Episode Guide: Year One
Title: "Mission of the Darians"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
A distress call from a nearby city in space draws the Alphans' curiousity for an exploratory mission.
Production Number: 022 (Season One)
- filmed Friday, January 10th - Friday, January 24th, 1975
Original U.K. airing week: 30 October 1975 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 12 December 1975 (syndication)
Written by Johnny Byrne
Directed by Ray Austin
Backplot
- In the year 1999, lunar nuclear waste storage dumps have exploded, due to magnetic radiation, sending Earth's moon into interstellar space. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, unable to escape, are seeking a new home.
- The Alphans have just defeated Gwent, the living machine, in the previous episode, "The Infernal Machine."
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
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A call for help from the survivors of a dying world... an incredible world that has been flying through space for 900 years, with contrasting inhabitants. Some have never changed; others have reverted to barbarism. But can this offer new hope for the Alphans?
The spaceship is colossal. From Moonbase Alpha, it appears to be at least fifty miles long and two miles wide. From it come signals which, when decoded, appeal repeatedly for help: "Emergency! Emergency! This is the Commander of the Spaceship Daria. A major catastrophe has occurred. Large areas of our ship are devastated. We who survive will perish without urgent medical and material aid..."
Commander Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) immediately orders a mercy flight, taking with him Professor Bergman (BARRY MORSE), Dr. Helena Russell (BARBARA BAIN), Alan Carter (NICK TATE), Paul Morrow (PRENTIS HANCOCK) and Security Man Bill Lowry (PAUL ANTRIM)
They enter a bewilderingly strange world of startling contrasts. One part is in the charge of the agelessly beautiful Kara (JOAN COLLINS) and the ship commanded by a man named Neman (DENNIS BURGESS). The vast spaceship set out 900 years ago from its own dying world in search of a virgin planet where the Darian civilizations would begin again, But a nuclear disaster struck early on the voyage and the emergency signal was automatically triggered off and has been broadcasting eve since.
There are now only 14 true Darians left; but in another part of the spaceship, in what has become a wilderness, are decendants of the original survivors who had been left to die and, when found, already degenerate creatures, mutant and savage. worshipping at a shrine dominated by a picture of their god, and led by one they called Hadin (ROBERT RUSSELL).
To their horror, Koenig and Bergman discover from Kara the secret of the Darians who have survived in their original form. Their existence relies on a form of cannibalism, their lives preserved by transplant surgery, their food supplies from re-cycling plants using human fodder. They have tricked the barbarians into supplying that fodder.
And Koenig realises than an offer to provide new hope for the Alphans by leaving the moon and joining the Darians on their flight to a new planet can mean only one thing -- more human fodder is needed. He realises, too, that Helena and the other Alphans with her are in acute danger...
SCREENPLAY BY JOHNNY BYRNE
DIRECTED BY RAY AUSTIN
Guest Star
JOAN COLLINS
Guest Artists
AUBREY MORRIS and DENNIS BURGESS
with
PRENTIS HANCOCK as PAUL MORROW
CLIFTON JONES as DAVID KANO
ZIENIA MERTON as SANDRA BENES
NICK TATE as ALAN CARTER
PAUL ANTRIM as LOWRY
ROBERT RUSSELL as HADIN
GERALD STADDEN as MALE MUTE
JACKIE HORTON as FEMALE MUTE
Unanswered Questions
- Did the Daria eventually reach her destination?
- Did the cycle begin anew, with the Darians using human parts from unwilling populace members to supplement their older body parts?
Analyses/Observations
- The music by Barry Gray used during the disintegration scenes with the mutant and Lowry is dark and haunting to the point of almost overwhelming the scenes themselves.
Comments
- The science fiction generational spaceship concept has been previously seen on television. Examples include the Star Trek (TOS) episode, "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" and The Starlost series.
- During the "Main Mission: 2000" convention event (September 1-3, 2000 in New York, New York) Christopher Penfold discussed how quickly the Space: 1999 scripts were conceived, often being written over one weekend due to production schedule constraints.
Memorable Lines
"This is the Commander of the spaceship Daria. A major catastrophe has occurred. Large areas of our ship are devastated. Thousands of our people are dead. Hundreds sick and dying. We who survive will perish without urgent medical and material aid. Please help us. Our life type conforms to four five oh X two nine four H." - Neman
"Well, there is no sign of a way in, Commander." - Alan Carter "Alan, there's fifty miles of ship... Keep trying." - John Koenig
"Our experience on this ship has taught us the truth. The only truth! Survival!" - Kara
"Our mission is to survive this voyage. Not for ourselves, but for this... a gene bank. It contains the undamaged genetic material of our race." - Neman
"That is why we need you, John Koenig. You have the resources that we need to complete our voyage and save our race." - Kara
"So that's how you Darians prolong life. Is there nothing you won't do in the sacred name of survival?" - John Koenig
"Neman, you are not a god!" - Hadin
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