Collision Course (Space: 1999)

Lore & Background

The plot involves an asteroid on a collision course with the Moon. Moonbase Alpha plans to destroy it with nuclear charges, but Captain Carter's Eagle malfunctions and he is caught in the blast. Commander Koenig rescues him, guided by a disembodied female voice. A planet, Atheria, appears and is on a collision course with the Moon. Koenig is taken aboard a colossal space vessel and meets Arra, Queen of Atheria, who explains the collision will allow her people to evolve into noncorporeal beings. Koenig cancels the Alphans' countermeasure, but is sedated; a struggle ensues, and at the moment of contact, Atheria vanishes.

Reader's Guide

The episode is noted for its metaphysical themes, particularly the perseverance of faith and trust over logic and reason, a pet theme of writer Anthony Terpiloff. The casting of Margaret Leighton as Arra was a coup; suffering from multiple sclerosis, she completed her fifteen pages of dialogue in two days. The episode received mixed reception: SFX magazine rated it B-plus, calling it generally unremarkable but elevated by performances; John Kenneth Muir praised its suspense and thought-provoking conflict; John Brosnan dismissed it as pseudo-mystical gobbledegook. The novelisation by E.C. Tubb attempted to address scientific criticism about shock waves in space by introducing a 'sub-etheric' shock wave concept.

Did You Know?

• Margaret Leighton, who played Arra, died on 13 January 1976 at age 53, four months after the episode was broadcast by ATV.
• The final shooting script contains unaired dialogue between Arra and Koenig, cut for time, explaining the universe as a microscopic cell.
• The Atherian spaceship model was sculpted in jelutong and plywood and took 10 days to make.
• The episode's music includes tracks from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Joe 90, and Thunderbird 6.

A Patchwork of Regional Schedules

The broadcast history of Space: 1999 reveals a complex tangle of regional scheduling that made the viewing experience remarkably different depending on where you lived. The series first hit screens in Australia on 16 May 1975, marking the global premiere of what would become a 48-episode British science fiction production. In the United Kingdom, the situation was far less orderly. Rather than a single network airing the show in a fixed sequence, the various ITV franchise holders each chose their own order for presenting the episodes. This meant that a viewer in one region might encounter a particular story arc months before or after a viewer in another. To provide some consistency, the distributor ITC issued a recommended viewing order, and it is this sequence that the episode listings follow. The result was a series whose narrative flow was, in practice, shaped as much by local programming decisions as by the writers' original intent.

The Black Sun Collision Narrative

One of the most striking details in the series' production records concerns the episode 'Black Sun,' where the concept of a collision course takes center stage. The original ITC promotional summary described the Moon as being on a collision course with an asteroid that would transform into a black sun. However, the episode as actually filmed presents a somewhat different scenario. In the broadcast version, an asteroid alters its trajectory and is ultimately destroyed by a phenomenon the Alphans come to identify as a 'black sun' — what modern viewers would recognize as a black hole. This discrepancy between the distributor's written description and the on-screen narrative is a small but telling footnote for fans who track how the series was marketed versus how it was ultimately told. It also underscores the era's tendency to use dramatic, simplified language in episode synopses that did not always map neatly onto the more nuanced science presented in the actual episode.

Two-Season Architecture and ITC's Stewardship

Space: 1999 was structured as a two-part British science fiction series, with 48 episodes produced between 1975 and 1977. The first block, widely known among fans as 'Year One,' comprised 24 episodes and premiered in 1975. The second block, 'Year Two,' followed in the 1976-1977 period, also containing 24 episodes. This two-season architecture was unusual for British television of the era and gave the show a narrative scope that allowed for evolving character dynamics and escalating stakes across the full run. ITC, the production and distribution company behind the series, maintained the canonical ordering of episodes and provided the recommended viewing sequence that has since become the standard reference for episode lists. The clear division between the two series also facilitated different broadcast strategies, as evidenced by the fact that Year Two aired on Associated Television over a period stretching more than a year, with scheduling that varied considerably across UK regions.

The Two-Decade Wait for 'The Dorcons'

Perhaps no aspect of Space: 1999's broadcast history illustrates the era's scheduling inconsistencies more vividly than the fate of 'The Dorcons,' the final episode of Year Two. While the second series aired on Associated Television over a span exceeding one year, the last episode's arrival was staggered to an almost absurd degree across different parts of the UK. In some British regions, 'The Dorcons' finally reached viewers in the summer of 1978 — well over a year after the series had begun its broadcast run. In other regions, the episode simply never aired during the original transmission window at all. Those viewers had to wait until a BBC Two repeat run in 1998 to see the conclusion of the Alphans' story, a delay of roughly two decades from the series' original production. This extraordinary gap between the show's creation and its eventual viewing by some audiences stands as a remarkable footnote in television history, a reminder that in the pre-streaming era, access to a complete narrative was far from guaranteed.