1999, Sweden as M?nbas Alpha 1999, Poland as Kosmos 1999, Finland as Avaruusasema Alfa, in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and Colombia as Espacio: 1999 and in Mexico as Odisea 1999. The series was also broadcast in 1976 in South Africa as Alpha 1999, and was dubbed into Afrikaans. Countries where the show was popular include Poland, Ethiopia, South Africa, Turkey, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, Malaysia, Canada, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. One of the first previews of the series was in Australia on the Seven Network in July 1975, but the station later split the first series into two seasons. The second season was shown in 1979. In the UK, the episodes of the show's second season were shown sporadically over a period of a couple of years, starting in 1976 while the last episodes were still in production. In some regions the final first-run episodes appeared in 1978, more than a year after they were produced; in other regions of the UK, the second series was never shown. The series has recently been broadcast on ITV4 and ITV HD in the UK and on the Portuguese cable channel SIC Radical. [edit] Basic premise The underlying storyline of Space: 1999 centered on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha following a calamity on September 13, 1999. A huge nuclear waste dump on the far side of the Moon detonates in a massive thermonuclear explosion, initiated by the buildup of magnetic radiation which was released, causing a nuclear chain reaction. The force of the explosion causes the Moon to be sent hurtling out of Earth's orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, stranding the 311 crew members, in effect becoming the "spaceship" on which our heroes travel, looking for a new home. During their interstellar journey, the Alphans encounter a vast array of alien civilizations, dystopian societies, and strange phenomena previously unseen by man. The concept of traveling throug...
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