Catacombs Reference LibraryCriticism
Variety review
Catacombs Reference LibraryKHJ-TV Channel 9 was the independent TV station for Los Angeles that broadcast the series. See 1975 news in Variety and adverts in Variety
Friday 22 August 1975, Daily Variety, p8, Telefilm Reviews
Star Trekkers finally have place to light as syndie series out of Britain (produced in association with RAI, Italian State TV) hits well over 105 markets (as of early summer). Local KHJ-TV preem presentation before series slips into regular Saturday slot should enhance viewership, and upcoming 26 episodes already in house will deliver 7 p.m. to the indie market.
Cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Things To Come, new series jumps into final year of century, sets community adrift on earth's moon when that heavenly body, being used as dump for atomic wastes, retaliates by partially blowing up. Remaining section floats off into highflown adventures guaranteed to attract adults as well as youthful audience.
Moon Base Alpha, now home, was to be launching pad for planet Meta, which seems to have its own form of life and which the adventurous earthlings have to investigate because it is there. But before the moon blasts off its nuclear load, the astrophysicists and assorted reps of human race find themselves plagued with mysterious infection that kills nine men and infects two probe astronauts. Jargon becomes easier and easier on exposure to intriguing program, and "Happiness to you!" may become commonplace greeting for earthbound mortals.
Martin Balsam [sic, Landau], in local command on his lunar vessel, makes valiant attempt to discover cause, but the physician in charge, played by Barbara Bain, calmly warns him, "We're looking for answers, commander, not heroics." She makes her point.
Barry Morse sticks around as resident physicist good for future adventures, and others aboard have obviously been tucked away as upcoming diversions. More, the moon, floating ever-more away from earth, will run into other creatures and, without a flicker of surprise, such guestars as Richard Johnson, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Margaret Leighton, Cyd Hayman, Ian McShane, Catherine Schell, Michael Culver, Jeremy Kemp.
Imagination has been given free rein in George Bellak's initial script, which looks conservative compared to succeeding segs. Frank Watts' camerawork, Brian Johnson and Nick Allder's special effects, shrewd editing by Dave Lane complement the realistic story-line which, even if it at times strains credulity still can't be challenged for authenticity. Gadgets, miniatures, slow motion, wise use of colour bases, and Rudi Gernreich's costumes contribute to overall success of venture.
And it's a happy note to dis- cover computers such as HAL will not attempt to run the colony computer-in-residence for this voyage has to confess, "Human Decision Required." With that sort of thinking, series may be around for 1999 itself.
Tone.
Daily Variety, Monday 27 September 1976
One of the things to be said in favour of maligned primetime network television is that if it had ITC's syndicated Space 1999 to kick around there no way this plastic invader from outer nonsense would have lasted the first ear, let alone gone into annum two.
That, if nothing else. would have rescued those interplanetary prisoners, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, and returned them to the world of real acting. And it might have forced ITC to reclaim its big budget and spend it in the hopefully productive work of real entertainment.
It's getting so that a real space junkie has practically no place to turn on the tube for a fix. The suicidal trend of O.D.'ing in special effects seems not only to have contaminated the best in the still more or less earthbound American genre, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, but to have leaped the Atlantic and afflicted the already all too anaemic Space 1999.
All basic space ingredients are present as the new season goes into fitful orbit. There is the good planet and the bad planet; a forest of test tubes; canyons of computers; an overkill of push-buttons; papier mache performances; listless direction, and a sterile world polluted with space platitudes and cliches.
The only redeeming feature about this over-peopled and overdrawn epic is that it is frequently interrupted for long commercials and is forced to go into a week's remission at the end of an hour.
Catherine Schell, who behaves quite well given the ludicrous circumstances of her captivity, joins the resident troupe when she is rescued from the malevolent machinations of her self-destruct father, played with the requisite touch of villainy by Brian Blessed.
Space 1999, in renewal, is only a continuing embarrassment for Landau and Bain. Endowed by her evil father with the gift of molecular transformation, Schell at will can disappear, turn herself into a lion, a gorilla, a flower bush, a wolf.
Brian Johnson is the special effects director whose mission - not impossible - in life is to reduce flesh and blood performers to vegetating mutants. Nick Allder, special effects cameraman, commits Johnson's self indulgence to film.
John Byrne's script is a melange of interplanetary space junk hooked up to a larger than life pinball machine gone berserk. Fred Freiberger, late of Star Trek, is on board this year as the new story editor, which sure gives him a lot to answer for. Anderson still is around as executive producer, and the spaced-out space music is the contrivance of Barry Gray and Vic Elms [Actually Derek Wadsworth].
Britain's ITC boasts that the now $300,000 an episode show spins out for a claimed record series expenditure of $7,200,000 - making impossible to resist a Churchillian paraphrase that seldom has much been spent on so little.
Tush.