Barry Gray -- Theme from Space: 1999

 

I remember back to the mid-1970s when I saw the first commercial advertising this new sleek sci-fi show called "Space: 1999". The ad popped up on the regional channel, CHCH-11, in Hamilton just west of Toronto. I was a couple of years away from becoming a full-fledged dumb teenager so at the time, so I hadn't known that this show by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the couple behind all those 1960s Supermarionation hits such as "Thunderbirds" and "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons", and then "UFO", would actually bring together people and settings that I had actually seen already but hadn't been aware about in my fuzzy-headed memories. 

Of course, there was the sci-fi aspect from "Star Trek" which I barely remembered seeing in its first run, stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain who used to be on the first years of the original "Mission: Impossible" although I hadn't recognized them as such at the time (but I did bop on my diapered tush to the theme song), and the third main actor Barry Morse who had been the intrepid taciturn Lt. Gerard on "The Fugitive" in the early 1960s although the only scene that had been in my mind back then of that hit was the one showing the death of the One-Armed Man.

One of the fondest memories that I have of "Space: 1999" is the Eagle, and I know that I'm not alone in that opinion. Just the whole thing about it possessing detachable modules, lifting off and landing in spot, and its launch pad rising up and down...it didn't matter that the same scenes were recycled from episode to episode; it was a simply cool spaceship which had us wondering when NASA would ever actually make a real one. An Eagle One!😅

As for the show overall, my Australian friend may have put it best when he said that "Space: 1999" has been remembered nostalgically in a better light than it actually was. Yup, seeing some of the episodes in Seasons 1 and 2, there were some of the hilarious bendings of science and weird acting that made it the butt of jokes on "The Big Bang Theory" and even by a US Supreme Court judge. And my feeling is that though Landau was an award-winning actor, he needed those writers and strong directors backing him up, something that didn't always happen on "Space: 1999".

Still, I think that the first episode "Breakaway" and then "Black Sun" among a few others still stand out positively for me, although the premise of the Moon blasting out of orbit was probably one source of mirth among Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter and the others. It definitely distinguished itself from "Star Trek" in that it had some of the scariest and tensest sequences ever put on television; there's been much said about how scary "Doctor Who" had been but I can't really see any of the scenes there matching up with what I saw in "Dragon's Domain", "Force of Life" (with a young Ian McShane from "John Wick" as a tragic Moonbase Alphan-turned-heat vampire) and even those poor astronauts in "Breakaway". I think what kept me interested in the show was that I didn't know who was going to buy the space farm from one episode to the next and how horribly they were going to depart.

I can go on for hours about the ups and downs of "Space: 1999", especially the major renovation it got between Seasons 1 and 2 but then this week's ROY article would appear as something transplanted from a "Space: 1999" blog and not "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Therefore, let's go straight to the Barry Gray theme for Season 1 which was epic when I first heard it on the pilot episode "Breakaway". The ominous timpani leading to the brassy fanfare which then went into a shocking rock sequence accompanying the "Mission: Impossible"-like quick cuts of the episode to come. Then it was back to the orchestra before classical and rock merged into a prog rock ending. I never heard anything like that in a theme song and I haven't since. I would root for a Hollywood remake just to hear the revamped version of that theme.

I do have to include one other piece from the soundtrack for Season 1. As with the original "Star Trek", "Space: 1999" did recycle various examples of Gray's music in its episodes which have stood out, and even some famous classical pieces such as "Mars, The Bringer of War" from Gustav Holst's suite "The Planets" were used (in "Space Brain", the episode where the Alphans had to desperately fight off the Mother of All Bubble Baths). But I have to say that the one original Gray composition that has always remained in my own brain all these decades is "We're at War" from the episode "War Games", a very dark What If episode but with a fun battle (well, massacre really) between the Eagles and the Hawks. 

"Space: 1999" made its premiere on September 4th 1975, nine days and twenty-four years before the Moon supposedly gets violently ousted into outer space. Intriguingly enough, I did find a Top 10 list of singles on September 1st that same year. What were the top three?

1. Hiromi Iwasaki -- Romance （ロマンス）

2. Kyoko Kosaka -- Omoide Makura （想い出まくら）

3. Kenji Sawada -- Toki no Sugi Yuku Mama ni （時の過ぎゆくままに）