Episode Guide: Year Two
Title: "The Rules Of Luton"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
Koenig and Maya are forced to fight for their lives when Koenig accidentally kills intelligent plant-based lifeforms on the planet Luton.
Production Number: 007 (Season Two)
Original U.K. airing week: 21 October 1976 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 22 October 1976 (syndication)
Written by Charles Woodgrove (pseudonym for executive producer Freddie Freiberger)
Directed by Val Guest
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.
- Following the visitation by the interstellar trader, the Taybor (and his S.S. Emporium ship), the Alphans are back to their "normal," daily routines.
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
A grim fight for survival takes place between Koenig and Maya and three weird Aliens on a planet of living plants.
One thing is certain about the planet which the Moon is approaching. It is rich in vegetation - but terror looms ahead when Commander Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) and Maya (CATHERINE SCHELL) investigate in an Eagle piloted by Tony Verdeschi (TONY ANHOLT).
Instruments in the Eagle report a malfunction. Tony therefore returns to Moonbase Alpha to pick up a replacement, leaving Koenig and Maya on the planet. As they wander among trees, flowers and bushes, Koenig cannot resist the temptation to taste some berries while Maya picks a flower. Both scream out in agony and a voice thunders out, accusing them of being cannibals and murderers and warning them that they will be punished.
A spectacular storm rages as the Thunder Voice tells them that they have destroyed life forms. The voice represents the Judges of Luton. They are trees.
Koenig's plea of acting in ignorance meets with the challenge that this can only be proved in combat with other criminals from space who have also violated Luton's laws, with the promise that the survivors will be given their freedom.
Their adversaries are aliens whose abilities gradually emerge: one (DAVID JACKSON), a strange, green-faced being of enormous strength, another (GODFREY JAMES) is able to transport himself by dematerializng and reappearing immediately where he wishes, and the third (ROY MARSDEN) possessed with the magic of invisibility.
The winners of the eerie combat will be the survivors. Koenig and Maya, realizing that the odds are heavily against them, play for time by placing a ravine and then a river between themselves and the Aliens, but Koenig is seriously injured by a rock lance hurled at him. His strength is slowly ebbing as Maya uses her powers of transformation to help them, only to be caught, and faced with the risk of being crushed to death, when she changes into a bird.
The weakened Koenig succeeds in making a weapon which enables him to knock out the Alien holding her and is able to rescue her, but hopes of their own rescue are fading as Tony searches for them in his Eagle. The planet itself has become invisible, although his instruments record that he is close to it. It is only when he almost crash lands that he realizes he has reached it...
"SPACE 1999" - SERIES II
CAST LIST
EPISODE NO. 9 "THE RULES OF LUTON"
DIRECTOR: VAL GUEST
KOENIG - MARTIN LANDAU
HELENA - BARBARA BAIN
MAYA - CATHERINE SCHELL
TONY VERDESCHI - TONY ANHOLT
ALAN CARTER - NICK TATE
YASKO - YASUKO NAGAZUMI
1ST OPERATIVE - ANNIE LAMBERT
STRONG - DAVID JACKSON
TRANSPORTER - GODFREY JAMES
INVISIBLE - ROY MARSDEN
Unanswered Questions
Analyses/Observations
Comments
Memorable Lines
"Cannibals! Murderers! You will be punished as cannibals and murderers deserve to be punished!" - One of the vegetation lifeforms of Luton
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