Space 1999 1975-1977 syndicated

[kennermike]

Any fans of the Second Season Produced by Fred Frieberger

[Mikey]

Yep,

To be honest, I like season 2 a little bit better then season 1

season 1 was fine, but a lot of the episodes were kind of boring

[trekman101]

As with most si-fi ,the shows get better as the seasons go by.Season one's are usually the worst

[Godzilla]

It's almost like 2 different shows. I can remember as a kid really liking season 2. I enjoy season 1 much more as an adult. Any chance I get to explore Moonbase Alpha is a good one though.

[david_b]

Season 1 was the best. It had it's own style, plus being shown here at 10:30pm on Saturday nights (after the news..), it was pretty creepy and cool to watch.

As does any show, it does have it's shortcomings, but it was way over-compensated in Season 2. More subtle changes would have been preferred, making characters more well-rounded, etc, etc. The plots became very routine, dull, no scientific curiousity abounding.., and I didn't like Maya one bit. Catherine Schell's wonderful, just didn't like the shape-changing aspect.

david_b

[tay666]

Now I loved Maya and it's the main reason I much prefer season 2 over season 1.

[Mikey]

Was just watching The Mark of Archanon tonight ........

Tell me if i'm crazy --- but I think the main guy resembles the Burger King



m

[kryptosmaster]

I watched this a few times when I was a kid but never saw them all. Never really got into it or liked it that much. Felt too "odd" to me. Of course now I know that's because it was an overseas show but at the time I just knew something was 'different' about it.
Rich

[bobws]

i liked them both. but was a little annoyed when all of a sudden in the second season we had a second in command that just appeared.

[david_b]

i liked them both. but was a little annoyed when all of a sudden in the second season we had a second in command that just appeared.

Totally agree - YR2 had a lot of great aspects to it, I loved how they played up secondary characters more (Sandra, Bill Frasier, Alan Carter, etc..), uniforms looked much cooler, and overall it had a good feel to it. My point was that there was a unique flavor to YR1, which I thought was intriging, scientific, shocking, and unlike any other show.

Losing that, and 1999 becomes more Trek-like. Nothing truly wrong with that, but then you have another sci-fi show, mimicing Trek (like Buck Roger's second year..)...., which of course, makes me want to go back and watch.... Star Trek.

If they would have used Maya as more of a real character, instead of popping out of nowhere on some eps and turning into a lion (as the token alien..), it would have been much better. I too missed the Koenig-Russell-Bergman dynamic of the first year.

Actually, ratings for 1999's second season finished much higher in the American market than for the first season's completion, but Sir Lew Grade decided not to do a third season and instead launch ITC into films more.

This all the year before Star Wars...

[Mikey]

One of the things that bugged me about season-2 was Koenig and the Alpha crew seemed to have forgotten to care about finding a new planet to settle down on.
Season-1 had had the words OPERATION EXODUS spoken in almost every second episode.

In season-2 they seem to be happy just Trekking along forever.

[palitoy]

Season 2 is a classic example of folding to executive pressure. Watching the excellent documentary from a few years back, you totally see how the influence of ITC America completely buggered a good concept.

A second season of Space:1999 did require some tweaks but the result is far too drastic, it's a new series. The headier concepts are gone, the atmosphere isn't quite there and who are all these people?

It's give and take however, we get better fleshed out people in season 2 and some faster pacing.

I still like season 2, lots to enjoy there. It's just such a shame that it couldn't have been met half way somehow, the first season is so impressive, not without it's faults but still it's so grand, the second season doesn't have that "big feeling".

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I like Space 1999; all of 'em. I found it had a problem that a lot of "serious" sci-fi does: it had a tendency to get slow and pretentious. Not CRIPPLINGLY so; but just enough to edge it out of being one of my all time favourite shows. The second season seemed an attempt to change that; and I liked a lot of what they did, but it was kinda shotgunned.

>Koenig and the Alpha crew seemed to have forgotten to care about finding a new planet to settle down on.

Yeah, like that. I can very easily concieve of a circumstance when this would happen: the crew becomes resoulute to their predicament and accepts it, they give up after so many false starts, etc. But they never addressed this IN CONTINUITY, so's we hafta sort of guess or accept things. Again, not a crippling flaw; but definitely a bit of an itch.

>and who are all these people?

That's something that should have been elaborated on in the FIRST season. There are a lot of people in the base, but we only saw a few of them. It's something that haunts a lot of shows though. Like the original Trek: in the first few seasons there are all sorts of people walking around in the background and a lot of chatter on the bridge. This kinda thins out as the series went on.

>such a shame that it couldn't have been met half way somehow

I agree. I think if it ran another season we would have seen some of the old highbrow plots mixed with the newer action pacing.

Don C.

[david_b]

Season 2 is a classic example of folding to executive pressure. Watching the excellent documentary from a few years back, you totally see how the influence of ITC America completely buggered a good concept.

A second season of Space:1999 did require some tweaks but the result is far too drastic, it's a new series. The headier concepts are gone, the atmosphere isn't quite there and who are all these people?

It's give and take however, we get better fleshed out people in season 2 and some faster pacing.

I still like season 2, lots to enjoy there. It's just such a shame that it couldn't have been met half way somehow, the first season is so impressive, not without it's faults but still it's so grand, the second season doesn't have that "big feeling".

Totally, TOTALLY agreed..! Far too much occurred, and you're exactly right about the Abe Mandel New York ATV office creative pressure. The first year had the advantage of being new, yet more grand and majestically filmed and directed, although some of the stories had story-telling issues (some eps felt padded, like 'Ring Around The Moon', etc..), but you could gloss over that with skillful directing and excellent camera angles, etc..

The second year had the feeling of another european show, like UFO, Blake 7, etc, great shows, but it was a 'come down' from the first year.

The Main Mission set was spectacular..!

2nd Year..? Command Centre..

Examples of the 'Americanization'..: 2nd Year 'Immunity Syndrome' ep, changing Alphan name Yuri Salkov to 'Jerry Travis'.

[Mikey]

In season-2 they kept calling Sandra "San" -- rhymes with Kahn

Was that short for Sandra ? or did they change her name ?

They never called her Sandra in season-2