Black Sun

If you can get past the first 12 minutes or so - some clumsy special effects mar those moments for me - this turns into one of the best in the series. The moon encounters a black hole (widely known as a 'black sun' in 1974 when this episode was made). The scenes in the last 3rd - when Victor and John share a toast and the crew resign themselves to their fate - are extremely well handled. The music is amazing in this one as well : This is one of Barry Gray's original scores for the series and it is a real beauty. The ending will put a smile on your face (and maybe a tear in your eye?).

Well after watching 10 episodes of space 1999, every single episode has the entire population of moon base alpha nearly dying off. This episode was no exception, but instead of something completely horrible happening, something weird and kind of nice happened. There was preparation for the inevitable horrible thing, and we got to see despair and hopelessness, but that was not the entire story.

I still seem to have 204 characters left to go, but I don't really have some more to say, so I will fill the space with some more words until required characters says zero. I'm not really sure why I am DB requires this limit, I review many books on Goodreads without feeling the need to write paragraphs and paragraphs.

Victor shines here, and don't think too hard about the premise. While flawed, as always with this show, it's earnest and believable, within the confines of the show.

And a fantastic scene with Victor, and his magic eyes...

Koenig: "To everything that might have been." Victor: "To everything that WAS."

This is one of the most tense and suspenseful episodes of SPACE 1999.

It deals with both strong scientific and strong religious issues, resulting in mankind's fight for survival.

For the Moonbase Alpha personnel, they try to keep their minds occupied with the little things in life, that they enjoy, because they know that they could all die going into The Black Hole.

The scientific issues are Black Holes, which was topical, especially in the scientific community at time, when this series was first broadcast in 1975.

The second scientific issue to be addressed is Asteroids.

When it comes to the religious issues in this episode, it is to do with god, which is very thought provoking. It is when they are going through The Black Hole, that a friendly female voice speaks to them. Victor Bergman asks her if she is god. Her response is, "IT WAS NICE TO HAVE KNOWN YOU." An interesting point of view if god does exist.

Guess staring in this episode, and he was the main guest star, was 60's pop singer and songwriter Paul Jones. The only comment I can say about his performance is, good singer and songwriter, but terrible actor.

"Everything is everything else, and the whole Universe is living thought."

Meaning: "I'm quite high, and everything makes SENSE!! EVERYTHING!!!"

Ok, we're falling into a black hole, so let's send a non- interstellar Eagle out to... wait, how does it escape the high gravity of the "black sun"?

Ugh, whatever, the joys of 1999 certainly do require suspension of the slightest knowledge of physics. This is the Andersons: it looks like it makes sense, and the acting is good!

Never mind that Kubrick backed his fantasy bits with acres of rock hard science....

There is a beautiful line here, from Victor, as usual:

Koenig: To what could have been.

Victor: To what was.