Space: 1999 – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Breakaway”
By stephanie - Sunday, July 29th, 2007
I’m finally getting around to checking out Space: 1999, the British cult sci-fi series from the 1970s that happens to star two Americans. Martin Landau and his former real-world wife Barbara Bain are the Yankee leads in this retro space epic. They work on Moon Base Alpha in the year 1999. (Funny how the folks in the 1970s were so optimistic about our space futures!)
“Breakaway” was the premiere episode, one that sets up the premise for the entire series – a huge explosion on the moon that sends it, along with the Moon Base Alpha crew, into deep space.
I love retro sci-fi, and I particularly love 70s sci-fi and all its sleek costuming, minimalist design, and bizarro sound effects. Space: 1999 does this to great effect. There’s a never-ending list of quirky things to spot. For example, we have TV monitors showing a strange transmission from a distant planet: It looks just like a moving Spirograph drawing complete with eerie droning in the background. Fun!
And the video communicators that double as door openers! They didn’t have that on Star Trek!
The tone of the show is dead serious in that 70s Andromeda Strain style. The crew are constantly either frowning or standing around with a serious look on their faces. Everything is down to business! It doesn’t make the show bad – just slightly intense in their own low-key 70s sorta way. This is definitely not a kids show like the original Battlestar Galactica was.
The special effects are dated, but not as bad as you think. The ships look OK – but it’s the monitors inside the station that really date the show. Not one of them has any color to them. My favorite part of the set is the big view screen, complete with superfluous squares of color bleeping around it just like you might see on the Disneyland Space Mountain ride.
The plot itself was decent. People on the moon are coming down with a strange ailment that either puts them into a coma or makes them go space nuts. From there we discover some strange anomalies that ultimately lead to the moon’s blast off into deep space. In spite of the story not really making much scientific sense, it was still interesting and I enjoyed it.
While I did not get a good sense of how the characters will interact with each other as a team, we’ll see how this shapes up over time. If you are interested in retro sci-fi, then check this one out.
July 29th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
For a fun and frivolous contrast to oh-so-serious sci-fi, check out a couple of my faves from the 1980′s: Earth Girls are Easy and Night of the Comet..both feature Valley girls and bitchin’ soundtracks…
August 1st, 2007 at 1:20 am
Sounds kind of interesting. I never cared much about whether a sci-fi show made sense in actual science so long as the story was entertaining. I mean it’s not called science non-fiction right? Thanks for this post. I had heard of the show but didn’t know much about it.
@roseb: Night of the comet… yeah… one of my favorite drive-in memories from my youth. Fun flick.