Space Nineteen Ninety Nine

Less helplessly cheesy, but unbelievably managing to be less scientifically accurate than BattlestarGalactica, there was always SpaceNineteenNinetyNine. (For 2 seasons.)

http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/main/

My goodness. Plastic lawn-chairs and tiny monitors! Well, one cheapskate company I worked for in 99 did indeed have both of these.

Think about it: an explosion on the Moon manages to produce enough thrust for the Moon to go fast enough (in a random direction) to visit a new planet every month or so. But not fast enough (in one explosion) to crush all the humans into slime.

Then, the time spent passing each planet is always long enough to fly to it and have an adventure. It does not just whiz past in minutes.

An innocent civilization, somewhere in deep space, minding its own business. Until the Alphans show up...

Then, the tiny Alpha moonbase (essentially the lunar city from SpaceOdyssey) actually contains enough heavy industry (mining, semiconductor fabs, etc.) to replace the hardware they keep losing.

On the other hand, the StarTrekVoyager theme is as old as Homer's Odyssey. So the bitter irony of a ride on the Moon is there's no going back.

I recently watched the entire second season on DVD and I have to disagree with the first comment - not only was it cheesy (you could watch the progression of props from episode to episode), it was hammy to boot. Martin Landau spent the entire series shouting to demonstrate his "leadership". The models, though, were the best part of the show, and are still outstanding.

Not surprising, considering the series was produced by hardware fetishists Gerry & Sylvia Anderson (who also made UFO, Thunderbirds, CaptainScarlet, etc).

CategoryScienceFiction