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solarbirdI can make a pretty good case for a lot of year one (and as far as I'm concerned year only) of Space: 1999, but when you run into episodes like "Full Circle," honestly, there's nothing you can do for it but start singing the unstated closing theme lyrics:
Most of the time there's something redeeming in a Year Only episode - like in the pretty terrible "The Troubled Spirit," which has this truly awful bit of 70s pop parascience bullshittery as a backbone, but which is partially redeemed as art by opening with a 2m 30s tracking shot filmed in silence except for music from a guitar recital which segues cleanly into what turns out to be a solid five minutes of no-dialogue extended-opening visual storytelling. Very adventurous direction and good performances in service of an unfortunate story, but redeemed in part as art. It's nicely told - it's just dumb parascience bullshit.
But, yeah ... Not this time. No. Oh gods no.
ThatI mean what.
made
no SENSE.
None!
What
the hell was that
supposed to be?
I
really just
don't even
know!
Most of the time there's something redeeming in a Year Only episode - like in the pretty terrible "The Troubled Spirit," which has this truly awful bit of 70s pop parascience bullshittery as a backbone, but which is partially redeemed as art by opening with a 2m 30s tracking shot filmed in silence except for music from a guitar recital which segues cleanly into what turns out to be a solid five minutes of no-dialogue extended-opening visual storytelling. Very adventurous direction and good performances in service of an unfortunate story, but redeemed in part as art. It's nicely told - it's just dumb parascience bullshit.
But, yeah ... Not this time. No. Oh gods no.
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Date: 2011-04-19 07:31 pm (UTC)And don't know if she was there in the first year or not - I think she was not part of the original ep, iirc - but had huge giant massive mega crush on Maya. I remember the other leads, and a few visual sequences, but most of what I remember about the show is her. Like, you say Space: 1999 and I had two immediate thoughts - "I used to love that show" and "Maya!"
Catherine Schnell was the actress name?
Anyway, that is my non-responsive comment of the day.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 07:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's how it is.
I'd like to like Maya's character, but jesus god year two is bad. Yeah, let's try to make Martin Landau into an action hero. Sorry, no. And everything got cheaper and the sets sucked and the music was terrible and the worldbuilding kinda fell apart and they retconned out some of the best parts and wrote out some of the best characters and and and.
Basically, Gerry Anderson could do a lot right as long as he was working with Sylvia. Gerry had a lot of good ideas, but I think Sylvia was really the world-builder, and they really needed each other. Once they divorced (between years one and two of Space: 1999), things just went to hell.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-20 06:09 pm (UTC)& nice to know about the backstory about the creators. This has me interested in going back and watching again in that non-existent future where I have the time and wherewithal. Meantime, I will just say that, as a sixth grader who saw one of the s2 eps first (the one where Maya was introduced, I think), s2 worked for me at the time (and better than the first season, cause when I saw any ep w/out her, I was all, "where's Maya? wtf? this is not right! who cares what's happening if best character not there?").
SO HEY, IT WORKED FOR AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM??????
:-P
no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-20 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-20 01:16 am (UTC)Which isn't to say Year 1 didn't have problems (it did) - but it was Often Actually Good. Year two... Um... Not so much.