The Full Circle

The 12th episode of Space: 1999’s first season, “The Full Circle,” was directed by Bob Kellett from a screenplay by Jesse L. Lasky Jr. and Pat Silver. The final shooting script was completed on 17 September 1974, with live-action filming running from 24 September to 8 October 1974. It first aired in Australia on 29 September 1975 and in the UK on 11 December 1975.

An Eagle crew vanishes after surveying a forest planet codenamed “Retha”—an anagram for Earth. The ship returns to Moonbase Alpha under remote control, carrying only a dead humanoid resembling a caveman. This incident jeopardizes the Alphans’ chance to colonize Retha before the Moon drifts out of range. Commander John Koenig and Captain Carter lead two Eagles on a rescue mission. Landing where the survey team touched down, Koenig and Dr. Russell’s group follow tracks into a ravine with a wall of mist. As night falls, Carter loses contact with both Koenig’s team and Moonbase. He lands and, with crewmate Sandra Benes, plans to search at dawn. But Carter leaves alone before sunrise, is trapped and knocked unconscious by cavemen, who then abduct Benes. After recovering, Carter returns to the landing site as a third Eagle carrying Professor Bergman and David Kano arrives to investigate.

Benes’s captors take her to their tribe’s caves. The chief claims her for himself, ignoring his wife’s protests. Beneath weathered faces, rotten teeth, and unkempt hair, the chief and his wife look exactly like Koenig and Sandra Benes. Benes is forced to swap her tunic for a leopard skin. The chief tries to seduce her, but she knocks him out with a rock and flees. The wife orders the tribe to hunt her down. Bergman’s group avoids the ravine and reaches the caves as the wife conducts funerary rites for her dying husband. The tribespeople scatter at the sight of the Alphans. Carter searches for Benes. Near the mist, Bergman and Kano find Koenig unconscious from a concussion. They evacuate him to Alpha, where he recovers. Dr. Mathias reports that the man on the survey Eagle was pilot Sandos, who had de-evolved by roughly 40,000 years. He died of heart failure, terrified when the Eagle lifted off on remote. Bergman, noting the chief’s resemblance to Koenig, theorizes that Sandos’s regression could have happened to Koenig too. The answer lies at the ravine.

Koenig and Bergman return to Retha. The tribespeople have recaptur