avoid this one (Space 1999)

Member Name: sharktrager

Product:	Space 1999
Date:	30/12/00 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Martin Landau

Disadvantages: dodgy acting

SPACE: 1999 was a live-action science fiction series created by Gerry Anderson, who also created many popular puppet sci-fi series including THUNDERBIRDS and STINGRAY.

The show was set, surprisingly enough, in the year 1999, when man had created a scientific colony on the moon. Unfortunately an accident sends the moon spinning out of Earth’s orbit, hurtling across the solar system and through a black hole. The crew of the moonbase then spend their time looking for a planet on which they can settle as their supplies are limited.

The lead players in the show were the husband-and-wife team of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Landau played Commander John Koenig, the boss of the base. Although Landau is a good actor (indeed he would later win an Oscar for his work on Tim Burton’s movie ED WOOD), here he appears to be as wooden as his wife, who plays the chief medical officer, Dr. Helena Russell.

Although the special effects were on occasion very good, with lots of model work by people who had been trained through Anderson’s use of ‘Supermarionation’, the show on the whole was atrocious. Even the episode titles were useless, with one being called THE RULES OF LUTON. Isn’t Luton a place somewhere near London? Sounds really science-fictiony doesn’t it!? (Not!).

The show is sometimes repeated on BBC2 and I would heartily endorse your avoidance of it at any cost!

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