Catacombs Reference LibraryUK Press
Countdown To Lew's Super Space Blast Off
Catacombs Reference Library
This new series from ATV leaves Star Trek light years behind, says DERRICK HILL
YOU HAVE to hand it to space - it certainly has mileage. And that's precisely what a man such as Sir Lew Grade likes about it.
The thing is, a man like ATVs Sir Lew, a true televisonary, wants to be able to stretch himself, wants to be able to lay out about £3,500,000 and then get it all back again, with just that little extra something on top.
And Sir Lew reckons that, if you were to lay all the runs, re-runs and mega-runs of TV space serials end to end, there would still be galactic house room left for another space serial.
Now, after 15 months on the launch pad- 24 months, actually, if you're counting from the first sighted gleam in Grade's eye - Sir Lew's major contribution to the advancement of space sci-fi is about to blast off.
It's called Space 1999, a series of 24 one hour episodes starring Mission Impossible luminaries Martin Landau and his wife, Barbara Bain.
TVs newest space crew have gimmick that they roam through space on a bit - admittedly a big bit- of the moon, and not in a spacecraft.
Landau, as John Koenig, is commander of Moon Base Alpha, the earthling research colony on the moon. As well as being a space laboratory, the moon is being used as a dumping ground for the earth's nuclear waste.
Now this sort of thing is something up with which the dear old moon is only prepared to put for long, and certainly not later than September 9. 1999, on which date its blows its nuclear stack and send that chunk of itself that has Moon Base Alpha attached out into deepest space ... well, out of earth orbit anyway.
This all happens before our very startled eyes in the first, scene-setting episode, and for 23 more, we then view on.
As Moon Base Alpha (Hereafter, if referred to again, to be referred to as 'MBA') has 300 members, the series producers have been able to crack on that people like Joan Collins, Richard Johnson, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Margaret Leighton and other guest stars, are boffining away in various parts of the complex.
Other guest stars, suitably buried beneath tons of day-glo make-up, will be walking in and out the series each week, passing themselves off as the kind of ordinary, everyday space wierdos that people careening about on a bit of the moon are wont to bump into any day of the week.
I hate to kick something that has given so much perverse pleasure to so many, but Space 1999 leaves Star Trek light years behind. Even the loyalest trekkie has to admit that Captain Kirk and Co have gimcrack written all over them.
Space 1999. on the other hand, has that opulent, rosy glow that can only be achieved after vigorous buffing with millions of small, green. paper pieces.
Its special effects are superb; and they should be, for they are work of Brian Johnson, the man who did the same job for Stanley Kubrick on the film 2001 : A Space Odyssey.
The series was created and produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the husband and wife team that gave the puppet series Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, Thunderbirds and others, to a still grateful world.
So, with names like this on its pedigree, it's little wonder that Space 1999 should have bigger and better gimmicks for it.
It even out-guns Trek in the crucial field of flashing coloured lights that go plip-plop all the time, without which space would remain forever unconquered.
Sad to say, it does share with Trek a predilection for flatulent moralising of the trendiest kind. Watchers of deepest space will know that space folk talk like junior primers in sociology and psychology. As with Trek, just let it flow under you.
Also like Trek it has a crew whose composition suggests that it was selected with an eye for world wide distribution. It looks at times like a gathering of a UN sub-committee. Come to think of it, that probably accounts for the flatulence.
Sir Lew, while undoubtedly excited about his new investment ... er, series, is surprisingly modest about it, feeling merely that it's the best thing to hit television since the last ATV series.
No wonder he was disgusted when the American networks turned it down. So what Sir Lew did then - what, in fact his US operator, Abe Mandel did- was to sell the programme to individual stations all over the States - 146 of them so far.
And some of the big stations are so pleased with it they intend putting it on in prime time instead of the offerings of the giants- ABC, NBC and CBS- to whom they are affiliated and whose programmes they are supposed to favour.