The Testament of Arkadia

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Space: 1999: Season One: The Testament of Arkadia

PLOT SUMMARY: A strange planet stops the moon dead in space and begins draining the base's power. A team sent to investigate the planet uncovers evidence that the long-dead inhabitants may have been the ancestors of life on Earth.
By Anna Nicole on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:52 am:

Hey, I resemble that remark!
Oh, wait, I thought you said I was a fart.
Never mind.


By Jessica Simpson on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:58 pm:

Please don't mention farts and other such smelly things. I'm upset, becuz Nick say i have a stinky a-s-s!!!


By Jessica Simpson on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 2:45 pm:

Anna, you very smart,so i ask question. How Alan Carter manage to contact Earth on internet? i thought breakthrough in neutrino transmission only happen in 2120. (i know it not from "future" Alan in AT,AP, becuz he & Koenig dead, just like your 90 year old husband).


By Anna Nicole on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:31 am:

OW! You hurt my other brain cell!
Me go lay down now.


By Anonymous #2 on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:51 am:

Anyone remember the Lost in Space episode with the Talking carrott? it had Stanley Adams playing if I remember it...I was only 7 at the time when it was on Cbs


By Curious on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 11:53 am:

The ending of this ep was touching. As Anna and Luke watch the departing moon, contemplating the planet of inbreds they'll create (with all the genetic problems,etc.).


By CR on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 4:52 pm:

LOL! :O


By Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 3:09 pm:

Some interesting ethics would come into being in a society where everyone was related. Would there ever be such a crime as incest?


By Douglas Nicol on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 1:17 pm:

I guess that the Computer picked Anna and Luke due to being influenced by the forces on the planet itself.

It's funny how in a way that the whole 'Chariots' ideal behind this episode seemed to be later used to some extent in Battlestar Galactica, and even though the theory seems to have been soundly discredited, it's still a decent enough episode.

I wonder where Luke's Eagle pilot training comes from though, unless the craft is fairly easy to fly as long as you use basic maneuvres.


By Mark on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 8:46 am:

This episode is one of the most beautiful in the style of its presentation. I love the low-key serious approach. Koenig's narration to the music of Beethoven is a very classy touch in particular. The fate of Anna and Luke is bound to elicit thoughtful speculation. Would they succeed in bringing new life to a dead planet, or would the isolation and hardship do them in?

As for Battlestar, it just didn't lend itself to such issues. I saw it as more of an shallow action-oriented show. At best, entertaining in a "Star Wars" sort of way, but not a serious adult show. The remake, on the other hand, is a more sophisticated and adult approach (undoubtably, much of this due to Rick Berman and a more Trek approach).


By CR on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 9:17 am:

Hey, Mark, you may want to post those idea sover on "The Kitchen Sink: They Don't Have a Board Yet, But... (AKA Create your own conversation)" board! I think the last post regarding the new BG was sometime last month, and I don't know if anyone's brought up those points. (And I'm not going to back and re-read all the posts right now!)


By CR, OOPS! on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 9:18 am:

idea sover = ideas over (typo)


By Mark on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 9:21 am:

I'm not really a huge Battlestar fan. Like most kids ( at the time it first aired), I watched it. It never caught on with me like S99 or Trek.


By CR on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 9:24 am:

Same here, but your point about the remake was interesting. (That's what the board I mentioned is about... the remake, not the original.)


By CR on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 8:49 am:

Based on an idea by Curious on the Sink 1999 2 board, here's my list of improved effects for "TToA":
I don't have many for this one; a couple of the ones I'm going to mention have already been cleaned up by Eric Bernard on his own versions... see stills at Space1999.org under their Interview page.
I'd remove the moonbuggy from the aft compartment (viewed through the open aft doorway). It's nice that they showed the crew bringing one along, but since the aft compartment contains the lavatory & some engineering controls, as well as supplies, there really doesn't seem to be much room for a moon buggy. How it got there is also a mystery, but I presume a floor hatch would do the trick. (Roberto Baldassari's Eagle blueprints have two moon buggies, each stored within the convex ares at the front of the recon module; they fit rather nicely there, and utilize the space well. I presume floor hatches are used there, as well.)
Speaking of the aft doorway, it only has one frame, instead of two like the forward doorway. I'd add the extra frame. Here's a Catacombs screen capture of the single aft doorway with the moon buggy beyond.
The Eagle flying out of the sun looks like it's moving out from behind a big light bulb, as has been mentioned by others on this board. Reworking the sun to look sun-like (complete with lense flare) would improve the shot.
The ground-level shot of the crew disembarking the Eagle is one of the coolest matte shots in the series, lending a great sense of scale to the Eagle. Unfortunately, it's a re-use of the same shot from "Another Time, Another Place." Bernard's clean-up not only changed the sky color to match the blue of other Arkadian sky shots, he actually replaced the Eagle with the roughly aft view of the crashed Eagle from "The Missing Link." The landing pods and superstructure angle were the same, so all he had to do was replace the command module from "ATAP" with the engines from "TML." (The Catacombs has several black-and-white stills of the original Eagle model which show different angles & lighting effects; one of those stills appears to be the one used for the matte shot in "ATAP.")
Once again, I'd have the modified docking tube I've mentioned (in other episode fixes), this time for the "hostage transfer" scene.
Finally, here's a change I'd make that's purely personal, and it's to the soundtrack, rather than to visuals... the "Revalation" music isn't bad, unitl the disco drums kick in; for me, it ruins the mystery and majesty of the scene and dates the episode. It's also too much of a contrast to the mood set up by the classical music used throughout the episode. If there were a way to just remove the drum track from that song, I think it would be OK.

An observation:
I think after thousands of years, there would be nothing left of dead leaves nor even tree stumps, but Helena does mention that the world is locked in a sort of stassis, so I'll just go with that. Besides, Anna & Luke had to find something to link Arkadia to Earth! And if there were only fossils to be found, I think even those two would have a hard time believing that they could bring life back to the planet.

OK, that's finally it for Season One! I'm taking a break from doing this for a bit, since it's been hard to keep doing it with any regularity. Besides, I still haven't seen most of the Season Two episodes since they first aired!
Thanks for putting up with my lists, and expanding upon them!


By Mark on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 10:22 am:

Some earlier posters commented about liking the "revalation" music. As a kid, I found that to be one of the more entertaining aspects of this episode. It seemed to add a little bit of "cheerfulness" to this oh so serious ep. Now, my tastes have changed. The music seems a bit corny, but it doesn't bother me.

In retrospect, it would have been nice if a lengthier epilogue had been written. One that would raise questions about the fate of Luke and Anna. As the last ep of the unique first year, such an epilogue is all the more missed today!


By tim gueguen on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 5:07 pm:

As far as the moonbuggy thing goes I doubt they actually had any fixed concept of what was in that rear section of the Eagle until the script found a use for it. The "can in the back" only became "official" when the Starlog Eagle Blueprints were released. Of course one would assume that an Eagle would have some sort of lavatory given that even a flight from the Space Dock to Alpha might see someone require a bathroom break. Then again maybe that back space is modular like the rest of the ship, and the Eagle that went to Arkadia had its removed to make room for extra supplies. Hopefully no one drank too much before it left Alpha. :-)


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 - 10:38 pm:

You know, an episode like this could never have been made on Star Trek, at least not without being bogged down by a scientific reason for everything that was going on. Don't get me wrong, am a big Trek fan, but I also liked that 1999 allowed for supernatural elements to co-exist along with science. It made for some well done episodes.

Take this episode for example, we never really know just who or what grabbed the Moon. Was it the ghosts of the Arkadians? This episode seems to suggest such a thing, by what Luke and Anna see in the cave. Clearly, some force was moving events along here.

Of course, that being said, the Arkadian ghosts also shot themselves in the foot. Putting aside the impossibility of starting a whole race from just two people, there are other factors. What if Luke or Anna were to fall off a cliff, or get a nasty illness like appendisidis (sp?)? Since neither of them seem to have any medical training, that would mean trouble (and even if they did have the training, how and where would they preform the surgery).

What the Arkadian ghosts SHOULD have done was put the Moon into permanent orbit around Arkadia, and left Alpha with full power. That way, the Alphans could gradually move down to the planet as they reclaimed it. With three hundred people, you have a good chance of starting a new civilization.

Of course, if this happened, it would have meant the end of the series, but it still seems more realistic to start a new world.


By ScottN on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 8:28 am:

Not necessarily. They tried it on Trek a couple of times. DS9 could have got away with it, but they also did it on the Voyager episode "Sacred Ground".

In general, though, you're right. Trek almost always had to find the "Scientific" reason.


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 10:32 pm:

DS9 did tiptoe around this with the whole Prophets/Pah Wraiths thing in the later seasons (you could easily have replace them with Angels and Demons and basically had the same storyline). However, it was clear that the Federation always called them "wormhole aliens".

1999 was much looser with this (which is probably one of the reasons the show has taken so many lumps over the years). Ghosts apparently do exist in the 1999 universe (such as The Troubled Spirit). I'm okay with all that, as long as they tell a good story, like Arkadia.


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 - 10:21 pm:

This episode tied in well with Season One. Throughout the season, hints were dropped that some unknown force was guiding the Moon through space.

You have to admit, that they should end up at the planet, could it have been just random. Or was Luke and Anna right about being guided there?


By WolverineX (Wolverinex) on Wednesday, March 05, 2014 - 4:01 am:

Since as DarwinFan writely noted, in "The Full Circle" the Alphans regress to Earthly Cro-Magnum people and not Arkadians, I take it to be that some people were taken to Arkadia from Earth a long time ago, not the other way round (as happens usually in Stargate).


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Wednesday, March 05, 2014 - 5:15 am:

Or the Arkadians arrived on Earth and intermingled with the native population.


Add a Message


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