Re: MESSENGER is at Mercury

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:16:58 -0500, "Jeff Findley"
<jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have some of the episodes on VHS and DVD that I picked up (new) from Half
Price Books. The best episode, IMHO, is Dragon's Domain. The probe ship in
that episode is extremely cool. Actually, the entire spaceship graveyard is
cool. That monster was pretty scary, at least it was when I first saw the
episode as a kid. :-)

....I pretty much loved all the eps of Series 1(*), although a couple
weren't anywhere near up to snuff when compared to the rest. "Dragon's
Domain" was one of the better ones, but had it not been for Martin
Landau's ego, it would have been a *better* one: Landau forced a
script rewrite that changed Alan Carter into Toni Celini so Celini
would die and Koenig would have to kill the monster. This was
facilitated by the necessity to cast an Italian actor in a major
episode role to meet the RAI part of the ATV/ITC/Group Three
consortium that was funding the show at the time.

....Oddly enough, "Black Sun" was, when first aired, wildly derided by
critics and fans as being total crap. But once the nitpickers got over
the use of "Black Sun" instead of "Black *Hole*", the interpersonal
drama of the show shines brightly. Yet another such moment occurs
during "War Games", when Victor Bergman leaves the final message as
the survivors of the attack are preparing to abandon Alpha. If there
was any one such message that should accompany every single probe sent
out, it was Victor's plea for whoever finds the message to seek them
out and teach them what they had to know.

.....A couple of those Series 1 eps, tho, were in retrospect direct
swipes of some "Star Trek TOS" plots. "Guardian of Piri" was "This
Side of Paradise" without the pod plants or the Berthold Rays, and
some have argued that "The Last Enemy" was in its own way either a nod
or a knockoff to "A Taste of Armageddon". But even then, for its time
it was better than anything else on the air - especially "The
Starlost", which Harlan Ellison should be forced to accept
responsibility for as punishment for being a midget with a mouth.

....Series 2, on the other hand, had its good eps, but they were mostly
overshadowed by the bad ones. 99.9% of the blame can be laid at the
feet of producer Fred Freiberger. The mistake Gerry Anderson made was
letting Lew Grade hire Freiberger without checking into how well he'd
performed on "Star Trek" and especially "The Wild WIld West". He was
hired mostly because he came across as a very nice guy. Nice guy
producers tend to sink a show, kids.

....If I had to pick any Series 2 eps that were worth noting, I'd have
to pick the first six episodes in the production schedule. After that,
the show took a nosedive in quality, although "Brian the Brain" and
the two-parter "Bringers of Wonder" had their moments of hope for the
series to bounce back. However, by the time "The Dorcons" was aired,
the writing was not only on the wall, the paint was chipping and
peeling.

(*) Referring to "Space: 1999" by seasons doesn't quite work, as there
were so many changes between the first and second years of the show
that the second one was almost a different show from the first. Hence
"Series" instead of "Season".

OM
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