Well, well, well, I ne'er thought that *I* would be rising to the show's
defense :-)
Some of the august members of this list scoff at Space:1999 [ITV] as being
too simplistic [true] bad f/x [I dunno] etc. Space: 1999, was, at that
time, one of the *two* SF television series at the time it was aired in
Turkey [the other being ST, and it was Star Trek, pure and simple, none of
this new-fangled TOS addition simply because there was *no* ST:NG :-)] I
was about 6-8 at that time and understandably not very SF-literate, but I
watched all the series with interest. The shapechanger's name, IIRC, was
Maya, and the apperant absurdity of MoonBase Alpha's one-planet per episode
speed [how many times the speed of light? :-)] was at the same level of
absurdity as the StarFleet's willingness to endanger the captain of the
Enterprise in every episode, whereas by simple logic the captain should have
been a little less expendible. Space: 1999 was one of the things that
endeared SF to me, and the lack of "hard" scientific content I find hard to
accept *now* [I have seen some re-runs of it and they *are* bad--but I am
speaking, after all, with the prejudices of an intervening 20 years during
which I have been exposed to more quality SF and had a science/engineering
education.] it was alright for the time. For that matter, I even liked
Battlestar Galactica, but I saw an episode on a German channel the other
day, where they were trying to put out a fire by *fire-extinguishers* I
could barely managed not to puke--even a far less advanced spaceship than
Galactica would not need extinguishers to stop a fire *from a Cylone attack*
since opening the hit section to vacuum is all they need. Where was I, oh,
yes, 1999 and ST were a good wedge for my entry into SF, and Space:1999 was
the first place I have seen remote controls [as in opening doors] and
communicators with small video screens that we *still* don't have as
standard equipment around, with only 2 years left until 1999. Plus, of
course, as someone else pointed out, we don't *have* a moonbase Alpha,
neither for nuclear waste damping or anything else, and this is depressing
enough by itself. Sigh.
--Cenk [who still has his "Space:1999" 'Eagle' on the bookshelf in front of
the RAH books] Gokce
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N. Cenk Gokce, Ankara, TR ([log in to unmask])
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