|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Afer one of the space ships of Moonbase Alpha, the moonbase on the
runaway moon, is abducted to a strange planet, Commander Koenig (Martin
Landau) and a small crew take another spaceship to investigage - and are
forced onto the planet called Psychon as well. There, a powerful ruler,
Mentor (Brian Blessed) wants to make his hell-like planet surface
habitable again using his computer which runs on psychic power - psychic
power drained from all those unfortunate enough to pay the planet a visit,
with all those drained becomning mindless zombies working in Psychon's
mines. Of course, the arrival of the moon and its fully manned base seems
to be heaven sent for Mentor. Koenig tries to save his moonbase's crew
by ordering them to blow up Psychon (and himself with it), but Mentor is
much too powerful to be defeated this way - and yet, he hasn't taken into
account that his own loving daughter, the shapeshifter Maya (Catherine
Schell), who has been living in blissful oblivion of her father's
kidnapping activities, might come to his downfall when she frees Koenig
and company who then destroys Mentor's psychic computer, and the whole
planet including Mentor with it. Koenig and his crew manage to escape
though, and they take Maya with them - after all, you never know when a
shapeshifter might come in handy ... This first episode of Space
1999's season 2 brought quite a few changes to the series, like a
change in tone to the more light-weight and action-oriented, and changes
in the main ensemble that were left unexplained - and it saw the addition
of Catherine Schell's character Maya, which would turn out to be one of
the most memorable characters of the series, if mainly for the fact that
she was a shape shifter (who looked positively weird when in human form).
Interestingly, Maya, an alien by definition, would mainly change into
earth animals, which from a logical point of view is sort of weird (but
easily explainable from a budgetary point of view). Anyways, despite all
the changes, the show's heart remained unchanged, as this episode ably
demonstrates: The miniature and special effects are still top notch while
the sets and outfits border the hilarious and/or ridiculous, the stories
are positively hokey and could have done with serious rewrites ... and the
whole thing is just so much fun to watch, not exaclty for all the right
reasons but still!
|