Couldn't you just punch Patrick?! His poor wife's heart is failing fast and he drags her through the catacombs, and every time she collapses and says she can't go any further he pulls her to her feet and makes her walk further!! Some loving caring husband he turned out to be!

Also, if it takes so much energy to produce oxygen for Alpha, is it really necessary to flood the whole of the catacombs with air? It seemed an awful waste of energy to me. Wouldn't it have been more sensible to send people down there in environment suits?

Finally, I was surprised to see Helena carrying out surgery in the middle of the crisis. Only a few minutes previously there'd been explosions going off all over the base, but the last thing you need in the middle of a delicate operation is to be thrown about by an explosion! After everything that Michelle had gone through, I reckon she could have survived another hour or so, or at least until the crisis was over.

Yeah, I myself wondered how a nice, sweet girl like Michelle ended up with a kook like Osgood. I guess stranded on a drifting satelite, your choice of eligible men must be severly limited, but still . . .

In Michael Butterworth's collection which adapts this episode, there is a picture in the photo insert section of a woman whose caption incorrectly identifies her as Michelle Osgood. The woman in the picture is actually one of the alien women from "AB Chrysalis"!

I thought this episode was a stinker from start to finish. It could have been an interesting story, except that Osgood is played less like a desperate loving husband than a loony-tune mutineer determined to kill himself and his wife with him. He needed a smack, real bad. Who lets these weirdos loose on the base anyway? First him then Sanderson from Seance Spectre. Doesn't the medical dept. monitor these loose cannons? Wouldn't security keep these kooks locked up? And I always wondered what happened afterward -- Sanderson becomes a crispy critter in the bottom of a nuclear waste pit, but what about Osgood? No mention is made of punishment or psych therapy, even though he obviously needs it. Same with the nut case from All That Glisters...when you think about it, the moon seems to have been populated with spazoids.

It also doesn't mention what the source of his dreams are. Are they work-related stress, an outside influence etc. If they had used the latter it could have been used as a follow on to another episode.

I agree that Alpha seems to have its fair share of people that have crossed the line into instability, but to be fair, these people originally signed up to work on the Moon for a few months or maybe a couple years, but ended up in deep space, attacked by one alien race after another, and with very few exceptions ('The Guardian Of Piri','The Last Sunset') have been cooped up inside Alpha, with no new Earth in sight.
Maybe it all boils down to the fact that nobody has had a decent cup of coffee since they left Earth?

And they've had Tony's beer tested on them as well. That might be enough to drive anyone crazy. :)

I just hate this episode. I hate the bed on teh moon, the fake fire-storm effect, Koenig being so snippy, Tony in a tank top (yeeech) and the dumb beer joke at the end. But the scene I hate the most is when Patrick and Michelle are in the catacombs and she's just about to pack it in. She asks her delusional hubby if there wasn't any hope for her in medical center, and he says no. And she replies, "You know best, Patrick." (CRINGE!) HUH??? You know best? Yeah, you dragged me out of my hospital bed, made me walk 15 miles into this dark pit, and you've got a ton of TNT strapped to your a**. Now THAT'S a devoted little Mrs. I wanted to slap her. And to make it worse, he drops her like a sack of potatoes. I love ya baby, but...OOOPS, gotta go!

The end scene bothers me, where Tony and Helena wondering how Osgood knew about the fire that was going to destroy Alpha. Helena guesses that in some mysterious way, the source of the heat wave reached out to Osgood. Uh? That seems like they realised that they were coming to the end of the episode and rushed out an explanation. It also looks like they made it up on the spot! Also, that bit with Helena talking to Koenig on a monitor - in the story, he's just landed on Moonbase Alpha and is in the Eagle which is being lowered into the hangar! Could they have not waited a couple of minutes? It isn't as if Martin Landau wasn't there in person - he can't have been too far away for him to have been on a monitor in black and white. Couldn't he have just walked onto the set, or did someone think it would look good for TV if it was done this way?

This was another of the "double up" filmed episodes, being filmed concurrently with "The AB Chrysalis," so perhaps this was done for some shooting reason. "Well Martin, since you're standing in front of the backdrop anyways...."

whoooooo, does this ep REEK. Pee-yew. End of review.

I think you said all that needs to be said, XFactor Other than maybe, EEEK, GAG, RETCH! Awfulawfulawful.

one word review-"STINKBOMB"!!!

Not their best effort.

Let's start with the obvious that there is no such thing as terranium.

The space heat source effect was cheesy - it looked like a revolving light plate on a lava lamp.

The sign on the Explosives Storage room looked hastily put together - the letters were not lined up.

Callie pointed it out earlier - why flood the catacombs with oxygen? And how is the pressure and atmosphere controlled?

On the DVD extras, the Coming Next Week announcements misspelled Tony Anholt's name

The only good thing about this episode was that Sandra was back instead of Yasko.

The original version of the shooting script included dialogue in which Helena and Vincent reveal that the artificial heart they have developed for Michelle has exactly the same specifications as the late Professor Bergman's heart. Vincent says; "Victor might have lived forever-given the chance".

once again, maya changes into earth animals - a tiger and a doggie. what, her planet doesn't have any animals to choose from?

Re: Last Post
Considering the stste of Psychon, when the Alphans (for want of a better word) first encounter Mentor & Maya, there might have been NO animal life left on Psychon for her to mimic....

Its too bad that there was no real interest in strong between episodes continuity in those days, as Osgood's behaviour in this episode really should have been mentioned in some fashion in "Seance Spectre" and/or "The Lambda Factor," both of which revolve around psychic powers and unstable crewmembers.

Any ideas what can be seen behind the bed in the following shot from the episode? It looks like it could be caution tape, perhaps to keep people away from the gas burners being used.
http://www.space1999.net/~catacombs/main/images/space/cotm/spcotm030.jpg

Given how often Maya was used to pull some useful scientific save the day factoid out of nowhere its surprising that she didn't come up with a fix for the artificial heart. Of course its possible the real reason this didn't happen is because this episode was filmed concurrently with "The AB Chrysalis" in which Maya played a major role, limiting Catherine Schell's availability for this episode.

Speaking of Maya, don't you think she went a liiiitle too far with mauling Osgood? Helena later says that Osgood lost alot of blood-- did Maya's brain go all-canine and forget that she was supposed to just help get him off of Tony and not EAT the guy?? Then he completely disappears from the scene and the story until they need to go back down into the catacombs.

All this talk about needing terranium for life support, which as some of you have notied, was WASTED down in the catacombs (along with heat, light, and gravity). The element is also needed for Michelle's heart, which by the way, is very, very small-- about the size of a presrnt-day cell phone, and yet Koenig won't spare any to save her? The entire device won't be made of terranium, so why not allow it's use? S.S.S. - Short Show Syndrome.

And they all act like a mechanical heart was a new thing.

Uh, Victor had one. Oh yeah, he never existed.