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TV Guide
Catacombs Reference LibraryTV Guide is a TV listings magazine that has been published in the US since 1953, with local editions for each TV region. Colour pages including editorial features were printed nationally, then sent to local printers to add the listings pages. It is digest sized- slightly larger than a paperback, but much smaller than a standard magazine. It was sold by subscription and on grocery store checkouts.
Five separate TV Guide articles on Space: 1999 are included here.
You won't have to wait 24 years to see more of these new faces- they're stars of Space 1999, a British made syndicated series (to be on more than 100 stations this fall) about a bunch of lost astronauts who are star-trekking through the void, unable to return to Earth. At left is Chistopher Lee, star of many a Dracula movie, as Captain Zantor, a flash-frozen space traveler who defrosts for one episode. Far left: Joanna Dunham, as Vana from the planet Zenno, is 218 years old (she doesn't look a day over 140 to us). Below left: series regulars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain crouch behind an intergalactic tree on planet Piri. (Barry Morse- The Fugitive's old nemesis- is also in the series.) At right, Isla Blair (top) and Anthony Valentine (bottom) are two aliens who start a space war and need hair transplants. What with the indifferent class of aliens they always run into, our astronauts have a real incentive to return to Earth- but they can't. They're stuck out there for a least one season. Plus reruns.
This "Close Up" feature comes from the Los Angeles area, where KHJ-TV channel 9 started showing Space: 1999 on 23rd August 1975 at 7pm. The image is from the local edition for WIS-TV Columbia, South Carolina. The accompanying picture was Bain, Landau and Morse sat on the floor, from The Infernal Machine.
Landau and Ms. Bain: A trek to England and another TV series ...
Debut: An ambitious new science-fiction series reuniting the "Mission: Impossible" team of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.
This episode concerns a countdown to catastrophe on Moonbase Alpha, a manned, self-sustaining installation to repel attacks from outer-space aliens and to dispose of atomic wastes shuttled from earth. When Commander Koenig (Landau) takes over, the disposal sites are found to be emitting energy in heavy amounts, and a desperate attempt is undertaken to avert an explosion that could blast the moon and Alpha out of earth's orbit.
Budgeted at S6.5 million, this series' credibility is heightened by Rudi Genreich's costumes, authentic-looking sets and, for television, spectacular special effects.
Cast ... Dr. Russell: Barbara Bain. Prof. Bergman: Barry Morse. Commissioner Simmonds: Roy Dotrice. (60 min.)
This program is the product of a British company called ITC, which puts out a press kit that is 2 feet by 2 feet - to start with. When we opened the kit up, it grew to 6 feet by 2 feet, and before we could wrestle it to the ground, it screamed, "THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE SERIES! THE HIGHEST BUDGET FOR AN HOUR SERIES ITC HAS EVER COMMITTED!" Well, they got one thing right: this series wasn't produced-it was committed, like a crime. It is a science-fiction concoction that, according to the 12-square-foot press kit, goes like this: "September, 1999... The most devastating explosion in the history of mankind blasts the moon out of orbit... on it are 311 men and women... pitted against forces of nature so extraordinary... life forms so strange... environments so hostile... their space odyssey is beyond the grasp of human comprehension."
Space: 1999 has been syndicated to over 150 stations in the U.S. It has also been sold to 101 other countries, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and Mauritius, where it should be popular-because language is no barrier. In the first episode, for example, there was practically no dialogue for quite a while, which, in view of what was to come, was a terrific idea. Then came lines like "People are dying out there, John," and even "We're sitting on the biggest bomb ever made." In a show like this, that's one line they should have avoided at any price. Finally, our hero turns, Hamlet-like, to address his fellow castaways. "As you know," he says, "we have been totally cut off from Earth. If we try to go back to Earth, we may fail. Therefore, in my judgement, we do not try." Well, it's lonely at the top-but you don't know the meaning of loneliness until you've seen it here. After all, there are people out there-not only dying, but watching.
The special effects are good, but the actors are awful, even Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, whom you will remember form Mission:Impossible; and Barry Morse, of The Fugitive. Miss Bain's part is the zombiest, which is some distinction, as the cast is huge. The clothes are by Rudi Gernreich, who is best known for the topless and bottomless bathing suits. We think a man should stick to what he knows best-his costumes. Here are mostly gray things that look like tailored sweatsuits. In our favorite episode so far, the castaways went to another planet. It was called Ultima Thule, and it was supposed to be a paradise, but - as so often happens in science fiction - it was no picnic. For one thing, it was 200 degrees below zero at night, and not much better in the daytime. The planet was inhabited by another group of lost space travelers, including some terrific-looking girls who, despite the temperature, wore very little. The first group of spacemen had discovered the secret of eternal life, but there was a catch to it: although nobody got any older, everybody was impotent. Also, they had been stuck there for 880 years, and frankly, they were fed up with television not getting any better.
Author Unknown
Article Source Provided by: Allen Barnella
Catherine Schell (far left, top) is a strikingly beautiful young woman who last year landed on Space: 1999's Moonbase Alpha as Maya, the syndicated sci-fi show's resident alien. Now, aliens, as we as we all know, come with some strange traits.
Schell's is the ability to transform her molecules for short periods of time, enabling her to make herself into what-ever she--and the show's scriptwriters-- consider exciting. Among her many transmogrifications, Schell's molecular metamorphoses have included a lioness (top center), a lunging gorilla (far left), a hairy snaggletoothed man (above) and an orange tree (below center). Becoming a lion or a tree is simple--it's done with trick photography, of course.
The other roles, though involve long makeup sessions, or weird costumes--some of them like the one flanking Schell here. Most viewers, however, find the real Catherine Schell more exciting than any of her metamorphoses. In fact, they agree that she is one alien who has no need at all to transform a single beautiful molecule.
(Probably some time around or just prior to September 1976, most likely the annual Fall Preview issue.)
A Little More Down to Earth: The syndicated sci-fi series Space: 1999 is returning for its second season in September, but in a slightly adjusted form. Many of the touches the creators of the series saw as "futuristic" have been dropped because audiences apparently found them hard to identify with. The avant-garde unisex costumes designed for the Moonbase Alpha crew by RUDI GERNREICH, for instance, will be no more. Instead, men will be men and women women, with no confusion. Informal, colorful clothing will be the rule For off-duty hours, the women will even have garments that strongly resemble evening gowns. FRED FREIBERGER, former producer of Star Trek, has been brought in to produce 1999. One of his goals is to inject more human drama and emotion into the plots and give stars BARBARA BAIN and MARTIN LANDAU less robotlike personalities. And CATHERINE SCHELL (who was recently seen in "The Return of the Pink Panther") is joining the cast- as an alien being who can turn herself into any object.
Space: 1999 copyright ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Thanks to Robert Ruiz