Any Space:1999 year one fans?

I just watched the scene in question on the Network blu-ray and think it's merely an edit between two different takes.

Since it happens right when Lee Russell starts to walk over to Helena, I suppose the director liked the shot up to the point where Lee starts to walk, but then wasn't satisfied with what came next, so they edited in a different take.

I'll pull out the series LDs over the weekend to verify the edit has always been there, but that's what it looks like to me.

As for the series itself, the lack of good science can be problematic at times, but it's generally a pretty decent show.

I like all of the characters in the first season, except the smarmy (and rather arrogant) David Kano. I didn't miss him at all in the second season. (I honestly cannot recall any instance where I thought he came off well. )

And speaking of the second season, I think it would have been much better if Victor Bergman was still around.

Victor probably added the most warmth in the first series and I know I missed him the most when he wasn't there. He really seemed to humanize the show.

(I decided to watch "Black Sun" tonight. It's one of my favorite episodes and it has absolutely gorgeous visuals. In fact, whenever I think of what a black hole must look like, I always flashback to the wonderful matte painting they made for this show.)

 

Thanks. It could be that it was there. I seem to remember it from before but couldn't be sure of my memory.

Some interesting observations and I would agree that the character of Victor Bergman humanized the show which is ironic given that he was the scientist on the show (and I suppose that was intentional). I always thought of him as the anti-Spock. He was a terrifically underrated actor with the general public.

The character of Kano I think was supposed to be comedy relief--which it didn't always work, I did chuckle when he refers to "computer" as a "she" and seems to be in love with it, well, it is a chuckle. Reportedly he was NOT pleasant to work with from what I recall reading and no one missed him on the show.

In hindsight the science issue with the show was no better or worse than most other shows of the day.

What remains impressive no matter what is the often innovative production design of the series.

I still feel that Fred Freiberger was probably the wrong choice for the series. A pity that Gene L. Coon wasn't alive--he would have been a good choice to shepherd the series (Coon passed away shortly after leaving "Star Trek") although I did like some of the casting changes.

I do wish that the A&E set did have the pdf file just for comparison--I would have liked to see changes to the scripts (Chris Penfold did rewrites on "Breakaway" even though he isn't credited so I'd like to see what changes were made).

Science mistakes aside, "Breakaway" IS a very impressive looking pilot.

In many respects "The Metamorph" plays almost like a second pilot and it has really good elements in it side-by-side with some really silly stuff (the costumes for the guards looked pretty bad).

Overall it's a pretty impressive set I have always felt that "Dragon's Domain" SHOULD have been expanded to two episodes.

 

My discs for the new Blu-ray version of Season One arrived today! I've only had time to watch Breakaway, and I A/B'd that with my old A&E disc. The screen shots I'd seen online didn't do justice to the improvement in picture quality. There is a scene early in Breakaway where radiation tests are being made on the nuclear waste site. On the old A&E DVD the machine they are probing looks grey. On the Blu-ray you can see that it is actually orange -- a fairly bright orange too. I'm quite impressed! Skin tones look excellent. This is on par with the Star Trek Blu-rays in terms of the jump in picture quality over the first round of DVDs. Nice rumble during the nuclear explosion and when the Eagles land. And the theme song ROCKS! I hope they release season two in 2011.

 

I agree--his rapport with Koenig was great.

Really, the only thing I liked about the second series better than the first series was the more fully developed (i.e., more obvious and out in the open) romantic relationship between Koenig and Helena. The "is it platonic or something more" relationship in the first series was good, but too much of that without any payoff gets old. So, I like how the producers just made it a foregone conclusion that by the second series, they are "involved" with each other.

+1

Black Sun and Another Time, Another Place are my two favorite episodes of the entire series.

 

Actually, I've read that the actor who played Ben Ouma in "Breakaway" was the person nobody seemed to care for. So, his character was changed to Kano and the part was recast.

The scientific snafus - beyond the whole premise of the moon being blown out of orbit - are things like the deafening sound blasts hitting Alpha in "The Last Enemy", and Alphans throwing open windows (?!) when they suddenly get an atmosphere in "The Last Sunset". These oversights don't ruin the series, but they do seem odd.

Probably my favorite is how the producers seemed to equate an oxygen atmosphere with gravity. Everyone is in slow motion when there is no air, but once they get some, suddenly everything is Earthlike. (There was some talk of "gravity towers", but the explanations never were consistent. The equation was always "oxygen atmosphere = gravity".)

As for Fred Freiberger, he did one important thing people seem to lose sight of - namely getting a second season for the series.

The show was done. While its ratings in syndication weren't that bad, ITC in NY weren't satisfied and it was Freiberger's promise of more action and adventure - as well as the addition of Maya - that got the second season approved.

Was he perfect? Not at all. For one thing, getting rid of Victor (and his interaction with Koenig), really was a major step backwards.

I think the biggest problems the second season had were a result of diminished budgets (requiring the shooting of multiple episodes at the same time), as well as constant input/meddling from ITC New York.

Still, Space: 1999 has got to be one of the best science fiction shows of the 70's, and it's more intelligent than any network sci-fi series during that decade.

I'd love to see Lee Katzin's original 90 min cut of Black Sun. I've read that it was Martin Landau's favorite episode, but it needed to get cut down to 50 minutes for broadcast.

I guess Katzin went a bit overboard with both "Breakaway" and "Black Sun", so he was released.

But since both eps were so long, I think they'd be fascinating to watch today.

 

True about Freiberger--he did also allow "Trek" to survive and produce episodes for season three--ironically he had the same situation as with "Space: 1999"--reduced budgets, massive rewriting necessary to meet the reduced budget and Roddenberry abandoning the show didn't help.

I think that if the longer cuts did survive for those two episodes, they would be cool to add as extras.

 

I'd love to see the longer versions released on Blu ray but I doubt we would see anything approaching pristine or even good prints if any exist any longer.

Katzin was a pretty well regarded TV director at the time and did a lot of work on TV movies, pilots, and movies. I always got the sense that these episodes would have worked even better as longer cuts. The same with "Dragon's Domain" which was pretty darn creepy when I was a kid and is an atypical episode for the show with its flashback structure.

 

"Dragon's Domain" is probably my third favorite episode. Love the flashbacks to the early 90's--or was it the 80's?

 

Personally, I think it's unfair when Trek and Space:1999 fans bash Freiberger, and say he gave the "kiss of death" to both shows.

Trek was a bad situation due to the reasons you mentioned, yet some of the show's best episodes were produced under FF's watch.

He was also saddled with the decision to shoot previously-rejected scripts in order to save production costs.

For me, the biggest mistakes he made with season 2 of Space:1999 were cutting Victor and not using Barry Gray's music.

I didn't miss Kano or Paul Morrow at all. Maya was OK as a resident alien, but her shape-changing schtick grew old with me fast. I also liked Tony quite a bit, and his hot-headed nature would have balanced wonderfully with Victor's low-key charm. (Victor was my favorite character, as he seemed to be the friendliest. So, I had a lot of trouble warming up to season 2 when it was first aired.)

I also think that the vast amount of rubber suit monsters - as ordered by ITC NY - hurt things more than Freiberger did.

 

I loved Barry Gray's music, but the second series theme was excellent as well.

 

A few things:

- The recently-mentioned "Matter Of Life And Death" edit is on the old LD, so I'd say it has always been there. So, there is no glitch on the blu-ray. The small jump it correct.

- If you want to get really nitpicky, there are (at least) two things the producers of the blu-ray set overlooked when remastering the show.

The "this episode" cards were generally blue with uppercase and lowercase letters. But, "Breakaway" had black "this episode" cards - all in lowercase letters. The blu-ray set standardizes things, so now "Breakaway" matches the rest.

The original version of "Matter Of Life And Death" had a weird font for Rudi Gernreich's on-screen credit (the font was also used on a rare early version of the main titles sequence). Again, the blu-ray release standardizes things.

- There are two fantastic videos at YouTube that fans of the show will find amusing:

Space: 1899 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooo1m9A4S4Y
Space:1999 - The Igyan Edition - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXWEh9kcGzM

 

I would agree. I used to be one of those who demonized Freiberger until I heard/read the whole situation. He did what he was asked to do which was to make the show(s) work with the money they had.

My only issue with him was more as a writer--he could be pretty good but he could also be pretty awful. The three episodes he wrote were among the weaker ones for the second season.

Nevertheless, it was important to have a writer-producer available for the show when it came to creative decisions impacted by the budget.

"Tony" had much more personality and the character was played by a better actor IMHO. I kind of liked Maya and they had a cool (creative and budgetary) way to make her change. Yes, it did become a gimmick but I have a feeling if the show had continued eventually it would been used a bit less.

 

Just found the text trivia track on "The Last Sunset". What's odd is that a lot of these extras aren't mentioned on the A&E box at all. The would be nice to know vs. having to dig through the special features to find.

Again, this is probably the best presentation of a vintage show on Blu-ray I've seen outside of "Star Trek" and "The Prisoner".

I'd love to see "The Invaders" and "UFO" get the Blu-ray treatement with the same extras but given the small audience for both of these titles, I don't think it's likely immediately. I loved the "Invaders" DVD's and do wish they had included the TV movie with Scott Bakula as part of that set.

For those who saw the feature films made from the series for TV airing I understand that there were some new scenes shot for wraparounds--at least I read that somewhere--is this true and if so what was shot and with whom?

 

You wanna feel old? Space: 1999 started to air 40 years ago tomorrow I think in the UK. (It had already started airing in some US markets in syndication, and would continue to roll out over the course of September, 1975.)

 

I loved the whole damn show. I even had some of the action figures and spaceships. Good times.