Jan 22
Judy in Disguise Comments: Yes, the full title (according to ISFDB) is “Space: 1999: Year 2: #4 The Psychomorph”
Published 1977
Judy in Disguise Comments: Yes, the full title (according to ISFDB) is “Space: 1999: Year 2: #4 The Psychomorph”
Published 1977
January 22nd, 2020 at 9:16 am
“SPACE: 1999 Year 2
Escape into inane script writing beyond belief
Based on the kindergarten-level dialogue and ideas of
Terrence Feely & Terrance Dicks”
January 22nd, 2020 at 9:28 am
“Commander, these aliens must have escaped from a disco band. Possibly Djingis Khan, Boney M or Hot Gossip.”
January 22nd, 2020 at 10:07 am
Needs some Zienia Merton.
January 22nd, 2020 at 10:42 am
And that little boy grew up to be… incredibly embarrassed.
January 22nd, 2020 at 12:37 pm
This title has more colons than the Human Centipede
January 22nd, 2020 at 12:58 pm
How many ways can you spell Terance?
January 22nd, 2020 at 2:54 pm
The multitude of urine samples must have been a simultaneous Feely Dicks idea.
January 22nd, 2020 at 3:26 pm
Lay off Terrance Dicks – that script was written for his unloved ‘Moonbase 3’ and adapted (by blunt-force trauma) for the less brained-up, more lucrative anglo-italian puppet show.
And he’s a hero for so many other reasons.
January 22nd, 2020 at 4:05 pm
“And that, my son, is how space ships make babies.”
January 22nd, 2020 at 4:06 pm
“Come, Hammurabi, let us visit the Integalactic Dentist on our way back to the ziggurat!”
January 22nd, 2020 at 4:11 pm
Yeah, I used to fall asleep watching Space:1999 too.
January 22nd, 2020 at 10:51 pm
Finally, the answer to why there were so many Eagles on the Moonbase, despite about fifty of them getting blown up every episode… they were breeding.
January 23rd, 2020 at 12:10 am
And the award for Most Ungainly Title goes to…
Season 1 was daft enough, proceeding from the completely impossible premise that a nuclear waste explosion could propel the moon out of orbit and into the galaxy at FTL speeds. “Beyond Belief” indeed.
Season 2 was a plague upon the Earth. My mother, who was a sci-fi fan herself and always encouraged me in it, refused to watch it and I was banished to the tiny B&W TV, and then I discovered boys as something other than playmates that year, so…. I don’t think I saw all of it.
Also Catherine Schell’s eyebrows and character annoyed me.
As to this cover, it’s as much a dog’s breakfast as the show.
@ARY: Not good enough for Boney M. I’m going with Hot Gossip, as they backed Sarah Brightman on her immortal “Starship Trooper” song of this era.
GSS to B’mancer, Alice, Ryan, and the tag-team of JP/THX. Plus bonus LOL to @Ryan.
Terrrreance.
January 23rd, 2020 at 2:14 am
Aw, lay off the Terran, see?
January 23rd, 2020 at 3:39 am
Ah, Space 1999: not only does the Moon somehow get thrown across the universe at FTL speeds, but it somehow then _slows down_ every time they get near an inhabited planet so they can drop in for tea and a battle. (Either that or it’s moving much slower than light and the universe is packed as full of planets as in an old Loonie Tunes cartoon).
Some sort of experimental FTL drive on a big-ass spaceship (rather than a Moon base) with a bunch of Eagles as landers would have made more sense: the first jump goes a lot further than they thought it would and now they have to find their way back to Earth. But no, that sort of thing had been done before, they had to have their “imaginative” premise of the Moon bouncing around the universe like a ball in God’s own pinball machine.
January 23rd, 2020 at 7:44 am
Feely: My name goes first on the cover, you Dicks!
Dicks: Yeah? Well, feel this Feely, I’m telling you my name goes first!
Editor: Boys, boys, no need to haggle. Let’s turn to an authority we can all rely on, Robot’s Rules of Order.
Dicks: That’s Roberts . . .
Editor: Yeah, well, you spell your way, Terrance, and the rest of us will spell our way. At any rate, it says here on page lxxxviii, “When co-authors are both named after the Roman comic playwright ‘Terentius,’ the name with the fewest “r”s goes first.” Well, that settles it, fellows. Feely, you lead the way and Dicks will bring up the rear.
January 23rd, 2020 at 10:22 am
I think it went something like:
TF: Mind if I call you Terrance just to keep things clear.
TD: Only if I get to have two ‘T’.
TF: Well since this is not the BBC and not Doctor Who and we’re big budget here, I think we can run to two ‘T’s.
TD: Done.
TF: Did I mention this is not Doctor Who.
January 23rd, 2020 at 2:13 pm
@Bruce: the daftness of the premise was compounded by the second series but then they went and commissioned halfway decent writers to do spin-off books. EC Tubb was lumbered with it and struggled to provide a rationale for the whole silly thing, but they ignored him.
But think back to the era of 22% inflation and ask yourself if you’d turn down work from the wealthy RAI, even if it meant having to put up with Fred Freiberger’s ludicrous notions.
January 23rd, 2020 at 2:42 pm
@B. Chiclitz – You seem to be big fan of these writers. I hear you really like Feely Dicks.
January 23rd, 2020 at 5:31 pm
@Chinese GSS—As your fearless leader and legendary wit Mao Zedong would often say, “Bite my clank.”
January 23rd, 2020 at 7:08 pm
If I recall correctly, after the second or third episode, they introduced the idea that they were passing through some sort of space warps that explained why they were able to drop into other solar systems every week. The exact nature of these things was not, to my knowledge, thoroughly explained, but somebody must have realised that space was, indeed, really, really big.
January 24th, 2020 at 12:35 am
@NomadUK: I must have missed that one.
@Tat Wood: yeah, I know SF writers have to eat (SF writing is rarely a profitable career at the best of times) and that the sillyness in most TV shows comes from the top, but the sheer crazyness of the idea IMHO gave the show a bit of a surreal, dreamlike air. Indeed, even in the first season the plots were often a bit dreamlike: didn’t most of one early episode turn out to be just an illusion sent by some aliens to warn them off from their planet?
January 24th, 2020 at 11:35 pm
@BC: Brilliant! And I must agree with the one-R decision.
@NomadUK: One could wish they’d come to that knowledge before the show started.
@Bruce: the dreamlike air was aided by Barbara Bain playing every scene as if she’d got into the quaaludes.
I do recall how everyone involved gloated that this meant the end of the almighty networks, that they were going to take over the TV landscape. Particularly in SF. Bit early on that one, gang. “Battlestar Galactica” came out with a giant budget and a plot setup that mostly made sense, and it took till the 90s for SF to do well in syndication — with sequels to a network show.
August 18th, 2020 at 12:31 am
“I just love these £1-a-minute shopping mall massage chairs…”