SPACE: 1999 ALIEN ATTACK VHS

From Moonbase Alpha:  I was sad to hear that Martin Landau died overnight (London time).  He had a long and distinguished career (including an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi in ED WOOD) but, for Star Warriors, he'll always be remembered for SPACE: 1999.  Not least because the moon was still bouncing around the ITV schedules well into the 1980s... followed by 1990s reruns on BRAVO and BBC TWO.

The show's home video carrer was a little more complex.  The early releases were restricted to cut-and-shunt multi-episode presentations created by ITC after the show itself.  The 1990s saw the newly-launched ITC VIDEO add it to their roster... Although they initially had to skip the episodes already licensed elsewhere for the 'movie' versions.  Which, naturally enough, included the all-important opening episode Breakaway.

Polygram had inherited the rights to pump out the movies onto tape and this reissue - from the 1990s - was released alongside the ITC tapes.  It contains Breakaway and War Games with - unusually - some additional sequences, with none of the original cast, set at the International Lunar Finance Commission.  They are, understandably, quite busy after they misplace the moon.

SPACE: 1999 ALIEN ATTACK VHS COVER

From the VHS era: SPACE:1999: ALIEN ATTACK, a cut-and-shunt combination of several episodes of the TV series to make a movie presentation.  Before ITC VIDEO started to release the individual episodes (and licensing problems meant some had to held back until late in the release run), these compilations were the only way of getting hold of the show on home video.

1979: STARLOG MAGAZINE LOOKS BACK AT SPACE:1999 YEAR TWO

From 1979: STARLOG magazine looks back at SPACE: 1999 Year Two:

1976: STARLOG ISSUE 1 LOOKS AHEAD TO SPACE:1999 YEAR TWO

From 1976: the very first issue of STARLOG MAGAZINE looks at the changes afoot on the set, and behind-the-scenes, on the second year of BRITISH-based SPACE:1999.  

Well, that went well...

1976: THE MAKING OF SPACE:1999 by Tim Heald

From November 1976: a book that seldom seems to surface today: THE MAKING OF SPACE:1999.

I spend a fair amount of time perusing secondhand book stores and comic book stores whenever I'm visiting a new town or city but this one had, up until recently, eluded me.  I hadn't made it my life's work to find it... it's just the sort of paperback I would buy without a second thought if I ever saw it.  Which I never did.  

So I eventually took the plunge and ordered a copy (for a lot more than the 85p cover price) from Amazon.

I've not had a chance to look at it in detail (and, in truth, I'm worried that the ancient binding might not respond to well to too much love at this advanced age) but I'm (once again) struck that it is not the sort of book that would ever appear nowadays.  It's a text-heavy paperback which is dense with information but not a great format for stills, artwork etc.  Today, it would be a studio-scrutinized coffee table tome with an abundance of images and a lot less text.  And none of it critical.   

This seems to have been published in the States and then shipped to the UK.  This may explain why copies are few-and-far between.

1996: SFX MAGAZINE: THE EPISODE GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Volume 1

From 1996: one of the best freebies in the long-running history of SFX MAGAZINE: Volume 1 (or 2) of THE EPISODE GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.  

This was a no-pics paperback which, as the name suggests, gave concise-but-informative episode guides to BABYLON FIVE, STAR TREK: VOYAGER and SPACE: 1999.  The former two shows were still in production whilst, of course, the last had wrapped almost twenty years earlier.

These weren't the old fashioned summaries of the plots that older guides focused on, these borrowed far more from the much-missed Virgin Books house style of throwing in behind-the-scenes information, analysis, context and the odd scathing observation.  

A second volume followed the next year and then, sadly, the project ground a to a halt.  I imagine the economics of such an undertaking, especially in the age of the web, didn't justify the potential sales spike. 

1976: DINKY STAR TREK & SPACE: 1999 US TOY ADVERT

I always think of DINKY TOYS as being a very British concern so I was quite surprised to see they were selling their Star Age wares in the States in the 1970s.  This US advert appeared in comics around the turn of 1975/76.

All three of the featured craft were playground mainstays in the late 1970s: STAR TREK's Enterprise (complete with cunningly repositioned shuttle bay that doubled as a stand) and SPACE: 1999's Eagles double-act.

1978: UK SPACE: 1999 MODEL KITS ADVERT

Here is an (exceptionally wordy) advert (from May 1978 and published in the MARVEL UK weeklies) plugging the Airfix SPACE: 1999 model kits.  

1975: SPACE:1999 - THE AMERICAN COMICS

According to that column on the right (unless you are looking at the mobile device version), you'll see that this is Slow-Robot's 199th post.  So far.  So soon.  What better way to celebrate this milestone than with a cover gallery of the US run of SPACE:1999 comics and magazines (containing - err - comics) from the seventies.

Both of these titles, published by (now defunct) Charlton Comics (who also published some seventies bionic comic books), launched in the summer of 1975 (with November '75 cover dates).

The four-colour comic appeared bi-monthly, clocking up seven issues in a year.  Each issue included 22 pages of new comic strip, a two page text story (of little note) and the usual adverts to help pay the bills.  The run deserves a footnote in US comics history for providing John Bryne with early work.  Issues 1-6 follow the format of the first TV season (with an adaptation of Breakaway, the opening TV episode, in the first).  The final issue switches to Year Two with an adaptation of the scene-setting TV episode The Metamorph.

The monthly black & white magazine was also strip-based but didn't duplicate material from the comic book.  It clocked-up eight issues (so, thanks to publishing schedules, generated more issues but was actually cancelled before the comic) and, again, only adopted the second season format for its final issue.

Presumably Charlton abandoned the license after a year when it became clear that the syndicated TV show wasn't generating enough enthusiasm amongst readers to justify continuing.

The TV show, filmed by ITC Productions at Pinewood Studios in the UK, was a big budget attempt to muscle in on the US TV market with a glitzy effects-heavy show.  When all three broadcast networks passed on the project (despite casting US 'stars" Landau and Bain in the main roles), ITC were forced to hawk it around local stations in first-run syndication.  The po-faced first season wowed with its state-of-the-art visuals (and a stinking line-up of guest stars) but failed to capture much of the excitement of sitting on an out-of-control moon zooming through uncharted space (science not being one of the show's strong points).  The re-worked second year drafted in new talent in front and behind the camera (including the departure of Sylvia Anderson as her marriage, and creative partnership with hubby Gerry, disintegrated) and a revitalised show which looked better even if the quality of the writing generally declined.

Charlton Comics, part of a larger publishing empire, was a notoriously cut-price operation which, uniquely, did every stage of the comic/ magazine-making process in-house. Established in 1946, Charlton Comics soldiered-on until 1985 before finally bailing-out of the business.

SPACE:1999 - THE COMIC BOOK

ISSUE 1

November 1975

ISSUE 2

January 1976

ISSUE 3

March 1976

ISSUE 4

May 1986

ISSUE 5

July 1976

ISSUE 6

September 1976

ISSUE 7

November 1976

SPACE 1999 - THE MAGAZINE

ISSUE 1

November 1975

ISSUE 2

January 1976

ISSUE 3

March 1976

ISSUE 4

May 1976

ISSUE 5

July 1976

ISSUE 6

August 1976

ISSUE 7

September 1976

ISSUE 8

October 1976