Black Sun (Space: 1999)

Lore & Background

In "Black Sun", the Moon is caught by the gravitational pull of a black hole. Professor Bergman designs a force field using Alpha's anti-gravity towers, while Commander Koenig launches a survival Eagle with six crew members. As the Moon crosses the event horizon, Koenig and Bergman appear translucent and rapidly age, then are addressed by an unseen god-like being. The Moon exits the black hole into a new region of space, and the survival Eagle returns, having been pulled in as well.

Reader's Guide

The episode received mixed reviews, with praise for character development but criticism of the writing and scientific accuracy. Commentators noted the episode's focus on the Alphans' emotions and relationships, and its introduction of "black suns" as accelerators of the Moon's journey. Some critics found the story confusing and the cosmic being's nature unexplained. The episode was later paired with "Collision Course" to create the compilation film Journey Through the Black Sun, released in 1982.

Did You Know?

• The force field sound effect was originally created for the film The Terrornauts (1967).
• The episode was filmed largely between 31 January and 21 February 1974, with a re-shoot on 25 March.
• The cosmic being was voiced by actress Patsy Smart.
• This was Lee H. Katzin's first and only episode directing for the series.

Production Origins & Budget

Space: 1999 emerged from the ashes of an earlier project. In 1972, ITC head Lew Grade proposed a second series of UFO to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, stipulating it be set on the Moon around an expanded SHADO base. The Andersons developed this into a concept called UFO: 1999, but when UFO's ratings slipped in both the US and the UK, ITC withdrew its backing. Anderson refused to let the groundwork die and pitched a fresh series to Abe Mandell in New York, who forbade any Earth-bound settings. Anderson's reply—blowing up the Earth in the opener—sealed the concept. Production designer Keith Wilson and the art department had already built extensive visual assets for the shelved UFO project, and that work carried directly into the new show. The finished series became the Andersons' final collaboration and the most expensive British television production of its era, carrying a combined £6.8 million budget. The first series was a co-production between ITC and Italy's RAI; the second was an ITC sole effort.

The Premise & Interstellar Journey

The show's central conceit is deceptively simple yet visually spectacular. In September 1999, an unknown form of magnetic radiation triggers a thermonuclear detonation of nuclear waste stored on the Moon's far side. The blast hurls the Moon out of Earth orbit like a colossal rocket, stranding the 311 personnel of Moonbase Alpha, a research station nestled in the crater Plato on the Moon's northern hemisphere. The runaway Moon effectively becomes the crew's spacecraft. Their odyssey carries them past a black hole and through space warps that fling them deeper into the cosmos, where they encounter alien civilisations, dystopian societies, and phenomena humanity has never witnessed. The first series wove in a recurring suggestion that a mysterious unknown force was steering the Moon toward some ultimate destiny, while the second series shifted toward leaner, action-driven storytelling.

Casting & Guest Talent

The casting of Space: 1999 was shaped by commercial ambition as much as creative vision. Lew Grade insisted on American stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain—married to each other at the time and already familiar to audiences from Mission: Impossible—to court the US network market. Sylvia Anderson, who preferred British actors, objected, but Grade's will prevailed. Barry Morse, a Canadian-based British performer, anchored the first series as Professor Victor Bergman, while Hungarian-born, American-raised Catherine Schell joined the second series as the alien Maya after first guest-starring in a different role. Australian actor Nick Tate also gained wider visibility through the show. The guest roster read like a who's who of British and international screen talent: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Joan Collins, Julian Glover, Ian McShane, Brian Blessed, and many others, some appearing in multiple episodes as different characters.

Structure & Presentation

Space: 1999's first series opened with a teaser or cold open, followed by a title sequence that established prestige for its two co-starring leads and delivered thirty-plus fast-cut preview shots of the episode ahead. This montage deliberately echoed the opening of Mission: Impossible, Landau and Bain's previous collaboration. The second series dropped the preview montage entirely. Episodes were structured into four acts of ten to twelve minutes each, a format designed to accommodate commercial breaks for North American broadcasters. Each episode closed with a brief epilogue scene, which in the second series often took on a lighter, more playful tone. The programme first hit air on Australia's Channel 7 in Melbourne on 28 July 1975, before its wider international broadcast across the 1975-to-1977 run.