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“Matter of Life and Death” |
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When an eagle sent to explore an almost too perfect planet has to be brought back by remote control, it returns with an unlikely stowaway: Helena’s husband Lee Russell, lost in space years before. Writer: Art Wallace & Johnny Byrne Director: Charles Crichton Guest Cast Richard Johnson as Lee Russell Stuart Damon as Parks |
There was always a mysterious, metaphysical quality to the stories in the first season of Space: 1999. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't. This is one of the episodes where it didn’t work very well. First of all, it suffers from that ancient bane of science fiction, Bad Science. It is asserted in this episode that Helena’s husband as well as the planet are made of antimatter, but the science is all wrong, even by the standards of 1970s knowledge. They also get it wrong in the Year Two episode “A Matter of Balance.” Another sad reality of life in the Space: 1999 universe is that every time man has ventured into space, the results have been invariably disastrous. One historical example of this was the Astro 7 mission to Jupiter. The commander was Helena’s husband, Lee Russell, who disappeared and was never heard from again. Until this episode, that is. He just appears out of nowhere, from somewhere across the universe. A possible explanation for this, of course, is that Helena encounters him first, and perhaps he took the form of Lee Russell out of her memory and assumed it himself, but at the end of the episode, he explains that he really is Lee, with some muddled scientific babble to try and explain how he got there, and that’s about when the episode falls apart, because by that time everybody’s dead, the moon’s blown up, and Helena’s hair is a mess. Then Lee tells Helena she can make it all better, and she does. (Now, click you heels three times and say....) Failed space missions from the past also figure into “Death’s Other Dominion,” “Dragon’s Domain,” “Voyager’s Return,” and “Brian the Brain.” References are also made to a plague which wiped out the crew of a Venus space station in “The Exiles” and “The Lambda Factor.” With a track record like that, it’s a wonder the space program survived this long! Continuity was never a strong suit on Space: 1999 either. Nobody notices that Ouma has disappeared and been replaced by Kano. Then again, people often disappear in the 1999iverse, and suddenly it’s like they never existed. Kano disappeared completely, along with Paul and Victor, at the end of Year One. In Year Two, there is no noting of their passing nor any mention of them. Finally, this is the episode where we first get to hear Sandra’s famous scream. |
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RELATED PAGES: [Ken Scott] [Martin Willey] |
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Alpha Chronicle Online ©2001 by Matt Butts. Space: 1999 ©1975 Carlton
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