Space: 1999 “is poised for a comeback,” according to the Hollywood Reporter:
ITV Studios America and HDFILMS announced plans for a reimagining of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s famed franchise of the 1970s, then called Space: 1999. The news comes months after Fox and producer Seth MacFarlane announced they would be reviving Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey, a 1980s miniseries from Carl Sagan.
“Science fiction is a powerful format capable of visualizing the human condition in thought-provoking ways,” said HDFilms president Jace Hall, who will spearhead the effort and serve as an executive producer. The project is in the development phase and has yet to be shopped to networks.
Be afraid. Be very afraid:
The original Space: 1999 was first conceived as a sequel to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s wildly uneven, but occasionally pretty cool UFO series from 1970. Apparently, the scenes set on UFO’s moonbase had the best test results from focus groups, and as a result, the Andersons decided to set their next TV series entirely on the moon — but floating freely in space so that it could visit other planets, a la Star Trek’s USS Enterprise. Never mind the physics of a moon that moved faster than light so that it could arrive at a new planet each week, yet slow enough so that it could launch its exploratory “Eagle” spacecraft, and never get permanently caught in the gravity field of the planet of the week. The result was a show with a not-bad theme song, nice 2001-inspired production design, and pretty good special effects for the pre-Star Wars-era that was completely undermined by a ridiculously overloaded premise. According to Wikipedia, “Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were surprised and disappointed that the public (and critics) never granted them the suspension of disbelief given to other science-fiction programmes.”
There aren’t ropes strong enough to suspend that amount of disbelief. No wonder the show sank.
Star Trek: The Next Generation and its spin-offs proved that it was possible to successfully update an older sci-fi TV series, and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica certainly had its fans. But a reworked Space: 1999 might be going to the gravity well once too often.
Were you a fan of the old series? And would you tune in for a remake?
I’d only tune in for a remake if it had Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s blessing.
In their efforts was a distinctive style, even if sometimes it was a stretch.
I am a fan of the series.
The suspension of disbelief required is indeed massive, big enough to drive a moon through as it were, and the doesn’t count the episode specific plot holes.
Despite that I should better I would turn to a remake anyway, especially if they managed to drag any of the original cast out for cameos, at least for a few episodes, and more if they avoid any political sucker punches and cheap hackery that passes for “edgy” sci-fi/fantasy these days.
It’s wrong, I’m just encouraging them, I know it, but I cannot help it. The hokeyness was just so wonderfully hokey.
Besides, Barbara Bain is hot, and Martin Landau is cool, and there were both part of the REAL IM Force, so that’s all there is to it.
Loved the first season but I was always a sucker for Gerry and Sylvia Andersen and I was a particularly heavy fan of “UFO” so for me, the show had an easy sell. For mid-70′s sci-fi stuff, you need to compare it to its contemporaries of that time like “Starlost”. Be aware that the second season was helmed by Fred Freiberger, the man who brought you the third season of Star Trek( let the screaming start now!). The Second and First seasons of Space 1999 are so different from each other in style and content that they are almost two different shows. They only share sets and a couple of stars, but little else.
Why must everything face the fate of being remade? Why can’t we have “Space: 1999″ held in it’s mod bubble for all time; a work frozen in time? I have no desire to see it redone with a “cool” attitude, lots of dark-colored costumes, dimly-lit sets and conspicuous profanity. “But it’s so dated!” people say. Well, that’s the friggin’ point! It’s a look back to a different time! When I watch it I want to be transported back to that era – same way I like the feel of listening to old Donovan albums. It’s a time machine.
Leave it alone!
If they can bring back the ultra-short mini-skirts that some of the cast wore in the later episodes, then yes, I’m all for it,
The proceeding sexist remark was brought to you unapologetically by a former 1970′s teenage sci-fi fa, formerly teenage, not former sci-fi fan, and aficionado of the female form. I mean damn, that’s what got us into sci-fi in the first place, From Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet to all the green skinned women of Star Trek.
The Sky Diver girls – how much could we *really* see under those fishnet tops?
I think it depends on how far re-imagined it will be.
I could see pulling it off if you changed the nuclear waste explosion of the original into some sort of botched multiverse detection experiment. Instead of drifting through space, they’re drifting through dimensions.
But, yeah. The show was grandly goofy. (And the second season did stink.)
I was an original fan of the show, but hey, I was in middle school at the time this show ran, and this show has not aged well. The original Star Trek and even Lost In Space (the first season anyway) have aged better than Space: 1999, and they are both older than this.
It’s possible that a remake, done well, could be entertaining. I wouldn’t have thought that a remake of Battlestar Galactica would work, but the re-imagining turned out to be far superior to the original, so who knows?
We might get a Space: 2099, but frankly I think they ought to go backwards. There used to be an old RPG called Space: 1899 that dealt was a steampunk alt history version. Now that would be worth watching!
Space: 1889 was published by Game Designers’ Workshop in 1988, and created by Frank Chadwick. Now, GDW was more famous for creating Traveller, which would make for an interesting sf series itself.
Back in my playtesting days at SPI in the 1970s, they put forth an idea for a boardgame named Space: 1889, where the Great Powers of the Victorian Era conducted their colonial conflicts on the planets and moons of the Solar System, with map sections for each. I eagerly voted for that one, but alas! it was not to be.
Any remake can work provided the writing and acting talent is there.
If it is not then no amount of CGI “turd polishing” can save it from being dreck ala Terra Nova.
The biggest issue seems to be consistancy, Star Trek TNG and the BSG remake both suffered from brilliant episodes followed by unwatchable drek.
A remake of UFO would be better. A rerun even better
Got to love a show that has a RED ALERT flashing in cyan on a blue screen.
As a life-long SF fan I hated this show, The Invaders and the disco inspired Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers as well. Hard to believe they’re contemporaries of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
TV SF has always been a sickly and poor cousin to SF literature and one can’t say special effects limited this. TV has had its moments in a very few Outer Limits and Star Trek episodes but in the end it is a victim of the reality of TV’s need for stock situations and its audience. For whatever reason, TV writers who adapt or create TV SF with the sole exception of Rod Serling have never really consistently understood the dreamy and evocative side of SF.
The original Star Trek’s simple stock situation allowed it to be more like an SF anthology and had some notable successes like “The Empath” and “The Menagerie.”
SF literature, marginalized from the start, had the freedom to go where it wanted without worrying about mainstream concerns. Now that SF literature is popular, in many respects it is stupider than the average SF story from 1947. The chances today of having an SF TV show that would produce the equivalent of a “Vintage Season” or “The Big Front Yard” are slim to none. SF has been a victim of its own success as has rock and roll. Remember when mainstream top 40 wouldn’t play “Lola” by The Kinks? Now we have all the vulgarity and little of the originality.
It’s hard to list all the flaws of Space: 1999. Let’s not mention that an explosion on the dark side of the Moon propelling it into space would either lead to the Moon smashing into the Earth killing all life on both places, or it making a near-miss, causing catastrophic changes to orbits and angular momenta, earthquakes, and the shedding of the Earth’s atmosphere. As a TV series, the worst flaw was that the characters were all indifferent to each other. One can make a series where the characters hate each other: Blake’s 7. But indifference isn’t interesting.
I don’t know if they were indifferent, but they certainly were low-key emotionally. When I was a kid, I used to wonder why they had to whisper all the time. Then towards the end they tried to jazz things up a bit – you had people practically foaming at the mouth. It was weird.
Very much enjoyed the show, was quite willing to suspend disbelief about the moon, for the sake of the show. But what did ruin it for me was the shape changer in season two. That’s just a little too convenient to have someone change into something else to solve the problem.
I think the idea of re-imagining it as a dimensional, or “multiverse” situation has real potential. Imagine: the moon stays in orbit (no physics problems, then)…but the Earth keeps changing. The Earth, where they are forced to visit for supplies (little things like oxygen and food), that sometimes has space travel, sometimes doesn’t, sometimes is empty of life, sometimes is full of something else (Borg-like?)
There are no limits to this. It would be like Time Tunnel, only with better adherence to true science fiction principles…ie, NO PHYSICS PROBLEMS!!!