Would Someone mind telling me where the docking tube for the two Eagles comes from.
Also Koenig and Carter must skulk around the base for a while after escaping medical centre

Isn't it JUST handy that Moonbase Alpha has a stock of Nuclear charges. How many others pieces of nuclear debris did they dump there? No wonder they won't allow births on Alpha. You never know what might be born, considering all the radioactive junk lying scattered on the moon.

Actually the nuclear charges aren't hard to explain if one assumes that the Alpha reactors can function as breeder reactors that produce plutonium. Being able to produce plutonium would allow for plenty of nuclear fuel out of which to make nuclear explosives. One of the novels, Rogue Planet i think, mentions this very idea. In fact breeder reactors would be handy for Alpha's normal power production, allowing an all but unlimited supply of reactor fuel.

To explain what I meant about Alan and Koenig skulking, when they escape medical centre, the countdown is at approximately 2 hours. When they burst in to Main Mission, the countdown to detonation is down to a few minutes. In that time no-one on the base was alerted to their escape, I find that highly unlikely. Even if there was little physically wrong with Alan and Koenig, I would think that Helena would check in on them routinely, or maybe Dr Mathias would.

Wasn't Helena a bit two-faced at the Command conference after Koenig came back from his meeting Arra? She mentions that John Koenig's leadership is what has gotten Alpha out of all the troubles they've encountered, then sneakily tells Paul Morrow that he'll have to take command as Koenig is obviously suffering from radiation sickness. And has she forgotten that Morrow spent just as much time in the radiation as Koenig and Carter? He was, after all, co-piloting the rescue Eagle! Shouldn't she have deemed him unfit to carry on? If not, why not?

Because Morrow wasn't acting in what she thought was an odd way.

The soundtrack on my laserdisc version of this episode has the "electric short circuit" sound effect (from consoles in Main Mission bursting into flames) occur as the moon "touches" Asteria, seconds before the scene shifts to MM. I seem to recall other minor sound glitches in this ep, too. Was this a flaw in the source material/recording? (ihaven't had a chance to check out the dvd to see if this has been corrected.)

The docking tube for the Eagles comes from the workbench of Brian Johnson and Martin Bower, of course! (See Douglas Nicol's posting from July 1999.)

"The docking tube for the Eagles comes from the workbench of Brian Johnson and Martin Bower, of course! (See Douglas Nicol's posting from July 1999.) "

LOL. Okay, I suppose I asked for that.

It seems I must correct one of my posts. The Mashed tape I had combining two episodes DID indeed have the detonation countdown at 2 hours when Carter and Koenig escape from Medical centre. However, recently getting the DVD with the original format episode this is no longer the case. I realise now what a mess was made of some of these episdes when trying to put them into TV movie form, but for a long time they were all that was available.

At least you had those... for a long time, all I had was twenty year old memories, novelizations and various magazine photos and articles. I'd finally managed to get the laser discs, except for the first volume that featured "Breakaway" and "War Games," and relatively cheaply at that. Unfortunately, Volume 1 on the secondary market was up to $150US by then, so I thought I was doomed to never see the episodes it contained.
Hooray for DVD!
I noticed that the sound problem I mentioned in my 21 January 2002 post has NOT been corrected on the DVD. Oh, well.

That same sound is still there but the consoles DID burst into flames.

I guess whoever built those consoles stayed in business and later equipped the USS Voyager.

Yeah, it seems all the consoles in ST Next Gen era starships were blowing up in people's faces and killing them.
As for the Main Mission fires, those were pretty ineffective extinguishers they used to attempt to put the fires out!

Here's something interesting I found quite by accident... I was in a second-hand bookstore this past weekend, and found an interesting (to me anyway) book about space travel in fact and fiction. It's called 2001: Building for Space Travel (John Zukowski, editor), and was copyright 2001 (of course) by the Art Institute of Chicago. The point? There's a chapter on future space exploration, showing past, present and future spacecraft designs. One such design (on page 139) is called a Kelly Space Eclipse Astroliner, and looks to most people like a cross between a current American Space Shuttle and a C5A Galaxy transport plane. To A Space: 1999 fan, though, the thing looks almost exactly like Arra's shuttle (with only one tail fin instead of two), right down to a front end that opens up! (OK, it opens like a C5A, which is a little different, but still...) The size of this "real" design appears considerably smaller than Arra's shuttle, but the design similarity is stunning.
I haven't yet searched the Web for more info on Kelly Space & Technology, so this is all the info I have about it. Check it out if you get a chance.

Does anyone here remember the British Starblazers books. They were about the size of one of the Commando comicx, 65 pages, and had a short story. One of them had an Eagle in it.

I like to think that a lot of the 1999 ships look fairly credible, like the Ultra Probe.

Consoles bursting into flames: At least the people in Space: 1999 grab fire extinguishers and try to put out the fires. In Star Trek, open fires occurr and no auto-fire suppression systems cut in, but nobody makes a move to put the daym fire out either! This is far more dangerous in an artificial environment like a space vessel than on a planet. I still can't believe that Neelix's improvised galley on Voyager used open flames for cooking! Something hot-looking but a bit more advanced like an electric burner would've made more sense.

Be careful with Kelley Space & Technology...you must not touch his brain!

Groan... (but I laughed as well!)

Just watched this one and the interior of Arra's spacecraft prompted a thought. The interior is full of cobwebs and apparently rather dusty. Perhaps this is an indication that the spaceship is very old, and is only being used because there needs to be a place for Koenig to physically meet(or seem to physically meet) Arra. Given what is supposed to happen when the Moon touches Aetheria perhaps the Aetherians haven't gone beyond the confines of their world for a long time, concentrating on spiritual matters instead.

Nifty idea, tim. I'd always chalked up the webs to the production trying to convey old age, but never extrapolated further as you have. I wonder if your idea is what we were supposed to infer all along. I know from now on, I'll look at that detail that way!

Main Mission watch a side view as Arra's ship swallows the Eagle. Where is the camera that takes this shot?

Later, they watch a side view as the Eagle leaves the ship. Same problem, especially as the three waiting Eagles are seen to be in front of Arra's ship.

Bergman says that it is "just possible" or "barely possible" that Keonig is still alive inside Arra's ship. That's a bit pessimistic isn't it? It's a bit of a leap from "they've captured him" to "they probably killed him straight away".

The camera shot idea seems to be a common mistake in Space:1999 and indeed in Sci-Fi in general. Look at the episode "A Matter of Life and Death" for the similiar mistake.

True, although the one that really sticks in my mind is the spaceship swallowing sequence in "You only live twice". I just find it impossible to suspend disbelief as that point.

Re: You Only Live Twice.

Did anyone on screen see that, or just us, the audience?

IIRC, Bond was watching the same view on the monitor as the audience was on the screen. It's been a few years since I've seen the film, though, so I may be mistaken.

You're right, Craig.

Thanks! It's amazing how I can recall miniscule details like that, but forget where I left my sunglasses (no, they weren't on my head) or what procedure to use at work to do a task I was just taught the previous week.

Back in March I posted a note about Kelly Space and Technology's aerospace craft that resembled Arra's shuttle from "Collision Course." Here's a link, but the picture I mentioned in my March post isn't one that can be selected. You'll get the idea, though.
Kelly Space & Technology

Koenig seems unusually emotional about Carter's status. He seems to be blinking back tears when it looks like Alan might not make it back, and displays almost obsessive behaviour when trying to contact him after the explosion, even snapping at Victor. You'd think they were brothers...or something else.

Hey Will, it gets lonely out there in that Eagle ;)

And people say that no emotion was shown in Season 1! (OK, I have to admit that the scene was a bit heavy-handed.)

Maybe Koenig is a metrosexual?

There you go... see how cutting edge and ahead of its time this show was?!

Shouldn't the moon have begun to be torn apart (by a planet 34 times its size) before it even "touched" Astheria?

Yeah. See Roche's Limit.

That's a cool site, ScottN. Thanks for the link!

I have to thank you too ScottN. Only one episode ever depicted a planet (or moon/planetiod) breaking up because of gravitational pressures; New Earth in "New Adam, New Eve". If anything, two bodies of similar size, such as the moon and New Earth, should have collided instead. The moon happily escaped with no damage!

No prob, guys. Always happy to help.

The situation of the Alphans dealing with an irrational Koenig is also presented in the second season episode "Seed of Destruction". In this ep, they attempt to restrain him.

Based on an idea by Curious on the Sink 1999 2 board, here's my list of improved effects for "CC" (another ep with very few fixes I can think of off the top of my head)...
The intial explosion of the asteroid looks like multiple explosions. No big deal, since there were multiple nukes, but they were all supposed to be timed to go off together. Also, IIRC, there's a pretty big chunk of debris initially visible. Basically, if the explosion could be cleaned up a bit to look like one big one with no debris, this shot would be fine.
Well, maybe one more enhancement: Carter's Eagle is awfully close to the blast; it only just clears the screen before the explosion occurs, and probably should have been vaporized in the blast. Speed up his eagle a little (so it leaves the frame with a few seconds sooner), so it looks like it put a bit more distance behind it.
The shot of the bright blast wave hitting Alpha is nice looking!
The planet looks gaseous (typical of many Season 1 planets). It looks pretty, but even as a child, I wondered where its people lived. Still, I don't know if I'd actually change it in this case; it fits with the mystery of the whole episode.
Fix that annoying sound fx problem, where the sound occurs before the visual!

Oh, I was thinking about Roche's limit... if an object is travelling fast enough, it'll strike before Roche's limit has a chance to tear it apart. I realize the moon looks pretty slow in this ep, but maybe it's a way to explain away the nit.

Another small nit about the planet. It didn't have a glowing atmospheric haze around its perimeter.

A 1975 Newsweek review of Space:1999 quoted this ep as an example of "campy" dialogue: the line where Koenig tells Helena he'll wear his goloshes when he heads into the radioactive cloud. The dangers from the radioactivity would probably be greater than suggested in the ep.

It's ironic... people have consistently criticised this show for not having any humanity within its characters, yet when little bits of humanity are shown (via sarcastic dialogue or emotion or whatever), the show gets criticised for that, too.
I know S99 was not perfect, but I'm tired of it getting slammed out of hand the way it's been for so long. Critics weren't kind to it back when it was new, but it seems some people just criticise it now because that's the popular thing to do.

CR, you seem to be in a bit of a sour-puss mood. The Newsweek review puzzled many fans. The critic just didn't seem to know what he was talking about. Koenig's line never struck me as being campy. It merely seemed humorous.

I figured someone would say that about my last post. (I was a bit tired when I wrote it. And for the record, I'm not offended by your candor, though some people may consider such "bluntness" offensive!) Are you talking that one in particular, or my posts in general? I'd be happy to discuss this off the boards; the Moderator has my e-mail address.
I agree with you about Koenig's line not sounding campy, btw, like Russell's toothbrush line in "Dragon's Domain."

As for the radiation cloud, would 'radiation shields' really be effective, since radiation would linger long afterward. Alpha would be contaminated for long beyond the lifespans' of the Alphans.

Maybe the 'Radiation Shields' were designed to absorb and dissipate the radiation rather than act as a barrier?

Why would Alpha be contaminated? If there's an external source of radiation, then the shields block it. Once they're out of the radiation cloud, unless Alpha itself became radioactive, it wouldn't be "contaminated".

While Alpha itself might not be contaminated, wouldn't all the surrounding lunar area be? It would make the Alphans' excursions in moonbuggies (Infernal Machine, Last Enemy) rather dangerous over that radiation saturated lunar surface.

Professor Bergman states that "out there there's a kind of radiation we know nothing at all about." The bad science fiction inherent in the line makes me groan, but if Professor Bergman says it, it must be so, since he's the science expert. Let's assume for continuity's sake that this radiation cloud is intense for the duration, but once it dissapates there is no lingering contamination, no appreciable half-life. Yes, I know it makes no scientific sense.

Since the radiation is from nukes that Alpha planted, wouldn't the Alphans know precisely what kind of radiation/fallout would be present?
I guess I'm not really helping, am I? Nevermind!

I think you caught something the writer overlooked!

The ironic thing is that I overlooked it until I read Peter's post the other day!

Possible anti-nit: maybe the Alphans didn't know the exact composition of the asteroid, and as a result, couldn't predict exactly what type of fallout would be present. It's a reach, I know!

I definately don't think the writer was aware of Roche's Limit.

The biggest and most obvious nit of all in this episode has to be Operation Shockwave. We all know that's impossible in the vaccuum of space. Bergman speaks of nuclear charges "moored in space", another impossibility, and Koenig says the whole idea "makes a lot of sense" when it really makes no sense at all! The English have an appropriate phrase for this: utter rubbish. However it is consistent with the dodgy scientific principles of the series, and again I'll let them get away with it for reasons of dramatic necessity.

Interesting episode. Of course a couple of things stand out.

I'm glad soemone else noticed the You Only Live Twice connection. I was also thinking that Arra's chair looked a little like The Great Machine room from Babylon 5.

How and when did Koenig get from his office to Medical? Bad editing cut.

Is this the first mention of radiation shields? And when and where did they get orbital satellites? Is this the first mention of them as well?

Of the episodes I've seen, I haven't remembered the details of many of them so far. However, one thing I've always remembered was the funky psychedelic colors of all the planets they came in contact with.

Like others, I've always been bothered by how quickly Helena and Victor deemed Koenig unfit to command. That, coupled with what some have called 'overacting' by Martin Landau while Alan was depositing the nuclear charge on the asteroid, point to a possible (but unfortunately not filmed) explanation.
Watching the episode last night, It occured to me that the depositing of nuclear charges seemed to have been a spur of the moment neccesity. Perhaps earlier Koenig had made some command blunder, such as ignoring the asteroid's potential threat, which would explain his emotions about the potential consequence of his actions (i.e. his friend Alan dying due to Koenig's oversight). That would also provide some more justification for Helena to question his command abilities later on.
Speaking of Helena, she wasn't too observant in my opinion. If I remember correctly, both Koenig and Carter both mentioned someone named Arra, yet she didn't notice this.
There was another nit I was going to pick, but it escapes me at the moment. More later, perhaps...

Why does everyone start backing up when Arra's planet is on the big screen. Do they think backing up will save them?

Notice that when the planet vanishes, a half dozen consoles burst into flame for no apparent reason!

I suppose it's a natural reaction, even if futile, you want similiar examples, the asteroids hitting earth in Armageddon, especially the Grand Central Station bit, the mothership totalling New York in Independence Day and so on.

For a Queen, Arra sure has a dirty ship. Dust and cobwebs everywhere? Her cleaning staff should be fired!

And speaking of those cobwebs, does this mean there's a bunch of spiders on her spaceship? And I have a problem for these webs, like on every other show they appear in-- Koenig just wipes them away and they fall apart. Real spiderwebs, like the kind in my mother-in-law's basement are so darn sticky you can't get them off your hand!

I like Arra's spaceship, but for such a long-lived race, it's design somewhat resembles the American Space Shuttle.

If the mines are lined up between Astheria and the Moon, once the countdown expires, and the two of them touch, that means that the Moon has just caught up to them, and they've all impacted across the surface of the Moon. They were all armed, so it's lucky they didn't explode on impact.

I guess that Arra's people didn't used spaceships that much, and just hauled that one out for this occasion.