Husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain team up again following “Mission:Impossible.” This time he’s Commander John Koenig and she’s Dr.Helena Russell. The Moon is blasted out of orbit taking Moonbase Alpha with it. They can’t get back to Earth so they wander around space. Catherine Schell joined up in season two as a shape changer. The show features one of the absolute worst soundtracks ever. It’s beyond awful and so bad it distracts from the show. Not that the show is all that great. The sets have lots of color and the special effects lots of cheese. The show didn’t have an ending. Not being a fan I could care less.
Season two opener: “The Metamorph” – The search is on for titanium. Looks like that planet over there has some. A scout ship (they’re called Eagles..get it Eagle Scouts..how clever). A ball of light absorbs it and takes to the planet.
Back on Alpha, Koenig and company are contacted by Mentor. He’s a scientist that runs the place. It’s called Psychon. He tells Koenig to come on down. He’ll send a ship to meet them in space. They can’t see it but behind him sits a lion.
Hold on. It’s really his daughter Maya (Catherine Schell) the metamorph. Here comes the ship. Uh-oh. It’s got a hold of Koenig’s ship and is dragging it down to Psychon. Koenig manages to get away….almost. His ship is grabbed by a ball of light and ends up in a spaceship graveyard.
No worries. Mentor’s a nice guy. He wouldn’t harm them….much. Koenig, Helena and company make it to some subterranean mines. It’s full of aliens who are mindless. So that’s why all those spaceships were there. It’s all because of Mentor’s computer which feeeds on brains.
Koenig and crew look like they have nice medulla oblongatas.. Helena and crew are just about to give theirs up to the computer when Koenig tells Mentor he’ll cooperate and bring everyone down from Alpha. That gets him some real dirty looks.
Koenig gives orders to Alpha to have everyone come down. Is he selling out? Catherine Schell became a series regular after this episode.
I don’t know why I bother leaving a reply to this (once again negative review) but…… To me, Space:1999 is the best sci-fi show of all time(past, present and future). It has the most wow factor sets ever made, a wonderful soundtrack, great stories and great acting (season 1 anyway). This show was REAL science-fiction. It’s a piece of art. Unfortunately, it was not well received by people in general. The fact is, that you had to have a brain to appreciate it. As for the second season, it was very enjoyable and had excellent music, but the overall production was not as good as the first one, but was still far better than any other sci-fi show. You don’t like it, don’t watch it. That’s what I do when I don’t like a show…… and it works !