Space: 1999 has become something of an easy punch line nowadays. The jumpsuits, he supposedly advanced technology that utilizes paper printouts, the fact that it’s once futuristic-sounding year has now passed. In many ways, it is 70’s sci-fi at its most laughable, and I am not about to try and convince you otherwise.

But…

I must confess that, until recently, I had never seen a full episode all the way through. Bits and pieces, certainly: enough to know that we were dealing with a crew of variously-accented humans lost in the galaxy trying to find a habitable planet to colonize, and traveling around in the moon. For some reason.

So with the topic this month being “Space”, it seemed the perfect opportunity to go in search of this series on DVD and give it a proper go. Two seasons and 48 episodes later (plus a semi-canonical fan-made epilogue found on YouTube) and I am pleased to announce that Space: 1999 is actually a pretty good time.

Oh, sure, the effects are dodgy as hell and the costumes are not only unflattering but utterly ridiculous. The ship’s captain, John Koenig (Martin Landau), is alternately oblivious, bombastic and insane and the storylines are often overwrought and unlikely, but there is a certain earnest charm about the show, a kind of nascent Battlestar Galactica-reboot hopelessness about it that completely hooks you in.

So, here’s the set up. In the efforts to mount a mission to explore a possibly habitable planet newly part of our solar system, Moonbase Alpha is the hub of all scientific endeavor. A spectacular (and by “spectacular” I mean “lame”) explosion leads to the moon -- let me repeat that: the moon -- to be blown out of orbit and all of a sudden Commander Koenig and his crack staff of three hundred pyjama-clad souls are hurtling through the galaxy to parts unknown. Since they are unable to pilot, I’ll say it again, THE MOON, they must simply go where it wills, through the vastness of space.

Oddly enough, despite the relative tininess of their itty-bitty rock out there in the empty cosmos, the crew of Moonbase Alpha manage to encounter more than one potential home (though something always comes along to screw up their new Paradise and send them back on their merry way, of course) along with a plethora of alien beings, most of whom carry on the great Star Trek tradition of looking just like humans, except with funny hair or painted skin.

Nevertheless, there is more than one instance here in which Space: 1999 will surprise you with its occasional science fictional genius. More than one episode where the denoument shocks the hell out of even the most hardened of cynics. And another point in its favor: from the first I was pleasantly delighted by the… well, the ordinariness of its nicely inter-racial crew.

Not that Martin Landau wasn’t a handsome enough man in his youth. And Barbara Bain, who plays the critical dual role of Alpha’s medical officer (critical on this show, anyway; rarely has the doctor been so indispensible as in this show; it is not, after all, a medical drama) and Koenig’s love interest, is a trim and attractive older woman with the most amazing eyes I think I have ever seen. But from head pilot Alan Carter (Nick Tate) to security chief Tony Verdeschi (Tony Anholt) to boss computer geek Kano (Clifton Jones), there is nary a hottie in sight. The closest we come in the first season regular cast is the elfin communications officer Sandra Benes (Zienia Merton), and while many a lovely lass shows up in assorted guest capacities, and the aliens we encounter almost entirely favor the skin-baring silver suits we have come to expect from such creatures, the preponderance of 70’s moustaches is a constant affliction to the eyes and I am fairly sure not a single cast member of this show would ever have made the cover of Tiger Beat. (With the possible Season 2 import Catherine Schell, as the sinuous alien Maya.)

Which is great, actually, because it really focuses the mind on what we should care about most in any series (but which is often so easily derailed by a gorgeous face or decent set of pecs), which is the plots themselves. And these, here, are often very, very good. It’s true that the show definitely suffers from Gilligan’s Island syndrome -- the viewer is never in any doubt as to the outcome of any investigation into a potential new planetary home -- but it is the often inventive and almost always entertaining manner in which the crew once again suffers disappointment that is worth the investment of your time.

I recently came across this opinion piece written by none other than the venerable Isaac Asimov regarding the first episode of Space: 1999. And you know what? He didn’t hate it. So, sure, I may have been won over to one of the more ridiculous-looking pieces of sci-fi to come out of the 70’s, may now be espousing it’s cause and advising you to go out of your way to watch a decades-old and much-derided series made by, of all people, the guy who created Thunderbirds… but at least I’m in very good company.

   -- Rachel Hyland