50 Fun Facts About Space: 1999

In Space: 1999, what explodes on the Moon's far side and hurls Moonbase Alpha out of Earth orbit?

Stored nuclear waste, dumped on the Moon by Earth, reaches critical mass on 13 September 1999. The blast works like a giant booster rocket, sending the Moon into deep space.

Space: 1999's two married American leads had earlier starred together in which CBS spy series?

Mission: Impossible had made the couple stars in America, so ITC insisted on casting them even though one producer wanted British actors.

David Prowse, who played the creature in Space: 1999's 'The Beta Cloud', wore the costume of which Star Wars character?

Darth Vader was another part that hid Prowse's face. The episode's director had hired the former weightlifting champion after meeting him in Harrods.

Which science-fiction author said a blast able to shift the Moon, as in Space: 1999, would really blow it apart?

Isaac Asimov also found things to praise, saying the series showed movement in the Moon's low gravity accurately.

Which bird of prey gives its name to the transporter craft flown from Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999?

Eagle craft appeared on screen as a mix of full-sized props, photographic blow-ups and detailed scale models.

Space: 1999 creators Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were best known for which puppet series about a rescue organisation?

Thunderbirds made the Andersons world famous, and the Moonbase saga was the last series the couple produced together.

Which alien science officer, able to become any living creature, joined Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999's second series?

Maya was devised to win back American viewers, and the promise of her arrival persuaded ITC to renew a series it had just cancelled.

Which American actor played Commander John Koenig, leader of Moonbase Alpha, in both series of Space: 1999?

Martin Landau won an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, almost twenty years after he first took command of the Moonbase.

Which country screened the world premiere of the British-made Space: 1999, before viewers in Britain saw it?

Australia's Seven Network got there first, then put the show on hiatus for a year partway through its run.

Fred Freiberger, who took over Space: 1999 for its second series, had produced the final season of which American show?

Star Trek's third and last season was Freiberger's. In Britain he pushed Moonbase Alpha toward faster, action-led stories.

Which actress played Dr Helena Russell, head of Moonbase Alpha's medical section, in Space: 1999?

Barbara Bain arrived with three consecutive Emmy Awards from her previous series, won in 1967, 1968 and 1969.

Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999 sits inside which crater in the Moon's northern hemisphere?

Plato housed a scientific research centre of 311 people, all of them stranded when the Moon left orbit.

Which actor played Zantor, captain of the peaceful Kaldorians, in the Space: 1999 episode 'Earthbound'?

Christopher Lee had just finished playing the assassin Scaramanga on film, and he hated alien makeup that took a layer of skin off with it.

Space: 1999 moved in secret one weekend from the threatened Elstree to which famous British film studio?

Pinewood became home after the secret weekend move, which got the production blacklisted by the unions.

Space: 1999 began as a sequel to Gerry Anderson's UFO, set on an enlarged Moonbase run by which secret organisation?

SHADO and its commander Ed Straker were dropped when the sequel lost its backing, but the design work was reused for the new show.

Which episode of Space: 1999, written by George Bellak and directed by Lee H. Katzin, opened the series?

Breakaway overran its ten-day shoot by more than two weeks, and a two-hour first cut so alarmed ITC that it was reshot and trimmed to an hour.

Which actress guest-starred in Space: 1999's 'Guardian of Piri' before joining the regular cast for the second series?

Catherine Schell played the Guardian's eerie servant, then returned after The Return of the Pink Panther as an entirely different character.

In Space: 1999's 'Matter of Life and Death', which presumed-dead relative of Helena Russell reappears on a scout craft?

Her husband, lost on a flight to Jupiter, comes back to warn the crew off a lush planet that proves to be made of antimatter.

Which English town, spotted on an M1 road sign, gave its name to a planet of ruling plants in Space: 1999?

Luton caught producer Fred Freiberger's eye on a motorway signpost, and he wrote the episode under the pen name Charles Woodgrove.

Which ITC chief insisted that Space: 1999 cast American leads to help sell the series to a US network?

Lew Grade wanted a network sale so badly that he also required American writers and directors, yet no US network ever bought the show.

Which actor played Professor Victor Bergman in Space: 1999 but left after one series in a dispute over salary?

Barry Morse, the relentless Lieutenant Gerard of The Fugitive, later claimed he was glad to leave the Moonbase behind.

The shape-shifting science officer of Space: 1999's second series comes from which planet, ruled by her father Mentor?

Psychon is a ravaged world that Mentor hopes to restore with a biological computer powered by the minds of his captives.

Which veteran of British horror films played Raan, an alien anthropologist, in Space: 1999's 'Missing Link'?

Peter Cushing, Hammer's Baron Frankenstein and Van Helsing, was praised for lending the heavily made-up Raan real dignity.

In which Space: 1999 episode is a lone survival ship sent away while a force field shields the base?

Black Sun spits the Moon out in a distant region of space, the show's answer to how it could ever reach other stars.

Which country's state broadcaster, RAI, co-produced the first series of Space: 1999 with Britain's ITC?

Italy's stake came with a promise to cast Italian actors, which is why Italian guest stars turn up in four late episodes.

Which actress guest-starred in Space: 1999 as Kara, a survivor aboard the vast derelict spaceship Daria?

Joan Collins was already a science-fiction favourite, and one critic praised her performance in an episode he called a full-scale triumph.

Which chief pilot, played by Nick Tate, kept his place in Space: 1999's second series thanks to his fan mail?

Alan Carter was due to be replaced by a new pilot until the producer saw how much mail the character received.

In Space: 1999's 'Journey to Where', a failed teleport to Earth strands three Alphans in which country's medieval past?

Scotland in 1339 is no refuge: the laird of Clan MacDonald takes the travellers for plague carriers and orders them burned.

Which Nordic country pulled Space: 1999 off air after twelve episodes because it was judged too brutal and horrifying?

Finland's national programme board stepped in twice, and the complete show was not seen there until a small local channel ran it in 1996.

Which security chief joined Space: 1999 in its second series as a romantic interest for the alien science officer?

Tony Verdeschi was played by Tony Anholt, whom Gerry Anderson already knew from his earlier adventure series The Protectors.

Former Doctor Who star Patrick Troughton plays which ruler, murdered by his heir, in Space: 1999's final episode?

The Archon leads the Dorcons, who hunt the Moonbase's alien science officer because her brain stem could make him immortal.

Which actor played Mentor, the ruler who feeds captives' minds to a living computer, in Space: 1999's 'The Metamorph'?

Brian Blessed had already appeared in the first series as a different character, the scientist Cabot Rowland.

Which story is Space: 1999's only two-part episode, later recut as the compilation film Destination: Moonbase Alpha?

The Bringers of Wonder grew from a treatment called The Globs, which pleased the producers enough to be expanded to double length.

Which composer of the Andersons' puppet shows wrote the fanfare that opens Space: 1999's first series?

Barry Gray scored only five episodes himself, and they proved to be his last music for an Anderson production.

When delays hit Space: 1999, CBS cancelled its order and bought which science-fiction series for 1974 instead?

Planet of the Apes took the slot, so the British show was sold station by station to more than 150 local American broadcasters.

Which unmanned Earth probe returns in Space: 1999 with an engine exhaust deadly enough to wipe out Moonbase Alpha?

Voyager One runs on the Queller Drive, and the drive's inventor turns out to be living on the Moon under an assumed name.

Which comic actor voiced the treacherous robot of Space: 1999's second series and also played its dead creator?

Bernard Cribbins spoke the robot's lines live on set so the cast could react to him, and the voice was made metallic afterwards.

Space: 1999 was never broadcast across Britain at the same time until which channel repeated it in 1998?

BBC Two gave the series its first national simultaneous showing, and the run ended, fittingly, in 1999 itself.

Which effects director of Space: 1999 went on to win Academy Awards for Alien and The Empire Strikes Back?

Brian Johnson filmed his model spacecraft against a dark backdrop and rewound the camera for each element, avoiding costly blue screen work.

Which fashion designer, creator of the topless monokini swimsuit, designed Space: 1999's unisex Moonbase Alpha uniforms?

Rudi Gernreich, an Austrian-born designer known for unisex clothing, was a personal friend of the show's leading lady.

Charles Crichton, who directed 14 episodes of Space: 1999, had earlier made which Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness?

The Lavender Hill Mob came out in 1951, and long after his Moonbase work Crichton capped his career with an Oscar nomination for A Fish Called Wanda.

Which actor played Anton Zoref, a technician taken over by an energy-draining force, in Space: 1999's 'Force of Life'?

Ian McShane's possessed technician drains the heat from his victims, then heads for the base's main generating plant.

In Space: 1999's 'Earthbound', what dooms Commissioner Simmonds after he forces his way onto a departing alien ship?

He wakes too soon from suspended animation, sealed in a chamber he cannot open, with the journey still decades from its end.

In a first-series Space: 1999 episode, which dead planet is revealed as the ancient home of humanity's ancestors?

Arkadia was wrecked by war 25,000 years ago, and two Alphans choose to stay behind and bring it back to life.

Which ice planet in Space: 1999's 'Death's Other Dominion' shelters a lost Earth expedition that has stopped ageing?

Ultima Thule's castaways set out for Uranus in 1986 and were flung out of the Solar System by a space warp.

In Space: 1999's 'The Full Circle', a strange mist on the planet Retha turns the Alphans who enter it into what?

Cave dwellers with familiar faces puzzle the search party until a dead tribesman is found to have capped teeth.

In 'The Last Sunset', what do probes give Space: 1999's Moon that lets the Alphans go outside without suits?

A breathable atmosphere proves a short-lived gift: the people of a nearby planet only wanted to keep the humans from landing on their own world.

Which instrument, played by Big Jim Sullivan, gives Space: 1999's ghost story 'The Troubled Spirit' its eerie score?

Sitar music carried the episode as its main track, and one reviewer said it made the tale uniquely chilling.

Space: 1999 held which distinction among British television series when it was produced?

Most expensive ever made in Britain at the time, the show cost a combined £6.8 million, and American publicity called it the Six-and-a-Half Million Dollar Series.

Which actor played both the living spaceship Gwent and its dying Companion in Space: 1999's 'The Infernal Machine'?

Leo McKern won praise from several reviewers for the double role, which the writers had first imagined for another famous stage actor.