The show was a second attempt by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson, Thunderbirds husband-and-wife creators, to break away from Supermarionation puppetry into adult human drama, following the cancellation of their first live-action series, UFO, after just one season. With the high-gloss production values of its main backer, ITC Entertainment’s Lew Grade, who gave us The Prisoner and The Avengers, when it began shooting in 1973, Space: 1999 was the most expensive British TV show ever made.
Only two series were shot, and they differed wildly. Arguing about which is better is like debating whether the Sean Connery or Roger Moore Bond films are superior. We all know, really – but you’ve got to admit there was some great fun in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. So it is with Space: 1999 series two, which comes to Rewind TV this week. Although I showed up to Celebrity Mastermind in a borrowed season one costume (as awkwardly form-hugging as I’d feared) to prove my gravitas, as a child it was series two that fuelled my games, where we turned our fold-out sofa beds into little Eagle command module cockpits and climbed inside for adventure, and I took on the role of Maya – alien princess with exotic eyebrows and metamorphic powers.
Space: 1999 was a kind of follow-up to UFO (set in 1980), which featured humans on the moon manning an early-warning station for alien attack. For the new show, this was reimagined as a quasi-military and scientific research station, now called Moonbase Alpha. The opening episode saw the moon hurled out of Earth’s orbit by a nuclear explosion (memo to Elon Musk: storing nuclear waste up there is not a great idea), with the 300 or so Alphans sent hurtling uncontrollably across space, looking for a new planet to call home, but mostly encountering hostile aliens.
Made with the American market in mind, real-life Hollywood couple Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, fresh from Mission: Impossible, led the cast as Commander Koenig and Chief Medical Officer Dr Helena Russell. But despite strong storylines, exquisite production values, and an impressively diverse crew, series one wasn’t picked up by a major US network, causing panic at ITC Entertainment. It was widely felt to be too dark, although if we’re really honest, its leading couple lacked charisma.