Bonus Trailers - Commemorating Breakaway Day

A special extra selection of trailers today, as this marks the twentieth anniversary of the Moon being blasted out of orbit.  What do you mean you don't remember that?  Why, it was all recorded in this fine documentary series, which first broadcast... twenty four years and nine days before the disaster happened....

Yes, one of Gerry Anderson's productions, Space: 1999 was a huge undertaking, with Derek Medding's effects pushed to the limits, lots of high concept SF, and big names for the leads and guest stars.  It was a bit on an uneven series, with its first season a bit too poe-faced for its own good at times; I have heard it described as "an adventure in a universe of beige" before, which is a bit unfair.  The show did have some cracking little episodes, like the almost horror tale Dragon's Domain, or one I quite like Earthbound, which uses the concept of being isolated from Earth to tell a good little morality story with a very wicked double twist ending.  To judge a bit of the series for yourself, here's the pilot episode, Breakaway, up on YouTube for free officially by Shout Factory.

Now as for today's trailers to mark the occasion, I remembered that back in the day, there was a habit for some TV shows to edit episodes together and release them as feature films.  That happened at the end of the seventies, and picked up again at the start of the eighties as the VHS boom began.  Space: 1999 was no exception, as four films in total were made from splicing episodes together.  Some were rather sensible, like putting together the two part Bringers of Light together into one; that's reasonable.  However, why for Alien Attack put together Breakaway with War Games?  I'd have had Earthbound as the second half, it would make more sense, and give a more satisfying ending.  Also, apparently some of these retconned the series to take place in 2100 instead (these were made for markets that didn't buy the whole show presumably).  Continuity wasn't really a priority of this lot, given the rather random order the mix of season one and season two episodes in here, as the two series had very different tones (have a look at the title sequence for season two to see how different). Anyway, here are the four Space:1999 movie trailers; enjoy!

Fun fact: this last one was a very early episode of MST3K in their KTMA days.

One last little thing; the series has just been reborn, by Big Finish Productions as an audio series!  Have a listen to a taster of the first episode here, and check out their trailer.