Destination: Moonbase Alpha (58 page)

There had been a number of other science fiction episodes featuring living rocks, including
Star Trek
’s ‘Devil in The Dark’,
The Outer Limits
’ ‘Corpus Earthling’, and
The Bionic Woman
’s ‘The Vega Influence’. ‘All That Glisters’ was
Space: 1999
’s entry into this rather bizarre sub-genre. Keith Miles delivered his script in early March of 1976, and whether through fault of his own or through re-writing, it is certainly one of the worst in the series and contains numerous ghastly lines, including Koenig’s pontificating ‘Maybe they’re like humans. When they’re scared, they don’t think too well.’ While it could potentially be regarded as a tribute to
Star Trek
, Helena’s line, ‘I’m a doctor, John – not a miracle worker!’ comes across as a shamefully derivative rip-off. One aspect of the script that is appreciated, though, as it was in ‘The Metamorph’, is the recognition of Alpha’s occasional need for rare minerals to power such systems as Life Support.

Ray Austin provides direction that ploughs along with the pace of the script, though neither leads anywhere rewarding. Austin was reportedly – like the cast – very unhappy with the script, and following completion of this episode he opted to leave
Space: 1999
and join
The New Avengers
.

Patrick Mower delivers a genuine oddity of characterisation as the Irish cowboy Dave Reilly. His performance is admirable, despite his inconsistent accent and some occasionally overdone sequences where he comes across stiffly. To be fair, it would be difficult for any actor to turn in a stellar performance when faced with this script! What is completely unclear is why Dave Reilly had to be introduced at all. He does nothing that couldn’t have been handled by a variety of other Alpha characters, including Alan Carter or Sandra Benes, and it would have been far more rewarding to have seen a regular in this large role. The main cast struggle through and uniformly give their best to maintain a sense of dignity in the face of this unchallenging and often idiotic material. Martin Landau plays Koenig with an edge – temperamental and easy to anger – which might be partly because Landau himself was extremely unhappy with the script.

The special effects are quite nice, and the depiction of the otherworldly alien planet – a collection of red skies, grey sand and bizarre twisted dead trees – is excellent. Not only is this planet a highlight of ‘All That Glisters’, it stands as one of the most memorable alien worlds visited throughout the series. The living rocks and their ability to emit different beams of coloured light are unbelievable in many regards, despite the appealing notion of life having evolved in so radically different a form than we are familiar with. Possibly the alien rocks are meant to be viewed as being akin to mood stones. Regardless, the exclamation ‘Red is death!’ marks one of the most ridiculous moments of the series.

. In concept, there is nothing wrong with an episode featuring living rocks – it was done with considerably greater success on
Star Trek
,
The Outer Limits
and
The Bionic Woman
. But ‘All That Glisters’ fails in both script and execution. A cloud of disappointment hangs over the resultant proceedings, although once forgiven its shortcomings, the episode does at least provide an exciting and enjoyably silly sci-fi hour, with a pleasant resolution.

Rating:
5.5/10

2.5

JOURNEY TO WHERE

Screenplay by Douglas James

Directed by Tom Clegg

Selected Broadcast Dates:

UK
              LWT:

             
Date: 18 September 1976.               Time: 11.20 am

             
Granada:

             
Date: 29 Apr. 1977.               Time: 7.30 pm

US
              KRON (San Francisco):

             
Date: 18 Sept. 1976.               Time: 7.00 pm

Credited Cast: Martin Landau
(John Koenig),
Barbara Bain
(Helena Russell),
Catherine Schell
(Maya),
Tony Anholt
(Tony Verdeschi),
Nick Tate
(Alan Carter),
Jeffery Kissoon
(Dr Ben Vincent),
Yasuko Nagazumi
(Yasko),
Roger Bizley (
MacDonald),
Laurence Harrington
(Jackson),
Norwich Duff
(First Operative Texas),
Peggy Paige (
The Old Crone)

Guest Stars: Freddie Jones
(Dr Charles Logan),
Isla Blair
(Carla Cross)

Uncredited Cast: Sarah Bullen
(Operative Kate),
Robert Reeves
(Operative Peter Reeves),
Jenny Cresswell
(Operative L Picard),
Robert Davies
(Mr Hyde (Maya)),
John Wood
(Second Operative),
Terry Walsh
(Highlander),
Peter Brayham
,
Eddie Stacey
,
Tim Condren
,
Terry Walsh
,
Doug Robinson
(Clansmen / Stunts)

Plot:
Neutrino Transmissions from Texas City in the year 2120 reach Moonbase Alpha, promising that a return to Earth via new transportation technology is possible. A test package is successfully transmitted. This is followed by the attempted transfer of Koenig, Russell and Carter. An earthquake disrupts the procedure, and the trio awake in Scotland in 1339.

Quotes:

• Maya:
  ‘You told me heroes were fools who had a talent for nothing else.’
  
• Helena
  :
  ‘It’s the Moon, John – it’s the Moon!’
  
• Alan:
  ‘Would you believe we lost our way?’
  
• Helena
  :
  ‘With a history like that, who wants to go back to Earth, anyway?’
  

On-screen Date:
None.

Filming Dates:
Thursday 1 April – Wednesday 14 April 1976

Observations:
The test device was previously utilised as one of the air canisters in ‘The Last Sunset’, while the costumes of the Scottish clansmen are re-used from the Roman Polanski film of
Macbeth
.

Special effects footage of the domed Earth cities from ‘Journey to Where’ was borrowed by the
Wonder Woman
series for an episode titled ‘Time Bomb’.

Review:
‘Journey to Where’ was written by Douglas James, who had already penned ‘The Exiles’ and would return again later in the series as author of ‘The Seance Spectre’.

Upon the arrival of John, Helena and Alan on Earth, this episode hits its stride. The location shoot is beautiful and atmospheric, and the direction by Tom Clegg, which had been rather pedestrian in the Moonbase Alpha scenes, excels in the Earth ones. Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Nick Tate all likewise deliver outstanding performances in these scenes, freed from the confines of the Alpha sets. Bain, in particular, gives her finest performance in Year Two. She is absolutely gripping as
Helena succumbs to pneumonia, dropping her normally restrained demeanour and replacing it with a raw realism, demonstrating her courage as an actress. Helena, even in her illness, is a strong character: she is the one who identifies their Moon in the sky, and spots the fungus on the walls of the cell and directs the preparation of it into an antibiotic. The trio of Landau, Bain and Tate appear comfortable and at ease in their roles, and uniformly deliver three of the most natural and genuine performances in the series.

Catherine Schell imbues Maya with a sense of uncertainty and sadness at the thought of going with her fellow Alphans back to Earth – an alien world to her, where she would be even more alone; one amongst billions rather than one amongst approximately three hundred. She is left out and set apart from the rejoicing the others express in making contact with their home world.

The absence of Zienia Merton’s character Sandra is profoundly felt: her replacement, Yasko, is portrayed by Yasuko Nagazumi, who gives a performance of remarkably limited talent and manages to stumble over every word in her apparently slim English vocabulary.

Isla Blair, in an entertainingly awful white wig, returns to the series, having previously played the Female Alien in ‘War Games’. She and Freddie Jones have an interesting time with their American accents, yet do succeed in playing their parts with an earnestness that lends them credibility.

Director Tom Clegg delivers his first episode for the series, and would go on to helm a further four: ‘The Bringers of Wonder’ Parts 1 and 2, ‘Devil’s Planet’ and ‘The Dorcons’. While those others are all admirable episodes, this is his finest outing.

The Texas City miniatures are fun, with their pulsing disco lights. There are also similar lights on the Texas City laboratory set – an admirable bit of continuity between the special effects and set design departments. The effects of the earthquakes are quite engaging, especially for the period when they were produced. The shots of the devastated countryside of Earth, including foaming rivers and the carcass of a cow on a desert plain, provide suitably effective environmental warnings of the dangers of pollution.

‘Journey to Where’ is
Space: 1999
’s only time-travel story (in ‘The Full Circle’ the Alphans regress to a primitive state, but they do not actually travel back in time), and it is completely successful. It is a surprising and effective choice on the writer’s part to send the Alphans to 1336 in Scotland at the time of the Black Plague. A far more interesting choice than to have put them, for example, on a back-lot Wild West town as other sci-fi programmes have done.

The script contains numerous allusions to the future, most notably in Alan Carter’s singing (as in ‘Death’s other Dominion’). Prior to their journey into Earth’s past, Carter sings, ‘Fly me from the Moon at last; Let Alpha be my long-lost past.’ He later sings, ‘Fire, fire, burn so bold. Can’t you see she’s feeling cold?’ This foretells of the fire that nearly burns them all, and also foreshadows Helena’s realisation that she has her own worsening ‘cold’, which becomes pneumonia. Another notable instance is when Helena jokingly mentions the Black Plague, not realising that is exactly what the Scottish clansmen will accuse her of having.

Conceptually, the Alphans are allowed to connect with the Earth of the 22
nd
Century and see where mankind has wound up – ‘Who needs nature?’ is the brilliantly chilling summary of the state of humanity. Year One episodes, particularly those of Johnny Byrne, frequently contrasted the lives of technological and non-technological societies, seeming to suggest that the most desirable combination was a balance between the two elements of science and nature. The death of nature on future Earth leaves the humans – locked up in their futuristic cities – lacking a connection to the world that gave them life. Where Byrne often called for a return to and an embracing of the natural world, while eschewing a total abandonment of science, Donald James goes a step further. Helena personifies the disconnection between people living in an utterly technological environment and those in their former natural habitat. Demonstrating profoundly that the Alphans are now people of space, rather than of Earth, her return to the planet of her birth makes Helena deathly ill. While Byrne’s scripts show a desire for a new Eden, James seems to say that the rift is too great, and that the Alphans – mankind itself? – are too far-gone to return to a natural state. Certainly, their future does not lie on Earth, as was also stated in Year One’s ‘Earthbound’, when Professor Bergman said, ‘Maybe I’ve had enough of Earth and its so-called civilisation.’ Earth has become virtually as inhospitable to life as the Moon. Texas City and the other domed cities offer a life very similar to that on Moonbase Alpha. The question must be: does a return to Earth offer the Alphans anything more than they already have?

And speaking of those domed cities of future Earth, they do bear a notable resemblance to the domed city complexes of the novel
Logan’s Run
– adapted as a movie in 1976 and as a spin-off TV series in 1977 – both physically and thematically, with the absence of nature in the lives of those within. Amplifying the parallel, the central characters even share the same name – Logan. Here D. Charles Logan is a slightly eccentric scientist who takes great risks with his largely untested equipment.

This is a strong story, well told, and heightened to a level of greatness by the performances of the three leads and the well-conveyed ecological concern of the script. No matter the weaknesses of Yasko, Isla Blair’s wig or dicey accents, ‘Journey to Where’ holds even greater impact today than when it was filmed, and is absolutely one of the pre-eminent episodes of
Space: 1999
.