Space: 1999 - Some Thoughts
In the 1970's a series dropped, Space: 1999, that wasn't great. But besides the mediocrity of the acting and the cast, the whole premise is just plain ridiculous
Gerry Anderson, the genius behind the Thunderbirds, the marionette program that inspired Team America: World Police, had one more trick up his sleeve. That trick was Space: 1999, a British SciFi series starring Martin Landau and his wife Barbara Bain. The series ran from 1975 through 1977.
Its premise was that the year is 2065, the moon is colonized, and somewhat industrialized. On the far side of the moon is the nuclear waste dump that is showing some instabilities, and ultimately, it “blows up” and the resultant explosion ejects the moon from the solar system. The rest of the series is the isolated moonrise flying through the universe, meeting alien races, and having adventures.
It is patently ridiculous stuff, the acting is, uh, mediocre even with the two big names on the marquee (we first met Bain and Landau in the early episodes of Mission: Impossible) it strains credulity.
I no longer have the calculations, but back when I was in University, one of my professors used this as an example of the suspension of belief. We know the mass of the moon, we know the conversion of mass to energy from Einstein (the famous E=MC^2 formula), and we know the equation to calculate the energy to escape the gravitational well of the Sun.
When you do the calculation, to get the moon to just leave the solar system (not to give it enough velocity to visit all the alien civilizations and have all the adventures in the show). However, an explosion that large, a conversion of that much mass to energy, would mean that indeed, all people alive on the Moon would, uh, not survive.
Why write on this? I watched a few episodes recently, and I was in shock about how truly awful it was. I remember the 10 year old me enjoying the show. This is one that I will not be buying a copy of.