Archive for July 30th, 2011
Retro Review: Space: 1999
by Doc on Jul.30, 2011, under Video/DVD
This review is a long time coming…I’ve had the [asin=201]Space: 1999 Complete Series Megaset[/asin] for months now, ever since it became cheaper just to buy that than buy the remaining individual “sets” they used to sell it as (4 sets per season for 8 total sets) that I was slowly accumulating – and now the first season is also available on [asin=1078]Blu-ray[/asin] (Season 2 isn’t formally listed yet, but I’m hearing October.) But I wanted to re-watch the whole series – I grew up watching it, and was always fascinated by the design of the moonbase, the Eagles, etc. Sure, maybe it wasn’t sound science – but how many SF series actually have that? It treated the idea of being in space and on the moon as an important setting – and not ignored like on so many other things.
Space: 1999 was produced as two seasons of 24 episodes each by British studio ITV. It stars the then-married couple of Martin Landau (as Commander John Koenig, and who later went on to win an Oscar as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood) and Barbara Bain (Dr. Helena Russell), who both previously appeared in Mission: Impossible. But the two seasons are part of a schismatic production. I’ll discuss the changes a bit later.
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