The Lambda Factor

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Space: 1999: Season Two: The Lambda Factor
PLOT SUMMARY: A hostile alien force attacks the Moonbase by enhancing the latent psychic abilities of its populace and acting through them. It finds its most useful tool in Carolyn Powell, a medical technician angered over the breakup with her former lover.
By tim gueguen on Sunday, August 29, 1999 - 8:39 pm:

The big nit with this one for me is Koenig's friends getting a space plague from Venus and dying years before. FROM VENUS?! The surface of Venus is 600 degrees Farenheit and has a pressure of several Earth atmospheres. Certainly humans would not walk on the surface of Venus, and it seems unlikely that any sort of bacteria or virus could survive there. Even if it did it strikes me as unlikely it would be contractable by humans, as the conditions in a human environment wouldn't be to its liking. I suspect the writer still thought of Venus as we did before space probes showed how nasty it is, namely as a potentially Earth like environment.


By BarbF on Monday, August 30, 1999 - 6:43 am:

I thought they were on some sort of space dock and caught a virus...I didn't think the virus itself came from Venus.


By Douglas Nicol on Monday, August 30, 1999 - 11:10 am:

I think you're right, Barb, I watched this episode fairly recently and read the novels, and I'm 95 per cent sure that you're right.


By BarbF on Tuesday, August 31, 1999 - 7:04 am:

..of course that brings up the question where exactly DID this virus come from? I mean, did they have when they went to the space dock (hardly likely, I'm sure NASA would have them checked out prior), or did they contract it while there? From who? And how did Koenig's commander know that the virus had no known cure if they didn't even know what it was? Seems kind of drastic to let a bunch of people die without even knowing what they've got. I would think they'd send up people in contamination suits to check it out...
Something also about this whole story that struck me odd...Koenig brings it up in The Exiles, and Helena seems surprised by it. I mean, if it's bothering Koenig this much, don't ya think he might have mentioned it before to the woman he's doing the horizontal boogie with?
Just my .02 cents...rambling as usual...


By tim gueguen on Sunday, September 05, 1999 - 8:03 pm:

Well, I went and checked the episode script at Martin Willey's Catacombs site at www.space1999.net and sure enough there are several references to "Venusian plague."

Its interesting that Koenig refers to himself as being an "astronaut cadet" at the time his friends Sam and Tessa contracted the plague. To me the term cadet implies someone who hasn't finished their training yet, and not a person who would be taking part in an actual space mission.

The episode itself seems suspiciously like a rewrite of year one's The Troubled Spirit. Personally Spirit strikes me as a better episode, altho' I haven't seen Lambda Factor in a decade or more.


By wiseguy on Tuesday, September 07, 1999 - 4:51 am:

Hey, moderator, you misspelled LAMBDA...what's a lamda?


By Todd Pence on Tuesday, September 07, 1999 - 10:04 am:

DOH! Sorry about that, I'll fix it. That's really bad, considering that that was one of the letters of my old fraternity chapter, I should be kicked out for life for that.


By Anonymous on Friday, September 28, 2001 - 3:57 pm:

I hate that whole scene of Bain and Landau discussing his nightmares. He seems ready to freak out, she seems cold and distant. You'd think she'd at least put her arm around him and give him a "there, there"...instead she gets all pissy at him. He shoulda back-handed her...


By tim gueguen on Wednesday, December 12, 2001 - 3:55 pm:

Does anyone else sometimes find themselves calling this episode The Lambada Factor?


By Alice on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 4:57 pm:

Just watched the movie 'Jabberwocky' and couldn't place the actress playing the princess, but I thought I knew her from somewhere...it was Deborah Fallender from this episode.

Sheesh, I watch too much TV!


By Anonymous on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 6:55 am:

I really liked the character of Pete Garforth - he would have made a nice additional to the cast instead of whiney little Fraser.


By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 23, 2002 - 7:30 am:

One thing that seriously bothered me about this episode was the scene with Koenig and Helena in his quarters when he's struggling with his nightmares. I just hate that scene - Helena offers no sympathy, no tenderness, no understanding. Even as his doctor, much less his lover, she should be giving him a shoulder to cry on. Instead she tosses some pills at him and tells him to basically snap out of it. It would have been nice at the end of the scene when Koenig is sitting with his head in his hands to show Helena at least putting her arms around him. Just a yucky, yucky scene that needed rewritten.


By tim gueguen on Wednesday, July 24, 2002 - 5:48 pm:

Perhaps it was intended to show that she was being effected by the Factor as well.


By Anonymous on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 2:40 pm:

Maya's worst transformation is in this episode-the gorilla...the gorilla suit is pathetic.


By Will on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 - 10:38 am:

Maybe she purposefully transformed into a stunt man wearing a gorilla suit, hmmmmmmmmmmm?????


By Will on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 - 10:40 am:

Or....
She changed her uniform into a gorilla suit, and just acted like a gorilla!

There.

Mystery solved.


By Curious on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 8:54 pm:

Then what was her motivation for transforming into a "phoney" looking gorilla?


By CR on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 7:31 am:

To cause so much laughter that the antagonist could be easily captured?


By Curious on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 4:47 pm:

She was with Alan at the time, so another reason is necessary!


By CR on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 7:49 am:

Well, I'm out of ideas... haven't seen this ep for 25 years.


By Will on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 10:22 am:

When was the last time ol' Alan had a really good laugh? She was obviously trying to give him one and deal with the problem at the same time.

OOO! OOO! OOO!


By Curious on Sunday, February 08, 2004 - 1:01 pm:

Why didn't Alan didn't laugh at the Krenno creature ?


By Anonymous on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 12:07 pm:

He was unconscious.


By Anonymous on Monday, February 07, 2005 - 10:42 am:

Gorilla suit really stunk. Yech.

Not many people wander into CC, do they? It took forever for Koenig and Russell to slowly figure out whats going on in MEdical, all the while the blonde chicky is tormenting Tony, Maya, etc....seemed like 20 mins....sheesh


By Harvey Kitzman on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 8:38 pm:

Man, Martin Landau plays freaked out well, huh?

Interestingly enough, a Google search on Lambda waves turns something up. They are real.

Haven't we seen that spinning pinwheel before?

What motive did Carol have for trying to take over?

And how did Helena know she got mad at Mark and killed him?


By Anonymous on Wednesday, September 07, 2005 - 2:50 pm:

The actress that played Carolyn Powell was very pretty. The other one on the anti-matter planet episode wasn't bad either.


By Tim on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 7:40 pm:

How did Carolyn Powell get assigned to Alpha to begin with. This was one messed up woman. Don't they have psychological profiles of potential employees BEFORE hiring them?

At the end, Helena says that Carolyn's mind has been wiped clean, and that she will have to grow up all over again. So, who is the poor schmuck that will have to potty train her? Yikes!


By steve McKinnon (Steve) on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 7:24 am:

I can see several elements from Star Trek episodes in this one;
'Where No Man Has Gone Before' - crewman acquires god-like powers, torments and kills crewmates.
'Obsession' - senior officer obesses over a lack of judgement during a mission many years ago that killed shipmates, and ignores his chief medical officer's assurances that it wasn't his fault.
'The Changeling' - female crewman has mind erased and needs to be re-educated.

Landau played his breakdown waaaay over the top. Not only does he come off as a whimpering psychotic, I gotta wonder if Helena will ever be attracted to him again.

Interesting restriction regarding Maya's transformation powers. She can't simply change into a slightly larger lifeform from the caterpillar, so that she pushes the square container off of her? Would a little plastic box compress her humanoid molecules if she tried to change back to her humanoid form?

This is one of the few episodes that didn't involve an Eagle-- not one was sent to investigate the weird space-pinwheel (since they were grounded).


By steve McKinnon (Steve) on Thursday, May 14, 2015 - 4:48 pm:

Koenig shows an incredible amount of mental discipline at the end when he confronts Carolyn. He has a mental breakdown, blubbering, wide-eyed hysteria where he's ready for the Moonbase Funny Farm. And yet he's strong enough and calm enough to ignore the chais and destruction around him caused by Carolyn, even keeping hatred out of his mind that she fed off.


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Friday, May 15, 2015 - 5:00 am:

This is like another Star Trek episode, And The Children Shall Lead. Remember, once Kirk faced and defeated his fear, the little brats could shake their fists to their hearts content, and yet he wouldn't be affected anymore. The same happened to Koenig here. Once he faced and defeated his guilt, over leaving his friends behind, even though he had no choice, he was immune to the affects of the space thingy (which had tapped into and ramped up said guilt).

Carolyn, on the other hand, embraced what the space thingy did to her. She clearly had emotional issues, and said issues were ramped up. She embraced them, and ended up paying the ultimate price. Yes, she wasn't dead, but her mind was totally destroyed.

It's too bad they never followed up on this, I mean Helena said that Carolyn would have to "grow up all over again." And it's not like they had a convenient Starbase they could ship her off to for treatment, they would have to do it themselves. Perhaps if the series had continued, we might have seen how Carolyn was progressing.


By R W F Worsley (Notanit) on Monday, January 25, 2021 - 10:59 am:

It's too bad they never followed up on this, I mean Helena said that Carolyn would have to "grow up all over again." And it's not like they had a convenient Starbase they could ship her off to for treatment, they would have to do it themselves. Perhaps if the series had continued, we might have seen how Carolyn was progressing.

Maybe someone on Fanfiction.net could write one?


By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Tuesday, October 25, 2022 - 5:26 am:

Terrance Dicks wrote this one.


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