To Everything That Might Have Been: A Philosophical Journey through Space: 1999
About
Review after review of Space: 1999, in the Seventies and since, has noted that its more philosophical style is distinctive, not just from Star Trek, but from most TV sci-fi. It is one of the show’s trademarks – in its first season, anyway – and made it an important entry in the genre, over and above its groundbreaking look and style.
The show tackled the nature of life; nihilism; violence in human nature; inequality; immortality; scientific ethics; moral relativism; the struggle between good and evil. John Koenig, Helena Russell, Victor Bergman et al were neck-deep in these questions, week after week, and the answers clearly weighed heavily upon them – they didn’t just bounce back every week, ready for more, as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy did. The big questions the universe relentlessly threw at them had a profound impact, deeply coloring their perspective on their situation, and that made them all the more interesting to me.
The Alphans didn’t have a Starfleet or a United Federation of Planets to fall back on. They didn’t have the security of an all-powerful USS Enterprise in which to set their course and advance their knowledge. They were alone out there, as vulnerable as could be, and that only deepened the consequence of their existential grappling...