In my youth, I remember watching “Space 1999” a TV show. I don’t recall greatly enjoying it, but I didn’t hate it. It ran from 1975 – 1977, so I was 10 to 12 years old. A demographic that ought to have loved the show.
Lately, I was looking for things to watch, and I found it on Amazon Prime Video, so what the hell, I clicked on it.
The premise is that a moon base has an accident. On the back side of the moon is a large nuclear reactor (that provides power to the moon), and it blows up, launching the entire moon into interstellar space, where every week they encounter some alien species, or a planet, or other adventure.
Pretty far fetched stuff, but alas it is a lot of bollocks. The physicist in me recalls that in university we calculated how ridiculous the premise was. To create enough energy to remove the moon from the gravitational influence of the sun would take more than 50% of the mass of the moon to be converted to energy. Think of it as an atomic bomb that instead of a few kilograms of fusion or fission energy, it would be 1/2 the mass of the moon.
Complete bollocks.
Then there is the fact that the moon just travels through space and just finds (every week) a new planet, or interesting alien species.
Of course, interstellar space is pretty empty. As in, traveling at the speed of light, to get to the next nearest celestial system, would take about 4 years.
More bollocks.
Of course, the aliens that they come across are all pretty much humanoid. Bipedal, and looking human.
Odds: about as high as Scarlett Johansson swing by tonight to take me to dinner.
The two principal actors, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (who both left Mission Impossible when Peter Graves took over the leader role) are, in a word, awful.
Summary
Fond memories be damned, this show is terrible on many facets. Fortunately, I am not spending any money to watch this utter tripe. Gerry Anderson (executive producer) had done some good shows, but this isn’t one of them.
