Updated: May 30, 2024

Even in 1975 we had to suspend disbelief watching this series but now you better believe it, because Network Distribution have released the ultimate set of Space 1999 rarities, a set of feature films that mostly remix and recut the original TV series to create a bigger screen experience including, in the first feature, an Ennio Morricone score.

Space 1999 was the culmination of Gerry Andersons mix of near future science fiction and fabulous model work many of his technical crew went to work on James Bond, 2001 and Star Wars with his sixties series, starting with Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett, using puppets with the odd human hand to create a vivid vision of a world just around the corner. Growing up at the time, the future seemed to be rushing towards us at an ever faster rate, and boys like me who read TV 21 felt we were part of an extended universe with all of Andersons creations linked in comic form but also through toy lines and a fan club.

By the end of the decade, Anderson, who was encouraged by ITC supremo Lou Grade to keep on producing new series rather than milk successful formulae too far, had progressed to live action with the film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun ( 1969 ) and UFO ( 1970-71 ) which had exciting models and fashions, along with aliens and a cracking Barry Gray score. Space 1999 ( 1975-77 ) actually began here, owing much of its visual design to pre-production work for the never-made second series of UFO, which would have been set primarily on the Moon and featured a more extensive Moon base.