Mission of the Darians

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Space: 1999: Season One: Mission of the Darians
PLOT SUMMARY: Responding to a distress call from a city-sized generation ship, an Eagle party discovers the cruiser ravaged by a past nuclear catastrophe. Two different cultures exist on the derelict ship, one an elite aristocracy which exploits and feeds upon the degenerate, half-mutated masses of the ship's population.
By BarbF on Thursday, March 04, 1999 - 10:39 am:

I think this was one of the finest episodes of Season 1, but it left one question unanswered -- how were these people going to feed themselves? Even after Koenig "saves the day", they still had no means of feeding themselves other than their daily ration of Cannibal Crispies. Surely Alpha, with its limited resources, couldn't given them enough stores to last their journey.


By Douglas Nicol on Tuesday, August 17, 1999 - 12:24 pm:

When the mutans are checking Dr Russell, they check her hands and arms, and maybe her feet (I'm not sure on that one). Seeing nothing they pronounce her 'clean'. So it isn't possible to have a horribly disfigured torso or legs or upper arms.
I know they couldn't have nudity and check her out in the nude on TV like they do in the books, but surely it could have been handled better.


By BarbF on Wednesday, August 18, 1999 - 8:53 am:

Well, I figure the folks upstairs weren't too particular about who constituted their lunch, so maybe they told the folks in the basement to just do a visual check.


By Douglas Nicol on Wednesday, August 18, 1999 - 12:15 pm:

Don;t get me wrong, just because I nitpick some episodes doesn't mean I don't like them. I personally think 'Mission of the Darian' was one of the finest Year 1 episodes and was far better than some of the storylines that were thrown out on other SF show before and after.
If you want to nitpick a show read the Star Trek nitpickers guides to see how to do mistakes properly.


By BarbF on Thursday, August 19, 1999 - 11:41 am:

Me too, Doug. I can sit here and pick Space to pieces but I'd rather watch it any day over Star Trek or some of Trek's endless offspring. Even when it was bad, it was so bad it was good, you know what I mean? Some of the eps you just have to shake your head at, but Space, even after 20 years, is still visually stunning. The model work alone is reason enough to watch. Martin Bower was (is) a freaking genius.


By Douglas Nicol on Thursday, August 19, 1999 - 3:07 pm:

I must admit I used to like Star Trek, but I don't like the new stuff. I absolutely loathe Voyager, Janeway sounds like she's on helium. And what was one seasons selling point?? Jeri Ryan in a cat suit and high heels, sounds suspicously like the Baywatch approach there.
At least Space treated its characters like people, not objects.


By Peter Stoller on Sunday, September 10, 2000 - 8:12 pm:

This was a very ambitious episode. It's the
kind of thing rejected by the original Star Trek
as being too expensive. Their take on similar
circumstances was "For the World is Hollow
[yada yada] Sky."

The loss of Bill Lowry (expendable
purple-sleeve) is treated better than most
security men's demise (a la Star Trek's
redshirts). The Alphans spend a scene feeling
his absence from the returning boarding party.


By Todd Pence on Thursday, August 23, 2001 - 7:44 pm:

It's a good thing the Enterprise never ran into the Darian ship . . . one look at Scotty's hand . . . "MUUUU-TANT!"


By Anonymous on Tuesday, November 27, 2001 - 6:57 am:

When Lowry is disintegrated in front of Helena, it's fair enough that she can't stop it because she's being held by two men. But why didn't Paul and Alan do something about it? As I remember, they were nearby, and waiting for the right chance to rescue Helena.


By Anonymous on Wednesday, November 28, 2001 - 2:14 pm:

There's a mention of why Paul and Alan didn't help in the novelization of this episode - something about "Helena being in the middle" and her getting hurt. Which supposedly wouldn't go over too well with Koenig.


By Anonymous on Wednesday, December 05, 2001 - 3:01 am:

At the start of the episode, on Moonbase Alpha, the Darian's ship is described as 5 miles wide by 20 miles long - over 100 square miles. A minute or so later when Koenig and Carter are in the Eagle looking for a way in, Koenig tells Carter "there's 50 miles of ship"! Pay attention, Koenig!


By Craig Rohloff on Tuesday, January 22, 2002 - 7:38 am:

Perhaps Carter and Morrow were only within earshot of the disintigration chamber when poor Lowry was sacrificed, and thus were unaware exactly of what was transpiring. The male mutant who guided them to the area bolted as soon as he heard the crowd noises, and given the amount of ground clutter, Carter and Morrow probably took a few minutes getting in close without giving away their position.
At least it makes Lowry look less expendable, and Carter & Morrow less uncaring.
By the way, there is very brief nudity in the operating chamber where Helena is about to be "processed." The other nude bodies are hidden by forground characters, but the dead female lifted (by a Darian elite) from one table to the next is clearly unclothed. I'm surprised they got away with this, especially back on 1970's American tv, where prudishness ran rampant.


By Douglas Nicol on Wednesday, April 03, 2002 - 7:12 am:

Although it is notable that despite the cruddy conditions on ship, it doesn't stop the Darians appearing in fresh togas or miniskirts in the case of the women.


By BarbF on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 7:02 am:

It's the first rule of the sisterhood, Doug: when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping ;)


By Kinggodzillak on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 3:32 pm:

One of the Darian mutant girls was apparently taken back to Alpha - she's the cute extra seen throughout Season 2 who Maya turns into in the Dorcons.


By ScottPunningN on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 8:22 pm:

Why did she turn her into the Dorcons? Why wouldn't she turn her into a parking lot instead?


By Anonymous on Tuesday, September 02, 2003 - 1:36 pm:

That was a major nit of this episode for me - why did Maya turn into a person at all? If she wanted to hide from these people, she could have turned into an atom or a flea or something so small they couldn't have found her. Oh well - who said it ever made sense.


By Anonymous on Wednesday, January 28, 2004 - 9:27 am:

if she wanted to keep people away she should have turned herself into taybor


By Curious on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 3:13 pm:

I thought the destruction of the gene bank was very sad. Those people's reserves of damaged genes were gone. Koenig sure seemed to be in a happy mood at the end of the episode. I thought a better ending would have been to have Koenig comment on the unfortunate loss of the gene bank.


By Curious on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 3:31 pm:

I meant to say "those people's reserves of undamaged genes"...


By CR on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 7:14 am:

I don't know if I'd describe him as happy, per se. (Well, he wasn't chipper, at least.) But he did seem... something.
I think he was trying to distract himself from having to ponder the "what if?" factor of something like that happening on Alpha.
He never actually answered Carter's query about the possibility, which makes one wonder, what would John Koenig do if he ever ended up in Neman's position?
And no, I don't mean dead in a pool of genetic material, either! :) I meant in Neman's position of having to insure the survival of my race at any cost.


By Cur. on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 2:06 pm:

I was somewhat sympathetic towards Neman's noble purpose of trying to preserve his race (although his means were certainly unethical). Alpha did face a predicament similar to the Darians. In "War Games", the ruined moonbase could no longer sustain the population, so they abandoned the base.


By Gordon Long on Monday, February 23, 2004 - 10:32 pm:

One thing that always confused me about this episode, which I only saw the one time on it's initial run: after Lowry got zapped, he's disintegrated, right? But going home in the Eagle, I could have sworn he was riding in a seat in the second row next to the left wall--invisible, but wearing blankets because he's very cold and talking to whomever was sitting in the seat closest to the door. (And it was the expendable security guy, not a small Darian female...but that would have given her a way to survive and become a Y2 Alphan.) Maybe somebody could check this on DVD and see just what I was seeing?


By CR on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 7:15 am:

Actually, on the return trip from SS Daria, Helena was chilly in the seat next to the (now noticeably) vacant seat Lowry had occupied. She imagined his humming, which became hauntingly audible to the audience to drive home the point that this loss was an individual, not just some anonymous red-shirt. (Sorry, that's Star Trek... I meant anonymous purple-sleeve!)


By Curious on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 7:54 am:

Your point about Helena's reaction raises an interesting point. Frieberger once said in an interview that the year one characters didn't respond when someone dies ( he made a point of having Helena react strongly to Picard and later Toren's death in the Metamorph,etc...). I don't know what episodes he would be refering to.
In eps such as The Troubled Spirit, Helena reacts strongly to the death of Mateo. Both Helena and Koenig thoughtfully reflect on his death in the epilogue. I guess Freiberger wanted more overt emotion expressed by the characters. I do think it is unfair to try to say that the year one characters lacked 'humanity'. Quite the opposite. I just think they were more introspective.


By CR on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 8:21 am:

I believe Freiberger had only viewed about half a dozen or so of the first season episodes; makes me wonder which ones he actually saw.


By Mark on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 12:55 pm:

Judging from "The Rules of Luton", Mr. Freiberger must have also been looking at Lost in Space.
"Hmmm, how can I make Space:1999 more juvenile?"


By Peter Stoller on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 5:45 pm:

I entertain the notion that Freiberger believed he was in fact making a children's show, and judging from the average age of the people commenting here, he wasn't wrong! Several people posting here, myself included, have mentioned being around ten or twelve years old when they first saw the show in the 1970s. That doesn't change the fact that he insulted our intelligence by aiming so low.


By CR on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 7:39 am:

Based on an idea by Curious on the Sink 1999 2 board, here's my list of improved effects for "MotD":
Another ep with pretty good effects overall, so another short list...
I like the matte paintings of the Daria interiors, even though they do look a bit like paintings rather than photos. (The one of Neman & the Alphans walking along the skywalk was very well executed, though!) One thing I'd change is to eliminate many of the stars that appear through the skylight domes; there are so many stars, the paintings don't match any of the exterior space shots.
Back in January 2002, I theorized that Morrow & Carter weren't within visual range of the sacrificial altar (disintegration chamber) and thus didn't know Lowry was about to be killed. I never liked how in the episode as completed, they seemed to just stand by with no reaction and watch Lowry die. I would move the scene where the male mute runs away to occur just after Lowry's death, so that it looks like Morrow & Carter never knew Lowry was in danger.


By Mark on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 10:00 am:

I was going to add that I thought the twinkling stars 'enlivened' the matte paintings, but I see you found a nit about it. Actually, throughout the entire series there is a lack of continuity in the star backgrounds. This ep isn't a particularly bad offender: "Brian the Brain" would probably be the worst offender. In the shots involving the Swift, a shot where the Swift stops in front of a dense starfield is followed by shots where there isn't a star to be seen!

Those scenes with physically challenged actors (dwarves and the man missing a finger) are rather a bit politically incorrect today.


By Peter Stoller on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 10:44 am:

Politically incorrect, perhaps, because the savage Darians discriminate against them. They are following an edict of the cult of Neman which compels them to disintegrate mutants. There was nothing correct about it in the 1970s either, the scenes are meant to be unpleasant.


By Douglas Nicol on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 2:09 pm:

To add to CR's effects and changes, maybe an 'excuse' could be found that Morrow and Carter initially can't get closer to the altar due to damage and overgrown areas that the Darians would be familiar with and that they wouldn't fire their guns at such a range due to certain considerations like the fear of hurting other people or the range of the weapons themselves.


By CR on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 3:36 pm:

One more thing about the disintegration chamber: I'm glad the people shoved inside just faded away... I shudder to think that if the episode were made today, just as the light inside the chamber reached its highest intensity, we'd see the victims quickly (like only a second or two, but enough to register) reduced to skeletons layer by layer starting with clothes, then skin, muscles & finally organs. Yuch. I know S99 had its share of gore (duh!), but we never actually saw the process of that gore. ("Dragon's Domain" came the closest, but even that had quick cuts away from the victims being swallowed and their corpses being spat out.)
It's not that I'm suddenly wimping out, but I just think showing that would be over the top, even for this show.


By CR on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 3:44 pm:

On the other hand, I wonder if a little more struggling on the victims' part wouldn't be a little more realistic. I would think that they'd have been pounding harder on the chamber door, kicking, throwing their bodies against the door and so on before succumbing to the light & noise. I wonder if it was originally scripted that way, but the actors were directed to play it more subdued due to the unnerving intensity such frantic struggling may have conveyed...

(Of course, there are also the physical limitations of the perspex set to consider!)


By Peter Stoller on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 4:44 pm:

Those appeared to be a nice pair of commercialy available tempered glass doors with futuristic-looking handles, so they could probably take a good pounding. The hinge attachments and the rest of the custom-built set might not have stood up to it though.

The disintegrating effect you describe would be perfect for a film adaptation of Alan Moore's "Watchmen".


By Curious on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 5:17 pm:

The tall door (painted with a Christ-like Neman) the savages pound on wasn't that stable either. It visibly opens a bit as it's being pounded on.


By Mark on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 4:13 pm:

This episode raises many interesting issues. I've always thought the elite Darians with their contempt and attitude of superiority over the 'savages' was rather reminiscent of the European colonialists in Africa. Not only did they also hold the 'savages' in contempt, but they too were all too willing to exploit them.

I would have expected to see a vast greenhouse dome that would have provided food for the savages on the Daria. The vegetation shown in the dome appeared to be a dead forest. It didn't look like it could provide enough food for the savages (but it did suggest an earlier devastation).


By Curious on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 3:12 pm:

I interpreted Mission of the Darians as being a quite literal representation of Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" philosophy.


By Harvey Kitzman on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 10:35 pm:

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!

OK, now that that is out of my system, this was a decent episode. However, the matte paintings could have used a little more work. In a show with good quality miniature effects that still hold up well today, those paintings looked bad.

Someone else already made a For the World is Hollow.... reference.

The "priest" who declared the people mutants looked a lot like Marcus Cole's friend Duncan from Babylon 5 - same actor? And the big balding survivor guy looked like Galt from The Gamesters of Triskellion. Can anyone confirm this?

Good episode. Joan Collins looked awesome too.


By tim gueguen on Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 11:29 am:

Good eye. Aubrey Morris did play both the High Priest in this episode, and Duncan on B5.


By Douglas Nicol on Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 1:11 pm:

Aubrey Morris was also the captain of the sleeper ship in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.


By Will on Thursday, September 23, 2004 - 3:04 pm:

It's about time somebody mentioned how gorgeous Joan Collins was in this show. That little skirt and those legs...Siiigh! Best part of the show.
When the Eagle leaves Alpha to approach the hovering Daria above the Moon, the Daria is way too close. At that extreme closeness the gravitational field of the Moon should have pulled the ship down into it.


By CR on Friday, September 24, 2004 - 11:00 pm:

...Too close to the moon... Good catch, Will!


By Curious on Monday, September 27, 2004 - 8:45 am:

The Daria also appears much too small to match Koenig's description of "there's fifty miles of ship".


By mike powers on Sunday, September 23, 2007 - 9:44 pm:

What a missed opportunity here! The Alphans should have abandoned their moonbase & taken up residence on this awesome space ark.Would have made for a better series.


By Tim on Monday, January 21, 2008 - 6:23 pm:

I see this episode paid tribute to the Ensign Deadmeat Syndrome of Classic Trek (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and some unknown in a red shirt, Ensign Deadmeat, beam down to a hostile planet, Deadmeat may as well have had a bullseye target painted on his back). On this mission, you have John Koenig, Helena Russell, Alan Carter, Victor Bergman, and Paul Morrow, all series regulars. Then you have poor old Lowry, a guest character. One knew that this poor schmuck was never gonna see Alpha again!

It was nice that Helena seemed to mourn his loss. Probably because she saw him die and couldn't do anything to save him.


By Mike on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 10:37 am:

So whatever did happen to the Daria & its people? Koenig offers to help them but we never see them again? Did they reject his offer,that seems like suicide.And wouldn't the Daria be an opportunity for Moonbase Alpha regarding its survival too? The Darians technology is vastly superior to ours,shouldn't both civilizations pool their resources? The model of the Daria is absolutely fantastic! It has to be one of the most superb models ever constructed for a sf TV show.


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 10:47 pm:

I too wonder about this help that Koenig offered, what was it? It's not like Alpha had unlimited resources themselves.

It is conceivable that the Alphans could have joined the Darians after this. After all, the secret was out. If they had pooled their resources, it would have helped both civilizations. Of course, this would have radically changed the series :-)


By steve McKinnon (Steve) on Friday, March 18, 2011 - 8:26 am:

I realize that this was all very overwhelming for helena and she was scared out of her mind, but all she did was whimper as she was brought before the examiner to see if she was a mutant. She should have been begging for her life, screaming that she and her friends came here to help these people. Instead, she offered no defense for her continued existence at all.

Paul leapt through those doors literally 2 seconds after the man dragged Helena through them, and yet he ends up alone on the other side, and wanders around for a while.

I really liked seeing Paul on a mission, rather than barking out orders and making reports at Alpha. I wonder if Prentis Hancock watched season 2 and the scenes with Tony Verdeschi thinking, "That could have been me! I could have had all those cool scenes away from Alpha!"


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Friday, March 25, 2011 - 7:42 pm:

Paul leapt through those doors literally 2 seconds after the man dragged Helena through them, and yet he ends up alone on the other side, and wanders around for a while.

I know, there is no way that guy with Helena could have gotten out of sight so fast!


Add a Message


This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Username:  
Password: