So you can create an exact replica of a person, send them to the base with a diabolical plan to drain their power and regenerate your dormant world from a small seed, but you can't get your damned hair parted on the correct side???

Not a bad episode, but it highlights how absolute unquestioning command could be a bad thing.
The duplicate was hopeless in emulating Koenigs personality.

Gotta admit . . . the "You are trapped . . . there is no escape!" scene makes for a great clip!

I think the best thing about this episode is Kranston and her sexy uniform - very nice!!! Even you must agree with that Todd????

Heck yea . . . though I still prefer Catherine Schnell from "Guardian of Piri"

How does Koenig's Eagle change its shape at the start of this episode? One minute it has the modules at the sides (as in "The Metamorph"), next it's a standard shaped Eagle.

That unfortunately is not an uncommon continuity error. It happens in a couple other places in the series.

That Laboratory pod, as it's been generally referred to, had those modules at the sides. I guess they were little airlock vestibules, they have the standard trapezoidal hatches on them in addition to extra lift and attitude control rockets. Presumably it was built for more practical side-by-side docking scenes, but I don't recall it ever being used for that. I do remember 'regular' pods used in docking shots, with a tube that appeared to telescope from one ship to the other. No telling where they had room to stow it.

I assume that TPTB had to make a new toupee for Landau, with the part reversed.

Probably right Adam Bomb...and the way it shines in the light I think it was created from the leftover bits of the Puke Monsters from Bringers of Wonder...

This episode doesn't have much going for it, but I do like the scene where Helena confronts the fake Koenig. Bain gets it just right as she pleads with him not to "shut her out." And then the look when he calls her "Dr. Russell." Very nicely done.

Its one of those kind of scenes that takes on an added resonance now when you know their marriage would eventually fall apart.

True...you get the feelig maybe similar words were eventually spoken in private. Still, from all I've read or heard about the couple, they're still very close and there's been no animosity between them. Pretty amazing for Hollywood, where it seems everybody has divorced and hates somebody.

True, Anon. I've read nothing but nice comments from each person about the other, including Landau one time commenting that his daughters are some of the nicest people he knows, and he credited Bain for the wonderful way she mothered them. You're right, that's a rarity in Hollywood. I think one of the funniest things I ever read was something Steven Seagal said...he told a reporter he was never getting married again, he was going to find a woman he didn't like and just give her a house.

while these are all well-spoken, trenchant comments, I'd like to get directly to the heart of the matter and state that Cranston is definitely WAY up there on the babe-o-meter.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks so much Socrates. Does your babe-o-meter run on batteries, or do you have to pedal it yourself?

well, like a multimeter, the energy from the measured-object itself powers the Meter. Sometimes its barely a wiggle of the needle, and sometimes it breaks the glass (whoohoo)!

once in awhile, it goes in reverse, fortunately this isnt often.

Thanks for your time.

Not a problem. Women actually have one of these as well. It's called a Jerk-O-Meter ;)

Does anyone else think this episode ends really suddenly?

No sooner is the fake Koenig a pile of dust on the floor, then the end titles come up...

How do Tony and Maya get home? The planetoid was breaking up all around them!

This is the episode I couldn't recall the title of, Alice, when I remembered the crazy ending. Surely there should have been a proper ending, with a few lines of dialogue removed from an earlier scene so we could see everyone hop into an Eagle and leave.
It gets my vote as worst/sloppiest ending of any episode in the series.

I just finished watching this episode for the first time, and boy was the ending disappointed! It was a great episode right up until Fred Friedburger's name suddenly appeared, leaving me to wonder what happened to Maya and Tony on the Crystal Asteroid. Did they escape before the was asteroid destroyed? Was the asteroid destroyed? If not, did it have some other tricks up its sleeve after absorbing that much energy? In the beginning, it seemed to be able to disrupt things on Alpha. Are we to assume that just because Koenig's doppelganger is shatter that it just gives up? We are to assume all of this, of course.

Until then, the SFX, dialogue, acting and themes were unusually satisfying for this show.

I agree about the ending. The episode just abruptly ends. Sort of like a show without an epilogue!

An opportunity for a classic Gerry Anderson device was missed at the end...showing the asteriod explode!

It would have been interesting to see what the Alphans would have done with the remains of the doppelganger. Study it? Dispose of it because it was dangerous? In a year one story, usually an interesting thought about what was just seen would be expressed in the epilogue.

Alpha never seems to make use of any of the objects they come across. The moon is littered with the remains of the Satazius (Last Enemy), Gwent's craft(Infernal Machine),etc. Wouldn't the Alphans want to retrieve and use/study them? With the loss of so many Eagles in the series, wouldn't they want to make use of the Swift ( from Brian the Brain), or the alien ship from "Space Warp"? One would think the Alphans would make use of every available resource. Especially since several episodes state the predicament of having limited resources (as in "The Exiles").

That's something I've wondered about, too.

Really that's the problem with so many stories in the show, isn't it: the writer's discover a really great idea, but then fail to make use of it.

Part of it of course was no doubt due to the edict from ATV/ITC that the show, or at least year one, had to be viewable in any episode order for syndication reasons. So the writers wouldn't make any connections between episodes that might cause problems with this requirement.

ITC's stupidity made the characters look foolish...if we were on the runaway moon, we sure as heck would be salvaging every bit of alien technology we could find! Never know when you'll find an alien time machine out there....

Last week's episode of Enterprise "Hatchery" basically told a story very similar to "Seed of Destruction". Although the irrational Archer was affected by a chemical agent, and not a doppelganger, it was interesting to see scifi writers again use this type of story.

There've been several Trek tales from all of the different series dealing with doppelgangers or people who are acting completely out of character. Kirk himself was affected by the tears of the Dohlman of Elas, and 'fell' for the title character "Elaan of Troy". Haven't seen the episode of Enterprise as my UPN and Fox stations switched channels a couple of seasons ago and no longer receive the UHF station on my cable-less tv.

Hopefully, you can catch up on all the new eps on the numerous websites. It can be a real drag waiting a coule of years for the DVD releases.
I had cable back in '92 when the SciFi channel went on air. Unfortunately, my cable company didn't carry the SciFi channel until 1996, when the station aired episodes of Space:1999 and UFO for the last time (the two shows I most wanted to see on the channel). I only got to see about four very heavily edited episodes of each show. I was upset that nearly 10 minutes were edited out of some episodes!

I once saw a 35 minute version of 'Journey To Where', and that included a couple of ad breaks!

A 35 minute cut of Space:1999?
Must have been on the Sci Fi channel of course, since they run promos for the channel and its programs a hundred times an hour!

No, actually, it was on mid morning in about 1978 or 79 on Grampian TV (a channel that broadcasts in the north east of Scotland). For the past 25 years (until I watched the dvd)all I remembered about this episode was Helena getting ill and the fight in the highlands.

I don't think there WAS much more to the episode in that version...

The Sci Fi channel loved to edit out establishing shots (example; The Exiles without shots of traveling to/surface of Golos) and effects sequences (War Games minus half the space battles).
I understand why the blurb on the DVDs states "includes 12 minutes" usually not seen. The commercial time is increasing in the US. A couple of years ago, UPN reduced the running time of "Enterprise" to allow for two more minutes of ad time. Plus, when recording a program off the air, one has to put up with annoying station logos(in the corner) and ads for other network shows plastered over the end credits (and special news 'crawls'-ex."Snow storm coming, details at ten"). It's almost as if they want us to go out and buy the DVDs if we want to get a viewable program.

That's why I never tape anything from tv anymore, unless it's something I know won't be released on DVD.

About the DVDs, do prefer full screen or widescreen editions for films?

For films, widescreen (letterboxed). I have a large enough tv screen that the image isn't too small, and I prefer seeing the film as it was originally presented and/or intended.
I have a Japanese laser disc (those 12" things that look like giant DVD's) that's letterboxed, but instead of a black bar on the top and bottom of the screen, there is a larger bar along the bottom, with the image going right up to the top of the screen... this larger bottom bar allows for a lot of room for the subtitles.

In a few years, all stations will supposedly switch to high definition broadcasting. Will we still keep our old sets to watch the full-screen DVDs of Space:1999. Eric Bernard anticipated this by giving his S99 eps a widescreen format.

I believe (if I recall the interview correctly) that he also felt the letterbox format gave the episodes a more cinematic appearance, since they felt cinematic in tone anyway.

One thing I always found troubling in this episode: the concept of a world in "microcosm",or everything from a planet shrunken down to microscopic size. Even if this were possible (and a I don't think it would ever), wouldn't such a dense asteroid (containing a shrunken world) give off a tremendous gravity. Alpha should have picked up unusual readings before even setting down on it.

Wouldn't converting the shrunken world back to full size require more than just Alpha's energy?

This episode could have been a great varient on The Emeny Within, but instead shows the dumbing down of the series. I mean come on - nobody noticed the hair part? I part my hair in the middle, so nobody could tell if I had a doppleganger.

Lame lava lamp light effect from the Catacombs episode reused again.

The DVD for this episode, and the next 2. had a History of Moonbase Alpha on it. It talks about the construction of the base, the nuclear war of 1983 and the peace in 1987 that established a UN-type of control over the moon. It also mentioned that after the encounters of their first year in space, a decision was made to abandon Main Mission for the Command Center as it was underground and better protected. Someone could have said this in The Metamorph. Something like Helena saying in her log that the move to the Command Center is almost complete with a shot of the techs wiring it up. Just a thought.

The case for rock samples the Koeinig-doppelganger uses doesn't snap shut!!! OOPS!

I actually like the way this episode ends. Its more satisfying than the typical year 2 "something horrible may have happened in this episode but we'll throw in a totally out of place humour sequence at the end anyways" epilogue.

The hair part thing may not be as silly as it seems. After all when you see someone all the time you tend to ignore the minor changes that occur with them from day to day. Throw in a tense situation and people are even less likely to notice some little point about someone's appearance.

Given that the asteroid has Earth level or close to Earth level gravity it does seem to be made of very dense stuff.

This episode has a feel closer to a lot of year one episodes. Most of the confrontations are emotional and verbal instead of physical.

There was some discussion earlier wondering why Alpha didn't use alien technology that they accumulated through their journey, but as far as I'm concverned that big laser gun is alien/Alpha technology. No way was Alpha built with such a thing.
And I can only assume that any food or water they come across is added to their supplies, we just don't see anyone talking about it.

Tim; "Most of the confrontations are emotional and verbal instead of physical."

That was why I really liked Helena using logic to prevent fake-Koenig from firing the laser, instead of everyone jumping him. She convinced him that it would slow down the energy transfer, taking a chance that she could change the alien's mind.

Great to see Maya change into a HUMAN rather than dog or alien for a change!

Best line; "I'm talking like I drink my own beer!" - Tony, after he considers mutineering against John.

Runner up; calling Alan a 'dumb kangaroo' when he won't believe Koening has been replaced.

If the limited atmosphere and gravity is being provided by the asteroid's inhabitants, won't they be shut off if Tony and Maya try to destroy their power source?

What kind of rescuee orders his rescuers to stay behind??? Koenig obviously needed them to prove that he was the real Commander. We really didn't need one extra crisis of having them frozen in a box.
It would have been much better if the three tried to escape, but the aliens trapped Tony and Maya at the entrance, with Koenig assuring them that he'd come back.

The editor and/or writer deserves a smack in the head for not tying this episode up properly at the end.

Yeah, this episode really has no final act. It just...stops.

guess Fred lost interest.

Fred didn't write this one.

But, as the Producer he should have been hands-on with it to its completion, and should have noticed it needed at LEAST one more page of script to tie it up.
Maybe it did have that page, but the photocopier broke down and Fred said, "What-evaaar!"

I think Fred said, "What evvarrrrr" alot.

No doubt.