One of the best from the first season! Great performance from Giancarlo Prete, when I saw this episode the first time, in 1975 I was 9 years old i was very frightened. Great psychedelic-guitar-solo at the beginning!
Fabio G. Italy

One of the best from the first season! Great performance from Giancarlo Prete, when I saw this episode the first time, in 1975 I was 9 years old i was very frightened. Great psychedelic-guitar-solo at the beginning!
Fabio G. Italy

Sorry, but this is not my favourite episode. I think 'Force of Life' was far more effective at the horror angle. It's not particularly bad but not anything special either.

Plenty of suspenseful moments and gothic overtones. Especially when when Laura Adams
was murdered. Even when James Warren was killed,
you could tell that something malevolent was on
Moonbase Alpha. This was suspenseful as ALIEN,
Halloween, and The Amityville Horror! The ending
was intense and shocking. Most of all very sad.
Kudos to the cast and guest stars for doing a
remarkable job. This episode had me on the edge!

It was cute to see the Alphans addressing
ghosts as observable phenomena; Prof.
Bergman speaks of psychic energy, making it
sound like something real––which sugests
that research on such phenomena has
progressed significantly by 1999. Their first
best clue, the observed and recorded
temperature drop through Alpha is just like the
"moving cold patch" said to have been
observed in the presence of ghosts.

Giancarlo Prete died Friday March 9, 2001 in Rome at age 58.

The music at the beginning of this episode was composed and performed by Big Jim Sullivan. Sullivan is a well known British session guitarist and spent years as a sideman to Tom Jones.

I recently saw this episode for the first time on DVD. I really liked the teaser. The guitar/sitar music played against the images of Mateo's experiment was very effective. I have to ask however, just what was the purpose of the experiment? Mateo believed that Moonbase Alpha's survival could depend on it. Somehow, he believed, communicating with plants would strengthen the food chain. I can't see how. Was Mateo planning to tell the lettuce and tomatoes to grow faster? All in all, this is an atmospheric episode that does its best to tell a science fiction ghost story.

The plot of this episode is very much inspired by a series of late '60s experiments that claimed that plants could feel things, and might have some sort of sentience. Ultimately the experiments were debunked, but not before the idea somewhat caught the popular imagination. Stevie Wonder's album The Secret Life of Plants is one example of this.

Anyone notice the experiment occured around midnight? Communications post clocks show 12:00. OK, I know they don't specify am or pm, but it's a ghost story. What time do you THINK a ghost story would take place?
What gruesome makeup, especially for 1970's tv! Protruding bones and burned flesh...this one stuck with me for a long while, especially because of the "predestined" ending. In later years, I appreciated the fact that Koenig expressed regret over his responsiblity for Mateo's death, indeed every death that occurs on Alpha. Nice depth of character.
As I mentioned in my Force of Life posting, I loved the Hydroponics Lab set.

For those of you who might be curious exactly what kind of instrument Jim Sullivan was playing in the opening sequence and the soundtrack its a Coral Electric Sitar. This instrument was developed, with the help of New York session guitarist Vinnie Bell, in response to the interest generated by George Harrison of the Beatles in the sitar and Indian music. Its tuned like a normal guitar, but uses a special bridge to generate a buzzing, sitar like sound. It also has 13 drone strings, to emulate the drone strings on a real sitar. A picture can be seen at the following link http://westwoodmusic.com/artists/fogelberg/coralsitar.htm

Coral were a sub brand of Danelectro, a manufacturer known for their low end but good sounding and playable guitars. The instrument was only in production for two or three years before Danelectro went bankrupt at the end of the 1960s. Nashville guitar maker Jerry Jones makes an upgraded version of the design with a better bridge that makes it play more in tune.

(FYI if you're familiar with the theme from David Lynch's Twin Peaks you've heard Vinnie Bell, who plays the guitars on the cut.)

I just rewatched this, and it wasn't quite as frightening as I remembered. (In my memory, there were more sudden closeups of the burned hand.) It's still a good episode though, and that burned hand is gross.

At first I thought it appropriate that the experiment happened at midnight. Then I noticed that once again, the clocks are at midnight throughout the entire episode... (as in End of Eternity).

Bergman asks a confusing question: he asks Mateo how you record psychic energy. Huh? Didn't Bergman and Keonig just say that that's exactly what they had done?

When Mateo dresses, he pulls his tunic on over his head. So what are the chunky zips for?

The laser setup at the end doesn't seem very secure. As Mateo struggles in the chair, the laser behind him wobbles.

During Mateo's fight with his ghost, his left side is forced into the laser ring. So why is his right side toasted?

Maybe the image was flopped (reversed), like when the ghost first appears during the command team's seance and its coloured sleeve is on the wrong side. I don't recall the "VJC" badges on the tunics being flopped, though, so it was probably just a continuity error.

The closeup of the ghost's appearance in the hydropnic unit office clearly shows the double exposure used to achieve his "materialization"... the storage cabinets behind him change position slightly.

Another nit: When Laura Adams is about to be killed, she runs from the hydropnic unit into the corridor, but her way is blocked by the ghost. It's also blocked by a solid wall of yellow light panels that weren't there when she entered the unit just a few minutes previously! (For that matter, the wall was only in that one shot of the ghost standing in the doorway.)

I've been catching up on the remaining episodes I haven't seen in a while. I just watched "The Troubled Spirit" last night ( I hadn't seen it since I was a kid). This episode left me with mixed reactions. While I found it to be unsatisfying in several respects, it was a fairly good ep. I think "The Force of Life" was a more effective horror style treatment. My biggest problem with this ep was the central premise of trying to communicate with plants. Bergman was wrong when he stated plants have nervous systems; they don't. They don't experience happiness either. Although phychic phenomenon is a stable in scifi stories, it has been thoroughly debunked on NOVA and more recently on "Penn & Teller's Bull...." The focus on plants was left out of the end, and for the better.

The episode starts out on a great note. The sitar music is used throughout the ep. Most of the regulars are present at the "Alpha Music Recital" and everyone has their own program (this seems to be an influence for later such scenes in ST:TNG). It was fun to watch the reactions of all the characters to the music. Sandra leans forward as if she's really into it. Kano seems to be in an almost analytical mood. Bergman is asleep (how rude!). Helena seems to be really enjoying it. Koenig, however, has a look on his face as if he is enduring an unpleasant ordeal!

The set for hydroponics is shown next. It is a odd jumble of set pieces from other eps. The lids for the nuclear waste silos (Breakaway) and the boothes from "War Games" are prominent. One interesting element is the white grid (reminiscent of the bio-domes in "Silent Running") on the back wall. Impressive, but Hydroponics really wouldn't need a large window for sunlight. Mateo and his assistants are shown engaging in what appears to be a seance (or a group of hippies celebrating weed). Then, back to the recital. Koenig is now smiling. His mood sure has changed!

The heavy accent of Mateo made it somewhat difficult to understand him at times, but it was nice that a non American/British actor was cast for some diversity. I lost sympathy with Mateo when he threatened to kill Warren (a senior citizen). He came off as a real bully. This was futher emphasized when he manhandled Laura later.

After Laura's death, Koenig assembles a Command Conference. Surprisingly, Paul comes off as the most rational one. One small nit: in a scene where Koenig, Helena, and Victor talk near a window, all three cast their shadows on the "lunar hills" outside the window. Someone should have moved the painted backdrop further away.

The emphasis in plants seems to be replaced by a suggestion of a ghost ( phychic being,or "spook" according to Alan) on Alpha. Koenig suggests an excorcism! This was one thing about the episode I had totally forgotten. In '74, "The Exorcist" was a huge hit, so its inflence should not be that much of a surprise. Johhny Byrne's script seems to express an unease with the supernatural. The characters all want a rational explanation but seem to give in to a paranormal one. The horror elements (the burned Mateo) really creeped me out as a kid, but seen now, they allowed for a nice change in style for this ep.

I thought the epilogue was beautifully written, except for the part where Koenig said he was particularly personally affected by Mateo's death. I would more expect that reaction from the death of someone who was close to him.

Seen as a science fiction ghost story, this ep was fun, but I prefer more straight out science fiction stories.

This is a story with little 'science', but the horror aspect was the focus. One of the most effective scenes didn't even have to rely on gore. The unseen figure, ominously heard, stalking Warren was scary. It suggested something perhaps more 'horrific' than what was later shown.

Based on an idea by Curious on the Sink 1999 2 board, here's my list of improved effects for "TTS":
Not much, other than fixing the visual nits mentioned over the years on this board... the panel of lights where a corridor should be, the flopped spectre, the shifting cabinets in the background, the flopped fight scene.

One possibility I've never seen anyone mention on this or any other site is how the music at the concert in the teaser may be the "random element" in Mateo's experiment which brought about the strange circumstances in the episode. As the camera pans away from the sitar, across the audience, down the hall, into hydroponics where, I assume from the still-playing music, that Mateo & Co. could hear it also. In the mid-70's mindset of plant research (specifically, how music allegedly affected plants), the idea seems to me intentionally placed in the story, what with this same music recurring thruought the episode. Maybe Mateo didn't like the music, and responded subconciously to its influence..?
Pseudo-scientifically speaking, this theory certainly has 'ultrasonic magnetic radiation' beat by a mile!

This was a creepy episode with a new twist on a ghost story, a man being haunted by his own ghost.

I hope Mateo is at peace now, or is he still haunting Alpha, unwilling to cross over (where is the Ghost Whisperer when you need her).

You know, I am a Star Trek fan, have been for thirty years now, but the fact that 1999 did stories like this earns it a place in my heart. As good as Trek is, there is no way they could have gotten away with a story such as this. It would have to be buried under loads of technobabble (especially on the modern Trek shows). Trek's idea of science is the answer and nothing else, was okay, but creatively I feel it also held Trek back.

Space: 1999 had no such rule in effect, at least not in S1, and that is why stories like this one could be written. Stories that could include both science and the supernatural.

I agree, the guitar piece that was played throughout this episode helped the atomosphere.

Some of you may have wondered at the influx of Italian Alpans in S1 (Mateo, Tony Cellini, Luke). The reason being is that 1999 got some addtional fund from Italy, in return, they agreed to have some Italian actors guest star.

This would make an excellent Halloween episode.