Episode Guide: Year One
Title: "The Black Sun"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
The runaway moon is headed towards a "black sun" -- and the fate of Moonbase Alpha's inhabitants appears doomed. And only a handful of survivors have a chance for survival aboard an Eagle "lifeboat."
Production Number: 003 (Season One)
- filmed Thursday, January 31 - Thursday, February 21, 1974
Original U.K. airing week: 6 November 1975 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 19 December 1975 (syndication)
Written by David Weir
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
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.
- Prior to this episode, the Alphans encountered an anti-matter planet... and learned what became of Lee Russell, Dr. Helena Russell's husband who went missing on a Jupiter probe mission years before.
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
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Terror in Outer Space confronts the breakaway Moon personnel when on a collision course with an asteroid which suddenly burns out and becomes all-devouring "black sun."
A new menace threatens Moonbase personnel as they find themselves on a collision course with an asteroid which suddenly, ominously burns itself out and dissolves into a thick mass of gaseous substance. It's huge and it's black. Instruments are affected as astronaut Mike Ryan (PAUL JONES) tries desperately to control his Eagle spacecraft, but is caught in a tremendous gravitational pull and disintegrates.
The significance of the phenomenon is not lost on Commander Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) and Professor Bergman (BARRY MORSE). Here is evidence of the dreaded black sun, with its fantastic gravitation that pulls everything into it, even light.
Koenig estimates that they will have only three days before the Moon itself, and all on it, will become victims. A scheme, born of theory based on desperation, is suggested by Bergman. Seven anti-gravity towers stabilize Moonbase Alpha's gravity. Bergman believes that by linking and cross-linking the anti-gravity screens on each tower, an entirely new forcefield could be affected which might save them by bending the pressure on three sides with such force that, as they enter the black sun, they will be forced through it's weakest point.
It is not long before the black sun is drawing their power. The atmosphere gets colder and colder. Chances of survival are remote but Koenig decides that there will be a better chance for some to survive, at any rate, if they could leave the Moon in an Eagle (sic), like a lifeboat in space, perhaps finding their way to a planet where they could find a new existence.
He chooses six people with the best potential for survival. Dr. Helena Russell (BARBARA BAIN) is one of them. But time is getting even shorter. The gravitational force of the black sun is increasing every minute.
The Eagle takes off, with three men and three women. Carter (NICK TATE) is piloting. The others are left to face the unknown as they are drawn closer and closer towards the black mass... and into it. Koenig and Bergman suddenly realise that they have become transparent. All sounds stop. Koenig believes time has stopped. Their appearance changes. With startling rapidity, they age into old, old men. Eons old, perhaps. A thought strikes Keonig that the whole universe is nothing but living thought. A child's voice is heard as the two men find themselves walking among the stars. Every star, perhaps, is just a cell in the brain of the universe, and the child's voice is heard to say "You think at what you call the speed of light. In eternity, I have no hurry. I think a thought, perhaps, in every thousand of your years... I am the known and the unknown. The seen and the unseen. All things come me (sic!). I am not part of them."
Then the child has gone. Koenig and Bergman find they are normal again. They are (sic) through. Unbelievably Bergman's forcefield has held, but what has happened? Where is the Eagle and its occupants?
SCREENPLAY BY DAVID WEIR
DIRECTED BY LEE KATZIN
Guest Artist:
PAUL JONES
with
PRENTIS HANCOCK as PAUL MORROW
CLIFTON JONES as DAVID KANO
ZIENIA MERTON as SANDRA BENES
ANTON PHILLIPS as DR. MATHIAS
NICK TATE as ALAN CARTER
JOHN LAURIMORE as SMITTY
Unanswered Questions
Analyses/Observations
Comments
Memorable Lines
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