Unfortunately, a large group of Science Fiction fans in America appeared
to be so wedded to Star Trek that each new series was greeted with, to use Mike Jahn's plrase, suspicion
bordering on hostility. Thankfully, the sheer quality of Space: 1999's production and its unfairly
criticised writing ensured that its US ratings were healthy, even without a network sale, giving the series a loyal and large
cult audience.
What if Knowledge Isn't The Answer?
For a series I've recently heard described as dull and soulless
there are some fascinating themes running through the first season of Space: 1999. The major concern
of the series is humanity's place in the universe, which is an extension of the Alphans' search for a new home. Whenever
the Moon travels near to a promising planet something crops up to stop them from settling there, in the case of The Last
Sunset and War Games because the people already living there have been examining Earth and are afraid of our
violent natures. These and other episodes see the wandering Moon and its inhabitants as an invading organism in the
body of the wider universe.
Two episodes take this ongoing metaphor to its most literal
extreme. Voyager's Return features an Earth artefect, a Voyager space probe, which has been infecting everything
that crosses its path due to a design flaw in its engines. Space Brain sees the moon as a physically destructive
force, its path taking it through the brain of a vast life force on which countless planets depend. Beyond the thematic
link the two episodes actually have very little in common, demonstrating the versatility of the format as guided by Gerry
Anderson, Christopher Penfold and Johnny Byrne.
Space Brain began almost as a 'monster of the week' episode, with the basic idea of Alpha
being attacked by an unstoppable foam monster. This simple notion is handled with grace and intelligence and is explicitly
linked to the show's ongoing examination of the possibility of a guiding hand keeping the Alphans from destruction.
Although this is generally played quite seriously, the writers do have some fun with the idea - making God female in Black
Sun and, in Space Brain, effectively killing God.
Professor Bergman neatly sums up one of Space: 1999's
ongoing Year One themes at the end of Ring Around the Moon when he asks the question "What if knowledge isn't the
answer?" This is a very big thing for a scientist to say as the alternative to knowledge that we are generally given,
especially in the current climate, is faith. Bergman's question remains fair enough in the context of the Alphans' situation.
They are technological man thrust into circumstances that mankind isn't ready to face, and in which much of their knowledge
and technology is regularly found to be useless. Such were Space: 1999's concerns with there being
some form of deity guiding the survival of the Alphans that were the series being made today it might well be open to accusationsl
of an anti-science. pro-religious standpoint.
The political and philosophical currents of the mid-seventies were very
different, though, and such a reading of the series was certainly not common at the time. Though as we've seen, getting
any serious critical response to the series proved to be virtually impossible.
Voyager's Return takes a very different appraoch to Space Brain. The designer
of the disastrously flawed Queller Drive, which has been killing vast numbers of people across the universe, is found to be
living on Alpha under a false identity. Queller is used to represent a generation of German scientists who went on to
work for both the west and the Soviets after the war and who bore a burden of guilt for what the Nazis used their work for.
Paul Morrow and Queller's assistant Jim Haines, who both lost parents to a major disaster involving the Queller Drive, are
used by Byrne as surrogate Jews, appaled at the presence of a man they regard as a criminal in their midst. To
complete the metaphor, an alien race accuses the human race of genocide, giving Queller the opportunity to finally gain
redemption.
All This Useless Beauty
Space:
1999 very rarely took issues on in quite such a direct manner, as in its first season the series' concerns
were largely metaphysical. The Alphan's search for a new home was used as a way of raising issues about man's place
in the universe in a way that put the series in the tradition of late sixties and early seventies SF such as 2001:
A Space Odyssey and Silent Running. Sadly, this tradition was swept away by the enormous success
of Star Wars, which made science fiction big box office for the first time in decades, but at the cost
of infantilising the genre. By the time bid budget science fiction returned to the small screen in the form of Battlestar
Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century the accent was on
spaceships and explosions instead of philosophy. The former, with its thematic similarities to Space: 1999
(a wandering population of displaced humans searching for a new home) can be counted as an especially missed opportunity.
