Why is it that the Thulian men in this episode are all running around in furs and boots, while some of the women are falling out of their skimpy little yak-skins? Not that I'd want to see Brian Blessed shirtless, it just seems a bit sexist to me.

Does Brian Blessed alway play a booming voice near fanatic?
Let's see, Cabot Rowland-thats one, Mentor, thats another, Blakes 7 he played a cult leadr on a penal planet, and in the PC game Privateer2:The Darkening he was a religious figure. Not that theres any typecasting or anything. And of course you have him as Prince Vultan in the forgettable Flash Gordon.

Hey, don't forget Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Brian Blessed provided the booming voice for the Gungan leader Boss Nass.
He wasn't a fanatic, but the booming voice angle was still there. Thankfully the drool was CGI.

"I see a hungry mind. I'll feed it...on
wormwood...and gall."

This was a damm fine episode! How many of
us placed an Eagle toy or model out in a
snowstorm to watch it slowly covered like the
one in this episode? Sure the acting is pretty
hokey at times, Barbara Bain's portrayal of Dr.
Russell going hypothermic is silly, so is Prof.
Bergman's behavior. John Shrapnel's is the
best guest performance out of half the
season! The walking vegetables in that cave
don't look cared for at all well. Dr.Russell and
Prof. Bergman strangely and
uncharacteristically embrace Dr. Rowland's
vision of immortality as one of mankind's
goals; It's opposed to their usual humanist
thinking. Maybe remembered best for that
gruesome pile of sticky bones sitting in the
Eagle, that image turned up in most promo
spots for the episode's initial broadcast.

I thought I saw a couple of slight continuity glitches; in the blizzard, when Helena collapses, she gets covered with snow. When Brian Blessed's squad find her there isn't as much snow on her as before. Also, when Alan Carter staggers into the Eagle, shuts the door and collapses, there's snow everywhere. Next time we see him, and he comes to, there isn't a trace of snow anywhere!

Two thoughts: At the end of the episode, as the Moon drifts away from Ultima Thule and the people of Alpha are saying goodbye to the people of Ultima Thule, don't you kind of expect someone to say "Goodnight, John boy, g'night, pa", etc.
Also, isn't one of the beautiful women on Ultima Thule Valerie Leon?

Pssst...hey, Hpool...

SNOW MELTS...

Yes, I know snow melts, thank you for pointing out the obvious, but can I mention something that you might not have considered... even when it melts, there are still traces of it all over the place! I assume you're referring to Alan on the Eagle, and not Helena out in the blizzard?

The Aplhans learn in this episode that the Earth year is now 2870, yet the show is still being called Space:1999.

Since the Thulians can't leave the planet and aren't going to be needing their spaceship, why can't the Alphans commandeer it and use it to more effectively locate a new home?

The spaceship is most likely nowhere near flyable. The model certainly appears to be that of an unfinished ship.

http://www.space1999.net/~catacombs/main/models/phoenix/imphoenix1.jpg

Besides, its probably designed on the premise that the crew, being of ageless Ultima Thulians, won't need to get anywhere in a hurry.

John Shrapnel also appeared in the film Gladiator as Senator Giaus.

Brain Blessed also played the loud, booming-voiced king in the comedy series Black Adder, starring Rowan Atkinson.

Here's a reach regarding continuity...

The Thulians said they were going to work on restoring the minds of the Revered Ones, and Jack Tanner clearly had some interesting mental abilities developing (precognition, limited psychic communication).

I presume that eventually, they were successful in their efforts, as well as in developing their mental abilities over the centuries.

Perhaps they eventually overcame having to remain on Ultima Thule, finally venturing forth into space (not as gods, as Rowland had anticipated, but as scientists and explorers). Maybe they also overcame sterility (no longer being on the planet, or just figuring a way to correct it), and eventually they or their descendents settled on a distant planet that came to be known as Zenno, where the development of mental powers became the driving force.

A long time later, a scientist named Raan decided to study how his race came to be...

I said it was a reach, but it's an interesting one.

Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway.

Did anyone else notice that a couple of the Thulians had appeared in the background on Alpha in some episodes? At least one female was a nurse and one male was a security guard. Sorry I can't specify the episodes at this time!

I spotted a nit when Rowland sabotages the radio.

He pulls out a circuit board (which slips out of the rack rather too easily). At this point we can still hear Alpha.

He then zaps the board, which silences Alpha even though the board is now disconnected!

(Later on we see the board removed from the rack, and it has ordinary edge connectors, similar to the older PC expansion cards. So it wasn't cabled in or using some future-tech interface.)

Why is it whenever someone decides to remove a circuit board does the computer throw out sparks?

This sounds like the Starfleet school of computer design.

LOL!

Haven't seen this one for years, and I'm surprised it's not a part of the 3-tape sets out there on VHS. (Hey, some of us are still stuck with 20th century technology!).
What I recall wasn't just the monster, and it's grusome habit of spitting out skeletons, but that horrible screeching it made. Instead of a King Kong/Godzilla type of roar, this thing just screeched at you like a tortured cat in a wind tunnel. Still gets to me.
Something I always liked about 1999 was that this whole story is centered around somebody other than the core actors, much like Force Of Life and Voyager's Return was. It was about somebody other than our heroes, and that's something that I've always had a problem with today's Star Trek. If this was done for TNG it would have been a failed mission by LaForge or Riker; if it was Voyager, it would have happened to Paris or Tuvok. After all, there were no 'interesting' crewmembers on either ship (apparently, according to the producers), so there was only core character stories to tell. At least in the original Star Trek we got to know many crewmembers other than the series stars.
I've got a problem with Cellini having 6 months rations and water in that tiny escape pod, though, not to mention the lack of bathroom facilities.

Knock, knock.
Knock, knock.
Helloooo? Anybody home? Helloooo???
That's the sound of me bonking myself on my head because I've posted in the wrong section.
The above post was SUPPOSED to be in 'Dragon's Domain', not 'Death's Other Dominion'.
If anybody wants to comment on what I said they should comment in the right episode section.
Sorry for the wrong address.
Okay, so let's talk about The Bringers Of Wonder here, while we're at it, or maybe even The Prisoner!
Nah.

Based on an idea by Curious on the Sink 1999 2 board, here's my list of improved effects for "DOD":
This promises to be my smallest list yet!
After Carter stumbles back inside the Eagle, some of the "snow" on the floor looks like shaving foam, which should be pretty easy to convert to a more snow-like appearance.
When Carter tries to take off from Ultima Thule, he tunes his monitor to get an exterior view of the Eagle from above. Where's the camera for that POV? I'd just eliminate the shot of the monitor altogether (though it's a pity to lose that nice shot of the snow-buried Eagle).
The shots of Eagles entering/leaving the "smog" don't seem right to me; there's the smog on the bottom of the screen, and the starfield above is space. No transition, like a real atmosphere would have. Something to fix this would help. (Did anyone see the movie Space Cowboys? There was a scene in the beginning of that film showing transition from lower to higher atmosphere rather effectively, and the moon was even in the shot!)
As gross as Rowland's corpse was at the end of the ep, why were the fingers grasping Russell's hand fairly clean? Didn't Bain want to get her hand mucked up? I'd add just a little color to the finger bones to make them match the rest of the putrid remains.

An explanation for the time anomaly on the planet would help. The problem of an interstellar mission is presented again. How could the Earth people get so far, so fast?

It wasn't an interstellar mission, though; it just ended up becoming one. (The original mission was to Uranus.)
Obviously, a "space warp" affected either the probe ship or the moon (or both), which Bergman muses about in the episode; it's a weak explanation in terms of reality, but kept the story moving along. The thing I'm interested in is whether or not the moon was actually 800+ years in the future by this point, as has been brought up in previous posts near the top of this board.

The moon couldn't be 800 years in the future. "Journey to Where" states it's 2120 back on Earth. That contradicts "Bringers of Wonder" which suggests it's the same time back on Earth. Again, there should have been a story editor who would correct such mistakes in the second year.

However "Bringers of Wonder" worked on the premise that the Aliens there were 'leeching' the memories of people that the Alphans knew from their own time, which makes you wonder why they didn't question it....

The problem with Season 2 dates is that they were made with little (if any) consideration as to what had already occurred in Season 1. Yes, a story editor or continuity expert should have prevented such problems, but I think the problem came from the top (and not just Fred Freiberger, but his major revamps did have something to do with it).
The more time has passed, the more I've become convinced that Freiberger shouldn't bear the burden of the blame; Gerry Anderson should have paid a little more attention to the changes made to his show, so such continuity problems wouldn't have been so blatant.
All that having been said, at least if one considers Seasons 1 & 2 to be in the same universe, the "Journy to Where" time shows it was the Uranus Probe/Ultima Thule that went through the time warp (and apparently came back in time to meet up with the moon).
BTW, didn't "Bringers of Wonder" have a huge gap between parts 1 & 2, even though they were supposed to be occurring on the same few-day time period?

There were other issues involving time. For instance, why would Zantor's ship (Earthbound) need 75 years to reach Earth since it didn't take 75 years for the moon to reach the same distance away from Earth?
Many have criticised the "committee" approach to writing on all the post ST:TNG Trek shows. One benefit is that with several people reviewing/adding to a script such inconsistancies are less likely to get by.

Sorry to keep falling back on the old "space warp" excuse for the moon's fast travel times, but I believe that's exactly what the writers relied upon.
Anyway, "Earthbound" took place after "The Black Sun," and after the moon's journey through that, it was definitely in a different part of space.

Anti-nit: The first low angle shots of the Eagle slowly being buried in the blowing snow create a terrific illusion of scale instead of giving away the miniature's true size.

Another convincing shot occurs when Landau and Brian Blessed look up: cut to low angle shot of the Eagle departing in a 'smog' blown sky.

It's always a pleasure to find a positive article about Space:1999. In the #175 issue of TV Zone (on newstands now), there is a very nice 5 page article on the making of "Death's Other Dominion" by Andrew Pixley. It's nicely illustrated with color photos and has some interesting facts about this ep. Fans might want to check this issue out.

I like to think that it was the Thulians that were transported back in time when the accident with the Uranus Probe occurred. this is also one of my favorite episodes, very well written, except for that whole 'smog' bit, I think it would've been better if they just said 'fog'.

In addition to the time problem, they're also too far out in space for a 1980's space probe. I found the use of 'smog' also not very satisfying (since that term usually first brings to mind L.A.'s smog caused by pollution). Thule seems to be a fairly pristine place, free of pollution. The smog term has been loosely used to decribe some of the atmospheres of planets in our own system.

-Rather than achieving phyisiological immortality, the planet Ultima Thule is inside of some kind of annomaly that slows time down so drastically that its inhabitants would achieve virtual immortality. In other words, they are actually dying on a cellular level, but the entropy has been slowed to the point that it's imperceptable. Kind of like the "Stasis-field" from Red Dwarf, only that their minds percieve the passage of time.

This might explain why people subjected to Dr. Rowland's experiments become mindless--inferfering with the anomally causes their minds to sync with their slowed-down bodies, resulting in everybody else appearing to move so fast as to be imperceptable. (I seem to recall a Star Trek episode where something like this happens to Kirk after drinking some spiked coffee.) It also supports how someone who regains their mind partially becomes clayivoyant, or time-sensitve.

It's vital to remeber when watching this show to that the level of technology on Moonbase is simply not advanced enough to analyse and deal with these kind of situations, and accepted scientific theories can and are often shown to be WRONG.

One more theory to help make sense of the enigmatic planet Ultima Thule:

Regarding impotence, the EXACT nature of the problem is never specified, is it? I suspect that it exclusively affects the men's ability to achieve erection. This would explain why the women all must wear such skimpy outfits! ;-)

A favorite episode of my childhood, but now, as then, I am left with one question: just why were there so many crewmembers on the Uranus mission? Counting the revered ones, there must have been nearly thirty people on board! Talk about specialists!

The whole there for 800 years thing threw me at first, but then I remembered Cabot Rowland mentioning that the Uranus Probe was hurled at incredible speed through space by an unknown force. I'm guessing that same force also sent them back in time, when they crashed on Ultima Thule, it was the early 12th Century here on Earth.

Obviously, as the unfortunate Dr. Rowland found out, it was something on the planet that made them immortal. So I guess if a 20 year old arrived on Thule, stayed there 60 years without aging, and then left, he would instantly become an 80 year old once he got out of the atmosphere.
Some immortality, it only lasts if you stay on that frozen rock!

Jack Tanner obviously knew this, or he suspected. When that woman wanted to accompany Rowland to Alpha, he pleaded with her not to go. Then there was his cryptic remake to Koenig: "Thule is a jealous woman. She will never let us go." Chilling foreshadowing here.

Way back when, CR wrote:

The thing I'm interested in is whether or not the moon was actually 800+ years in the future by this point

That's a good question, it was never really addressed. In my post above, I speculate that the Thulians had gone back in time, but it is also possible that the Moon went forward somehow. Perhaps going through the Black Sun moved them forward in time. Or maybe the phenomenon in Another Time, Another Place was responsible.

If that is the case, then even if Koenig and Co. could return to Earth, they would find a world nearly a thousand years later. Everyone they knew would be long dead.

I wonder, if this was true, and had Simmonds lived at the end of Earthbound, what would he have done in a world 800 + years after his own?

He would have tried his hand at future politics

Yeah, he probably would have.