I haven't seen this episode, but is there any reason they don't all get on an Eagle and fly back to Earth.

MODERATOR'S NOTE: It is indeed established in the episode that the blast has catapulted the moon beyond Eagle range.

I think I've seen every episode but this one, but it's all been so long. I'd love to see them all again, good and bad ones alike.

Other than Martin Landau, does anyone know what happened with some or all the rest of the cast?

I have to point out that the basic concept of the show, an explosion hurling the Moon out of Earth's orbit, is flawed.
(1) Nuclear waste is not explosive.
(2) A explosion strong enough to blow the Moon out of Earth's orbit would have either blown up the Moon or produced high enough acceleration to crush the Alphans.
(3)If, by some miracle, the Moon and the Alphans survived the blast, their speed would have to be high enough to escape not only the Earth's gravitational pull but that of the Sun.
(4) Their speed would still be far below light speed, and their interstellar trip would have taken centuries.

Also, the consequences for the people of Earth would have been dire. The gravitational changes resulting from the Moon leaving orbit would have caused huge tides that would have swamped all of the coastal cities. It could have even affected the Earth's orbit, causing dramatic climactic changes (not that the Alphans would have seen this.)

Mike, see my comments in the Sink.

Well, we know that Martin Landau was killed by the Consortium, so he got back to earth somehow :-)

The people of the Earth did suffer dire natural disaster and cataclysm, as is revealed both in this episode and the later "Journey to Where."

Actually Journey to Where blundered because the cause for the Earth's problems in that episode were blamed on pollution. You can make a jump and use the pollution of the nucleasr waste (Another nit already explored) on the moon but I don't remember this as being mentioned in the episode.

Nick Tate showed up on the TNG episode where Wesley finally went off to the Academy. He then popped over to DS9, where he played a member of the Orion syndicate whom O'Brien befriended.

Catherine Schell retired from acting and runs a bed & breakfast over in France. Apparently she never got paid any residuals from the series, so she doesn't do conventions. Whenever she's interviewed she also takes every opportunity to trash Barbara Bain because Bain had a bigger part than she did (to which I say, hey babe, it's been 25 years, get over it already).
Bain and Landau divorced in 1993. He went on to Oscar fame, and Bain went on to appear in an occasional TV spot or movie. She also does a lot of theater. They're Hollywood neighbors and remain on good terms. Their daughter Juliet is on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and their other daughter Susan is a producer.
Barry Morse has appeared in some TV miniseries ("Kennedy" was the last one I recall). I recall seeing Tony Verdeschi years ago in a miniseries called "The Last Days of Pompei," but that's all I've seen of him since Space.

If the explosion was big enough to blast the Moon out of orbit (at a relativistic speed, since they makit it to other star systems), wouldn't it have:

a) shattered the moon
b) irradiated the earth, destroying all life on the face that was towards the moon?

I must admit that I think this is one of the best pilot episodes for a show I have ever seen. Compared to such pilots as 'Babylon 5', 'Star Trek:TNG' 'DS9', and 'Voyager', this episode really grabs you.

Wasn't Ouma's last name Thurman? Sorry, couldn't resist that one...

Oh, that is bad wiseguy. Surely they can't get any worse.

One thing. Disposal Area 2 had a landing pad next to an observation area. There was also a landing pad of sorts for the Eagles to offload their cargo of waste at. There was no evidence of any of this sort of operation having been done at area 1. So how did they store the cargo there. Was the waste landed at Alpha, then transported by Cargo Eagle or moonbuggy, the manually lifted into the waste pits?

I almost get the impression that Area One was simply constructed by piling the waste into, well, piles, and covering it over with moon rock or concrete.

There is a glitch in the music between the names of Sylvia Anderson and Gerry Anderson in the opening credits. It can be heard on both the Sci-Fi Channel and Columbia House versions. Also, the picture takes on a yellowish tint in between the title "Breakaway" and the "Roy Dotrice" credits.

Does the ending of this episode remind anyone of another classic series? A shot of a scene, the camera rising up to the stars, with a narration?
All Koenig had to say was, "Yes, maybe there...in the Twilight Zone!"

The dates given in the episode could have been better chosen...Sept 9, 1999? Real cute 9/9/99... couldn't they think of another digit? And the cliche of 13 and bad luck...couldn't they have made it the 12th or the 14th? (I'm surprised they didn't pick August...a Friday the 13th)
And why make a disaster happen on one of the star's birthday (Barbara Bain)? Didn't they realize both events wouldn't fit in one square on the 1999 calendar 26 years later? :)

On the other hand, the secret can now be told...John Koenig wasn't supposed to be the new commander! That decision was caused by a 9/9/99 glitch on Commisioner Simmonds' computer!

Those of you who have "Breakaway" on video tape, be sure to watch it today . . . really cool to see today's date flash on the screen at the beginning of the episode!

24 years after first seeing Space:1999, I still chuckle at the goofy premise--ie, moon blasted out of earth's orbit with enough speed to make regular weekly stops in star systems across the galaxy. At the time I was 11, and my friends and I argued about about how 'realistic' it all was, especially the star-hopping aspect of the show. Then, thanks to the helpful writers at Starlog, all was explained (and I quote from issue #2) "The nuclear waste deposits exploded...with a surge of incredible power, and pushed the moon out of orbit, out of the solar system and *out of the plane of the eliptic.* It was this spiraling "upward"--into utterly unexplored space--that hurled the moon into the time warp that transported it light-years away from Earth."

Wow, glad we got that straightened out.

Still, despite its hokiness, I have fond memories of the show (of season one at least). Space:1999 meets all three of the criteria I set down years ago for what makes a "good" bad sci-fi viewing: 1) at least one award winning actor (preferably with an Oscar, but a Tony-winner will do in a pinch); 2) a preposterous premise which the actors nonetheless succeed in utterly embracing; and 3) lots of property damage: the more explosions the better.

This show had it in spades.

Actually, it was going through the black sun in the third episode which hurled them into another galaxy, far, far away...before that the only planet they visited was Meta in the 2nd episode (sorry, people, but any reasoning that this was not Meta can be blamed on lousy continuity on the part of the writers) which was explained to be in our galaxy in the first episode.

So, Koenig became commander on 9/9/99 and breakway occurred on 9/13/99...just where did those 4 days go? Almost every scene follows the previous scene. Did Koenig recuperate in the Medical section for a day? Unlikely, since he walked away from the crash... Did it take a day for Simmonds to arrive at Alpha? Just how long were the Eagles redistributing the nuclear waste before the explosions? Even if Koenig became commander at 11:59pm on 9/9 and the breakaway started at 12:01am on 9/13 that still leaves three days that the 52 minutes of this episode gets stretched into. Everybody is always at their posts and in their uniform. Did anyone actually sleep during these 3/4 days?

SEPTEMBER 13, 1999
META SIGNALS INCREASING
YES...MAYBE THERE...
or maybe Terra Nova, or maybe Zenno, or maybe Piri, or maybe Ariel, or maybe Ultima Thule, or maybe Delta, or maybe Betha, or maybe Arkadia, or maybe Psychon, or maybe Vega, or maybe Luton, or maybe Eden Mark II, or maybe Kalthon, or maybe Sunim, or maybe Ellna, or maybe...

Happy breakaway day, everyone. Surf's up here on Earth!

Monday, September 13, 1999; the Moon is blasted out of Earth orbit and sent flying into deep space...and you thought YOU had a bad Monday!
Can't believe we've actually reached this date, after all these years of watching 1999. Anyways...
Got a nit here that nobody has picked up; When we seeing the orbital Meta Probe space station, it's turning counter-clockwise on it's axis; then Koenig and the audience watch the Probe Ship dock with the station, but the station has stopped rotating; then when the Moon breaks free, the station is rotating clockwise; then when it's about to blow up, it's rotating counter-clockwise! Looks like they've got some defective thrusters there!

Anyone mind telling me what footage was added and which was cut for the Alien Attack tape. I have never seen Breakaway or War Games in their intended form.

Hmmm...as I recall there was some nonsense footage of a Space commission meeting added. It looked like they rented a room at the Holiday Inn and shot footage in it. Pretty lame...

AWFULAWFULAWFUL! I have to agree with BarbF regarding the Space Commission scenes. Considering they pushed the timeframe up to the year 2100 (and outside the background noise of regular car engines can be heard), it was just silly to see these guys with what might as well be a CB-radio sitting on a meeting room desk. I fast forward past these guys everytime.

Also scenes were inserted elsewhere for no reason at all. Near the end of the "Breakaway" half, the scene where Koenig and Bergman are looking through the door of the room where Collins smashed the window was inserted during the scene where they are listening to the news report. Also inserted were two shots of Helena walking across Main Mission while looking at the screen (both shown backwards-her right sleeve is white), one during the news report, the other at the end right before "War Games" starts. These scenes actually came from earlier when Koenig crashed the eagle. The only parts that were edited out were anything that mentioned Space: 1999 (the opening and closing credits), the year 1999 (opening and closing of "Breakaway" and some segments around the commercial breaks to try to make it look like no break was there, so they could put the commercial breaks elsewhere (similar to the sci-fi channel).

I must admit that the Lunar Commision office didn't look anything like a 'Mission Control'. Love the groovy formal outfits these guys were wearing, sweaters, each in a different colour. Maybe the colour signified a rank, or maybe it just looked lame. I'd go woth the latter.

>Also scenes were inserted elsewhere for no
>reason at all. Near the end of the "Breakaway"
>half, the scene where Koenig and Bergman are
>looking through the door...

That was actually inserted to cover up the shot of Commissioner Simmonds which appears there in the original episode. If they had simply cut that entire shot out rather than cover it up, it would have created a jump in the soundtrack - then again, they don't care about the soundtrack jumps where they've cut the title sequences out!

In the Lunar Commission sequence that follows, it's explained that contact was made with the base and it was learned that Commissioner Simmonds died following injuries sustained during the breakaway. This is done simply to give a reason for the fact that Simmonds does not appear or get a verbal reference in the rest of the movie, having been a fairly major character up until that point; in the original episode, of course, he does not die (and the Moon and Earth never establish two-way communications, so the Lunar Commission would have had no idea who, if anyone, survived).

Oops! Thanks, Gareth, never thought of that...still they could have taken a shot from the same scene and not have Koenig and Bergman looking through a door that's not there in Main Mission...or show a shot of Helena that they wouldn't have to show backwards...

What is it with Gerry Anderson and BIG explosions? Is the guy a pyromaniac or something because I'll swear I've never seen a show with so many explosions.

A historical note, September 13th 1959 is the
day the first probe from Earth reached the
moon, the Soviet Lunik 1 or Lunik 2
crash-landed on that day. Maybe that's where
they picked the date from.

Yes wiseguy, me & my friends also
ammended Koenig's closing line with the
slow pan upwards to the stars with, "...in the
Twilight Zone." Good observation, I'm sure
many other fans have made it as well.

Koenig to Carter: "Can you make it back to the
base?"
The reply Carter should have made: "Have a
nice trip Commander, I'm going back to Earth
while I still can!"

There's an FX shot absent from the episode
(at least absent from the laserdisc and
columbia house vhs releases) that should
depict the moon getting under way with a
prominent "hotspot" on its trailing surface,
illustrating the massive fission reaction
consuming Area Two and acting like a giant
rocket motor. That would have looked very cool
and it feels like it ought to have been there.
The "Space: 1999 Documentary" that I've seen
does include a very brief shot like the one I've
described here, does anyone know how or
when it was photographed, and why it seems
to be absent from the episode itself?

The shot depicting the Moon traveling away
from the Earth (from the vantage point of the
Mars satellite, so the dialogue says) shows a
prominent high-walled crater on the moon's
surface with rays and a smoothed-over lunar
plain surrounding the crater over a
tremendous area. I like to think this is the
moonscape deformed by the blast, with the
crater where Area Two used to be.

One thing that can be said for Gerry
Anderson's shows, they always had
well-coreographed miniature explosions.This
has had a direct influence on Star Wars and
space shows ever since.

September 13, 2000; Well, we're still allhere,people, and so is the moon. Whew!

Uh, Will, please see Steve M's post from 13 September 1999.

Happy 1st anniversary, gang!

Simmonds mysteriously disappears until the episode "Earthbound", when the Kaltorian spaceship will take _75 years_ to get to Earth!

As ornery and stubborn as Simmonds proved to be in Earthbound, it is hard to believe he was out of sight for so long. What, did the Moon go through a warp during the first few weeks? If so, that guy is really out of it to think they could find Earth again after making such a tremendous jump.

I also don't buy them going to another galaxy so fast. First of all, there are at least three instances of encountering previous Earth expeditions: the ones who settle on Ultima Thule, Dr. Russell's husband (in anti-matter form), and the expedition that spawned Brian the Brain.

I noticed a long time ago that the Moon conveniently slows down as it approaches a solar system, then speeds up to get to the next one. Gravity should cause the direct opposite.

Nuclear waste doesn't explode? How the heck do we know? It looks like it was a terrific volume problem on Earth, and I think they built up the mystery quite nicely. Heat, magnetic activity, but no radiation.

As to Breakaway and War Games, I don't have them in their original form, only the movie with the silly Lunar Commission scenes added, the silly re-dating to 2100, and the silly re-use of scenes from later in the episode.

I sure would like a copy of these two in their original form... if such survives.

The general consensus for year one has been to view the episodes as happening in the order they were filmed, which makes sense given the minor set and prop changes as filming progressed. "A Matter of Life and Death," the episode in which they encounter Helena's husband, was in fact originally intended to be a sequel to "Breakaway," with the planet they encounter being Meta. However the powers that be at ITC wanted the series to be viewable in any running order, so the connection was dropped. How things have changed in the wake of series like Babylon 5, where the viewer expects to see continuity.

There's good news if you want to see the series, as the first 12 episodes have just been released on DVD by A&E Video in North America. However for some reason they have only released the first 6 episodes on VHS: presumably they want to see how well the series sells on VHS before committing to more episodes. Each VHS set has 3 tapes of one episode each, even tho' they could easily put on 2 per tape. Carlton, the current copyright holder of 1999 and other ITC properties, will begin releasing the series in the UK in April.

When I was younger (MUCH younger), I recall watching snippits--and perhaps entire episodes--of "Space: 1999," but have not seen anything of the series in perhaps two decades--until now. I bought the first DVD set (episodes 1 to 6) and watched "Breakaway." One thing that struck me was the "2001 syndrome" again. Here we are, having passed a certain year on the calendar, and we have nowhere near the technology we see on this show. No moon base, no Eagles--but better viewscreen technology, though.

Using that control to open and close doors would, I imagine, get tedious very fast for those on the base.

The pilot alone does not seem to work around the incredible premise that this show is based on. All that nuclear waste blows up and turns into essentially a fission rocket--and that propels something as large as the moon at a speed large enough for it to escape the solar system. Somehow, that would take far more energy than blowing up a nuclear waste dump could cause.

When they are flying an Eagle by remote over the waste dump, why was it necessary for the unmanned controls on board to move like that, especially that "stick shift" control?

They had a lot of people on the set in the pilot. I wonder if that number will keep up for the duration of the series (then again, the original Star Trek series always had corridors filled with extras, so who knows).

It was interesting anyway.

When Helena is looking at an astronaut on the monitor, he is liad on a bed and blinks. The computer then informs her that his vital functions have ceased, and Helena then switches off his life support system - seconds after he'd blinked! Did the life support system make him blink? Was she a bit quick off the mark in killing him?

Happy 2nd anniversary, gang!

I've read elsewhere that a nit regarding the space station occurs during the newscaster's broadcast from Earth: he states that a possible rescue mission of Moonbase Alpha crew would be impossible because the spacedock was "also hurled from orbit." Of course, others pick up on the fact that the spacedock is blown to pieces during the breakaway (must've been all that radical spinning noted by Steve M. on Breakaway Day 1999).
I'd always assumed there was more than one spacedock. The Meta Probe launch platform was clearly in lunar orbit, and breaks apart from the gravitational stresses induced by the breakaway. Much later in the series, in Dragon's Domain, the "Interplanetary Space Station" (a redress of the original spacedock prop, with the addition of a landing pad) is clearly situated between Earth and the moon. I think this is the spacedock the newscaster was referring to. (Gotta love hindsight as a means of solving these nits!)

DUH...the summary of this episode at the top of the page mentions the space station nit!
But I really HAVE read it elsewhere, too.

I'd given the "four days in 52 minutes" thing (see wiseguy's post from Sep 11 '99)some thought a few years ago while I was attempting to make my own comic book adaptation of Breakaway. How could I reconcile those four days? Here's what I came up with:
September 9th, 1999 saw Nordstrom's death at NDA2 while Koenig was en route from Earth. During Koenig's flight, the pilot (Kelly from Space Brain? Shane Rimmer's voice, at any rate) tells Koenig they'll be arriving at Moonbase Alpha at 2335 Lunar Time. This puts Koenig's arrival just before midnight, and judging by all the personnel milling about, right around "shift change." (So are there four 6-hour watches/shifts, or three 8-hour ones?)
One could presume Koenig's visit to Medical Center to see the afflicted probe astronauts took place the next day, as did his meeting with Carter and his "deal" communication with Simmonds. The day ended with Koenig in his quarters pondering the problem while watching the Meta signal on his screen.
September 11th brought us the flight over NDA1 and Jackson and Ellis's point-by-point check of NDA2 (certainly a time-consuming venture), which ended abruptly with Collins going berserk.
It's a little hazy as to which day the next few events (the blink-eyed death of the probe astronauts and the flight data analysis) occured, but Koenig's flight over the NDA1 firestorm probably occured on September 12th.
By the time one figures in his rescue and med exam, followed by the arrival of Simmonds on base and Bergman's discovery of magnetic radiation, it's at least late in the day on the 12th, or possibly very early on the 13th.
Of course, we all know what happened on THAT day!
So, there we have my take on the four day thing. Given the 52 minute time constraint, it's no wonder we only saw "on duty" scenes. (Although much later, in Space Brain we see personnel rush into Main Mission wearing their pyjamas, implying that emergencies don't allow time for clothes changes!) It just goes to show that maybe a 2-hour (or at least 90 minute) pilot episode would have allowed for extra establihing details such as the time thing, or a little extra character development; still, it's a darn good episode given how much was crammed into just 52 minutes!

And to anyone who read my last post, you can see why I didn't major in math!
I meant "five" days, not four. Either I subconsciously forgot to include Sep 9th because it was almost over, or I was thinking 9+4=13. D'oh!

Am I the only one who finds the whole 'white eyed brain-dead zombie look' all the affected workers contract is a bit....freaky? I'm not trying to sound like a baby, I've just never heard any cite it as particularly scary...

In the 'This episode' sequence, there is a shot of an Eagle near the Moon. We can see into the cockpit, where a strange looking astronut and a grinning maniac are sitting. It comes near the end of the sequence.

I thought the 'white-eyed brain-dead zombie'look was a tad creepy, too, especially when coupled with the 'mottled flesh under the eerie blue isolation ward lighting' effect. (I was young and hadn't seen gore on tv...of course, by the time Death's Other Dominion, The Troubled Spirit and Dragon's Domain aired, I'd gotten used to it!)

Actually , the others didn't bother me so much....actually they didn't bother me at all for some reason, I'm 16 so I first got to see 1999 on BBC 2.... I guess some of that 'shock' aspect of it was lost on me, but the Breakaway virus thingy I still find quite creepy.....