Larter is in talks to play Virginia Lake, the "strong but feminine" woman at the heart of the show, says Gratzner. She'd be starring opposite Joshua Jackson, who's playing pilot Paul Foster.

And the new movie is already planned as the first installment in a trilogy — the first screenplay is written, and the second and third movies exist in treatment form. The movie's aliens will still be evil organ-stealing bastards, and they'll be humanoid instead of District 9-style creatures. It sounds like a recipe for exciting G.I. Joe-style schlock, but apparently that's not the goal.

Gratzner, a veteran special-effects worker, tells Forbidden Planet:

What I want to do with UFO is what Christopher Nolan did with the Batman franchise, or Martin Campbell did with Casino Royale. UFO is not a spoof, or a parody or a kids' movie. It's a pretty dark story, actually…it is not a show for young children.

You could argue, of course, that both Batman and James Bond had a track record of being dark and tackling adult themes before those films appeared, whereas UFO has a track record of this:

Great pep talk: "You're doing a fine job — a man's job. But you don't have to do it any better just because you're a woman [in a Lady GaGa costume.] And don't forget, you're a very pretty girl." And then they make the other woman stand with her leg raised , in a silver miniskirt. When she tries to move, they're like, "Hold it right there." As she says, "Not the most flattering of pin-ups."

Anderson's first live-action science fiction series, before Space: 1999, UFO is a delightfully campy adventure show about SHADO, a secret organization that fights evil organ-harvesting aliens. The moonbase staff all wear purple wigs and shiny silver outfits, and the music is jazzay, sixties style.

On the other hand, reading between the lines of Gratzner's interview, it sounds like he really wants to make something closer to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, keeping a lot of the concept design and silly outfits of the original, but with a smidge more character development and slightly more serious plots. But he's namechecking Batman Begins and Casino Royale because they're the gold standard for reboots right now. In any case, an Abrams-esque remake could be an attainable goal, and could actually do quite well amidst a swarm of Nolan-wannabes. Fingers crossed! [Forbidden Planet]

For those previously unaware of this televisual masterwork, Martin Landau is John Koenig, commander of Moonbase Alpha, humanity's outpost on, yes, the Moon. After a nuclear explosion, the Moon gets knocked out of orbit, sending Koenig and his intrepid crew on an incredibly odyssey through SPACE… in the year 1999! The title admittedly leaves this point somewhat unclear, so I wanted to take the time to spell that out.

Now, some might ask why such a series needs remaking. Indeed, some might even argue television producers should put the limited resources available for science fiction shows into making bold, new programming. Those people have apparently willfully ignored the way the entertainment industry has operated since...well, since forever, really. Anyway, the Space: 1999 intro is the grooviest thing in television history, and by itself should earn the entire show a second chance.

And make no mistake, folks, this is a show that completely blew its first chance. If the original Battlestar Galactica was an attempt to turn Star Wars into a TV show, then Space: 1999 basically tried to do the same thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey. As you might imagine, they failed at this absurdly lofty goal. The physics at the heart of the show's premise were utterly laughable – no smaller luminaries than Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison considered the notion that the Moon could be blown out of orbit and then cross interstellar distances in weeks the most ludicrous thing they'd ever heard of. The show's early attempts to kick around obscure philosophical points in the context of the celestial void soon devolved into the endless chases and mindless action sequences of, well, the original Battlestar Galactica, only minus all of the iconic stuff with the Cylons.

As such, Space: 1999 shouldn't be remade because there's something brilliant there so much as because it would be such a wonderful challenge for its makers. After all, the show already has one absolutely massive stumbling block, and it's right there in the title. Who in their right mind is going to accept a science fiction show set ten years ago?

And even then, what exactly is the premise of Space: 1999? At least Battlestar Galactica has a simple enough setup and goal – humans fight Cylons, Cylons wipe out humanity, survivors go in search of fabled lost colony, the Earth. It's maybe a little silly on paper, but as the recent series showed, it can be the basis for gripping television. On the other hand, Space: 1999 was never too sure itself of what it was precisely about – people on the Moon get blown out of orbit, weird stuff happens for no discernible reason, weird stuff continues to happen for reasons that are somehow even less discernible than the first set of reasons. It was all a bit too abstract for its own good.

So, let's make it about something. Instead of focusing on the Space part, let's do something with the 1999 part. We have one huge advantage over the show's creators back in 1975 – we actually know what happened in 1999. A new Space: 1999 could be the ultimate nineties nostalgia show, exploring all that delicious Clinton era angst through the spectacularly ridiculous prism of a moonbase that's been blown out into deep space. It wouldn't even need to be a radically different world than our own; just one where the Apollo missions lasted long enough to set up a now antiquated, largely forgotten moonbase. (It's not all that implausible - like anyone remembers the International Space Station even exists.)

Think of it! Instead of just having bizarre metaphysical mind trips inside something called "a black sun", the new Space: 1999 crew can have bizarre metaphysical mind trips while debating Monicagate! And trading Seinfeld quotes! And complaining about how Saving Private Ryan got totally robbed by Shakespeare in Love! And trying to get Windows 98 to work! And assuming the economic boom will never, ever end!

Make no mistake - 80s nostalgia is almost over, and 90s nostalgia is on its way. We're already running out of 80s culture to obsess over, so we're going to have to relive the nineties one way or another. So I have to ask: if we're going to put up with an insipid recreation of nineties life, why shouldn't it be set on a runaway moon hurtling into the vast and dangerous cosmos? Honestly, that sounds like a fair assessment of what happened after 1999 anyway. Keep the original theme tune, and I think we've got ourselves a winner.

1950s and 1960s:
Space vessel design in the actual Space Age tends to involve either sleek rockets or funny flying saucers — until Star Trek comes along, with the U.S.S. Enterprise's weird mix of saucer and rocket-like nacelles, bonded to a tuber shaped main section. Not to mention the fierceness of the Romulan warbird and the gun-like Klingon warships. Model design is already starting to change drastically:

1968 to 1977:

And then with 2001: A Space Odyssey, you start seeing more rugged, lived-in-looking ships, with weirder shapes, like the probe's long neck and rounded front. And ships start having more bumpy weird bits. This trend only continues with Space: 1999's squat Eagles, which look like they could survive anything (even blowing up multiple times) but aren't as elegant as an old-school rocket.

1977 to 1986:

And then Star Wars comes along, with its awesome space dogfights, and suddenly, hugeness and imposing scope are a must. It's no accident that later iterations of the U.S.S. Enterprise are way huger than the 1960s original. The crazy shapes of the T.I.E. fighters and other craft inspire some other weird models in things like The Black Hole. And the X-Wing fighters inspire everything from Buck Rogers' fighter ship to the Last Star Fighter's vessel.

1987 to 1997:

Star Trek: The Next Generation saw in a whole new era of space opera, but the main thing that changed in the late 1980s was the rise of CG effects, allowing spaceships to look much more diverse and weirder than models ever could. From the Borg cube to the many bizarre shapes of vessels in Babylon 5, starships no longer had to look like a few pieces stuck together.

1998 to present:

I can't think of one defining franchise of the past decade that has shaped how we view space opera the same way these earlier franchises did. Star Trek has kept innovating, but so have BSG, Farscape, Stargate and a number of others. CG has gotten a lot smoother and ships can move in much more natural, organic ways — just look at the Narada, to bring us back to our first example. At the same time, as nostalgia has reigned the genre, we've come full circle and resurrected a lot of classic designs, with a few tweaks.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès' silent classic is generally considered the first great sci-fi film, with the first great indelible image in movies, of the rocket ship hitting the moon smack in the eye. With his tale of scientists who shoot a rocket from a cannon to the lunar surface, where they meet hostile aliens, Méliès knew he had a hit; alas, Thomas Edison pirated the movie and made a mint from it in America before Melies could taste that sweet overseas box office. Watch the whole silent film below; it's only eight minutes.

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
The early 1950s saw a spate of movies built around lunar expeditions. This is one of the silliest — and, in the right light, the most fun. Did you know that there were giant spiders on the moon, or that in lunar caves the air is breathable enough to take off your space mask? The tale of a race of hot chicks on the moon planning to take over the earth has been parodied often, most notably in 1987's Amazon Women on the Moon (which often apes this film shot for shot), but for campy laughs, it's hard to top the original.

2001: A Spacy Odyssey (1968)
It's hard to come up with enough praise for the lunar segment of Stanley Kubrick's mind-expanding space opera. Plotwise, very little happens, save for the discovery of the monolith on the moon that sends Dave Bowman hurtling toward destiny But oh, those visuals! Even while trying to depict commercial space flight as an ordeal as mundane as airline travel, Kubrick still makes it look graceful and lovely. Same thing on the moon's surface, where eerie quiet coexists with beautiful desolation.

Space: 1999 (1975-77)
The whole series (shot in Britain for ITV and syndicated in America) took place on the moon, though not in our solar system. The premise of the show saw the moon sent careening out of earth's orbit and into deep space after a nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon exploded (oops!), leaving the crew of Moonbase Alpha to fight for survival in hostile encounters with strange creatures. The season 2 opening credits told the story economically, as you can see.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Terry Gilliam's overstuffed fantasy did have one minimalist sequence: its trip to the moon. That's because the production ran out of money, so Gilliam's plan for a vast set and a cast of thousands was canceled. Instead, Gilliam settled for a cast of five and a lunar city that consisted of little more than the former Monty Python animator's production sketches shuffled about. The changes worked, however, resulting in an austere yet enchanting sequence in which the human characters encounter the king and queen of the moon, two giants with detachable heads. As the jealous king, Robin Williams brings his usual bagful of crazy, but just imagine the sequence if Gilliam's first choice, Sean Connery hadn't bailed when the money got tight.

A Grand Day Out (1989)
The short that introduced the world to Wallace & Gromit (and to claymation king Nick Park) features a wonderfully daffy story that has the tweedy inventor and his silently suffering dog building a rocket in their basement in order to fly to the moon to satisfy their jones for cheese. This 20-minute short is as brilliant and hilarious as the rest of the Wallace & Gromit tales, and if you haven't seen it, or can't remember the unique nature of the creature our heroes meet on the moon, you must watch now.

Space Cowboys (2000)
Clint Eastwood's adventure about four oldtimers — NASA also-rans who didn't quite have the right stuff — who get another chance to blast off as seniors is a surprisingly sentimental story. But the finale, in which an ill-fated member of Clint's team finally gets his wish to reach the moon, gives the movie an unexpectedly lyrical and moving final shot.

The Time Machine (2002)
This update of the H.G. Wells story (and the 1960 George Pal film) isn't that great (even if it was directed by H.G.'s great-grandson, Simon Wells), but it's on this list for its striking sequence of lunar destruction. Time traveler Guy Pearce learns that, in the early 21st century, we sent demolition teams to level the lunar landscape in order to build condos on the moon, and, well, we broke it. D'oh! Watching the moon crumble over the heads of panicky earthlings is an awesome and horrifying sight.

Bruce Almighty (2003)
Given God-like powers, Jim Carrey emulates Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, except his ability to lasso the moon to give it to his gal is literal. Who wouldn't swoon the way Jennifer Aniston does to see such a magnificent moon, almost close enough to touch? Unfortunately, Carrey learns the next day, his moon-yanking stunt caused tidal waves in Asia. Gravity's a bitch.

Bruce And Grace Romantic Evening - The funniest movie is here. Find it

Watchmen (2009)
During the revisionist-superhero saga's celebrated opening-credits montage, there's a brief moment that pays homage to a celebrated urban legend. When Neil Armstrong lands on the moon, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is already there, taking his picture. Armstrong can be heard saying, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!" It's a reference to the old joke (which some believe came from an actual Armstrong utterance), in which Armstrong supposedly followed up his boffo "That's one small step for man..." line with a reference to something he'd heard a neighbor's wife say years before, that she wouldn't give her husband a blow job until the kid next door walked on the moon. Alas, it's not true. Armstrong never said it. Snopes says so.

The worst space operas are not just campy or silly. They're idiotic and braindead. They're so intent on cramming the cliches of Westerns or adventure serials into an outer-space setting that they not only leave behind even the most basic space science, they actually strip the danger and excitement out of space travel itself. They're usually derivative of better works, and have little undigested chunks of pilfered greatness floating around... like a debris field.

So here are the dumbest space operas of all time, according to us:

Battlestar Galactica (original series.) Sorry. Ron Moore pretty much summed it up when he explained why this version of BSG had so much wasted potential: You have the destruction of an entire civilization in the first episode, and then in the second episode they go to the casino planet and par-tay. Plus the dorky helmets. And the daggit. And Boxey. To be fair, though, this wasn't the dumbest space opera Glen Larson gave us. That honor must go to...

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Oh man. We rushed out and bought this on DVD as soon as it came out. And it is just unbelievably atrocious. Like the original BSG, it features a post-apocalyptic setting... which is forgotten right after the first episode. There's Twiki the penis-headed robot, who goes around getting into one hilarious scrap after another, and Princess Ardala, who's always trying to collar the tight-pantsed Buck so he will be her husband/boy-bitch. But mostly, this show is known for its amazing disco set pieces, including this bizarre rock band, Andromeda:

Guardians Of The Galaxy (the original comics). Marvel Comics' answer (sort of) to the Legion of Superheroes, Guardians Of The Galaxy charted the adventures of Vance Astro, who spent 1000 years in suspended animation before arriving at Alpha Centauri and realizing that humans had long since discovered faster-than-light travel. In the mean time, Earth has been invaded, first by Martians and then by the cruel Badoon. So Astro gathers a team of interplanetary misfits to free the Earth. In a typical later storyline, they find Wolverine's metal skeleton still intact (even though Wolverine is long dead) and Wolverine's great-great-granddaughter fights Doctor Doom for it. But Doctor Doom can control the metal skeleton with his mind. Snikkt!

Starslayer. I'm tempted just to say "look at the cover." But if you want more info, here goes. He's a Celtic barbarian, who's about to die in the distant past, but then his wife's descendant, in the distant future, summons him forward in time. Where he frees Earth from some alien invaders, reignites our sun, becomes a space pirate, and then dedicates a black hole to a Celtic goddess. Or something. Oh, just look at the picture.

Warlock. Another weird comic book hero. He's artificially created, his face is so radiant that only blind sculptor Alicia Masters can sculpt it into a human likeness. He gets hold of the Soul Gem, which sounds like the name of a mid-1970s R&B band, and goes around the universe fighting Thanos.

Space: 1999. Okay, I'm fully prepared for some pushback on this one. But even though I love this show, think about it for five seconds. The Moon is blasted away from the Earth at such high speeds that it visits a different planet every week. And somehow this doesn't kill everyone on the Moon, because of their protective Moonbase. Okay. Even though the Moon is hurtling through space at speeds much faster than the speed of light. Also, just how many Eagles do they have? And every planet is like a sillly horror movie or a crazy mind-trip. And then there was the crazy-browed shapeshifter.

The legion of Star Wars ripoffs. Not surprisingly, in the wake of Star Wars' success, a huge wave of incredibly vapid Wars knock-offs flooded theaters, from all over the world. (And we've presented many of them in our regular "found footage" feature.) There were the Italian Star Wars knockoffs, like The Humanoid, Star Odyssey, War Of The Robots and many others. You had your Japanese knock-offs, like Message From Space. There were animated Star Wars fakes, like Starchaser: The Legend Of Orin. And don't forget Galaxina. And of course, Turkish Star Wars. These knockoffs all have one thing in common: they borrow from the trappings of Star Wars, and completely skip over what made the original movie great. It's like a generation of B-movie directors watched only the Star Wars Holiday Special, snorted a mountain of cocaine and crushed Dilaudid, and then fired up the cameras!

Here's the whole thing of War Of The Robots in just ten minutes:

Cosmos: War Of The Planets. This Italian space opera, which came out around the same time as Star Wars, is just sort of brain-dead, with very little direction or originality. Our heroes drift through set-pieces ripped off from 2001 and Barbarella, before coming to a planet ruled by an evil computer. Which they overthrow, of course. It's all thanks to the positive power of red headgear with funny ear-circles. The whole movie is public domain and you can watch the whole thing (if you really want to) online.

Battle Beyond The Stars. It's Roger Corman's space opera, which is really all you need to know. Oh, there's an evil overlord, Sador, and he's going to destory a planet unless they submit to him utterly. And only one plucky young hero (and eventually, his girlfriend) dare to stand up to Sador, stealing an old spaceship and going off to hire some mercenaries to help. Actually, all you really need to know is that there's a spaceship-shooting babe with a ridiculous boob window:

Event Horizon. They travel to the aid of a long-lost spaceship, which turns out to have punched a hole into a universe of pure oatmeal... sorry, I meant pure chaos and pure evil. Not oatmeal, because a universe of pure oatmeal would make no sense whatsoever. Unlike a universe of pure evil, which makes perfect sense. Anyway, it makes them have wacky head trips. Mmmm... Oatmeal...

Supernova: I have to admit, any movie that features James Spader traveling through space naked can't be all bad... but the rest of it? Ugh. There's an alien artifact and a giant star that's about to (you guessed it) go supernova... and everything is messed up, until Spader gets naked again. Why can't he just always be naked?

Solaris (remake). We loved the original Tarkovsky film, but the Soderbergh remake? Just sort of navel-gazey and pointless, with just a few too many trippy moments for trippiness' sake. George Clooney explains it best in this video: "Uh, all sorts of strange things start happening."

Captain Eager. A recent direct-to-DVD British movie about an old space hero who comes out of retirement to save the day one more time, this film sort of rides the line between pastiche, homage and copy, trying to channel Dan Dare and falling a bit flat in the process. Although Tamsin Grieg is great, as always. And we love Scamp the Rocket Dog. Here's the trailer:

Space 1999
Perhaps understandably (The show's second season showrunner was a Trek veteran), Gerry Andersen's moonbase drama went from 2001-style cerebral sci-fi to Trek-esque adventure as it tried to avoid cancellation. In came an alien science officer, as well as a lot more action and even short skirts for the sexy female crew members, as the show tried to "Americanize" itself in order to win viewers... and each change made it that little bit more like original Trek. And, if you were a kid watching at the time, more than a little bit better.

Phoenix 5
Oh, to have been Australian and of television viewing age in 1970. Then, I could have seen Phoenix 5 instead of just reading about it on the internet and catching up with snippets on YouTube. Sure, the Phoenix 5 is no Enterprise - three crew members ("and their computeroid, Carl!") doesn't really allow for an endless supply of securitymen and interns to be killed - but look at those outfits and shitty special effects, and tell me that a mission to keep the peace in the 26th century isn't just a little bit ripped-off of Gene Rodenberry's dreams. Bonus points go to the show for having better theme music, as well:

Babylon 5
Yes, yes, I know; there are many Babylon fans who think that, not only is J. Michael Straczynski's television space opera epic not a Trek rip-off, but that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was actually ripped off of Straczynski's original Babylon pitch. Nevertheless, the intergalactic political backdrop of the show - and the visuals, especially the alien make-up - still strike me as strongly reminiscent of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Albeit, in terms of the writing, perhaps handled better), and the epic scale of the story overreaches in the same way as the original Trek's best episodes as much as any of the admitted influences. "Rip-off" may be too strong a term, perhaps, but surely we can agree on "heavily influenced"?

(And this is where the flames start.)

Switchblade Honey
Warren Ellis' 2003 graphic novel may have started out as a joke, but it's one that stays funny throughout its short (72 pages) lifespan; essentially, "what if the Enterprise was crewed by bastards?", Honey apparently got its origins when an episode of Star Trek: Voyager made Ellis imagine a Trek where Ray Winstone was captain. The result? The kind of Star Trek that you'll never see on television, and that's a good thing.

Galaxy Quest
Sure, it's a Trek parody, which really protects it from being accused of being a rip-off. But by the end of the movie, when there's such a heartwarming message of self-empowerment that would make even Harve Bennett blush (not to mention all manner of technobabble and action), it somehow transcends parody and comes back around the other side as something more akin to... well, a Star Trek rip-off. That's the problem with affectionate parodies, sadly; they really just want to be loved by the things they should be making fun of... but it doesn't stop us from having a soft spot for this movie, anyway. Blame it on Alan Rickman.

I. The Unexpected (But Basic) Weakness.

War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells. One of the earliest classic science fiction tales has one of the most ridiculous miracles as well. I remember when I read this book as a kid, I threw it across the room when I got to the "and then they all got the flu and died, kthxbai" ending. Even as a kid, I felt totally cheated. And the 2005 Spielberg film jettisoned almost everything about the book — except the ending. Trust Alan Moore to fix the problem by making the deadly disease into biological warfare in his second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel.

Signs. Along similar lines, we have the aliens whose one great weakness is water — so they invade a planet that's mostly water. It's just a tad convenient, but we've already ragged on this movie enough.

II. A Human Suddenly Touches The Soul Of The Machine.

Doctor Who, "The Parting Of The Ways." Almost every season of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who series has ended with some kind of unlikely miracle fix, but the first one was by far the hardest to swallow. The Doctor is facing an army of 100 trillion Daleks, who are also religious fundamentalists (just to make them even scarier) and he's spent the whole episode building a weapon that he won't use because it'll kill everybody, even the nice humans. And then Rose sees some graffiti and figures out that if she looks into the heart of the TARDIS, something totally awesome will happen. Never mind that the last time someone looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she regressed into a baby. But this time, it totally turns Rose into a super-god! But only for about five minutes, just long enough for her to wipe out all the fundy Daleks, and resurrect the hunky Jack — but not the cute Lynda-with-a-Y, because Rose is glad she's dead. Rose is a mean God, sadly. And here's that video:

The Matrix: Revolutions. Is it still a deus ex machina if you call it "The Deus Ex Machina?" Mayyyybe. In the end of the third film, Neo journeys to the "machine city" and makes a deal with the personification of the meachines, which calls itself the Deus Ex Machina. Actually, this bit grows pretty logically out of the rest of the events in the film, so I'm inclined to give it a pass. If you think the Matrix sequels in general make sense, than this bit makes sense, too.

III. The Cavalry Arrives.

The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. The world is totally shitfucked, and then John Percival Hackworth creates a multimedia AI book as a "primer" for young ladies. Nell gets a copy of the book, and it teaches her how to become a super-genius ninja mastermind. At the end of the book, just when you think everything is completely screwed, it suddenly turns out someone has pirated and mass-produced the book, and squillions of unwanted Chinese girls have all read it and turned into an army of super-ninjas, aka the Mouse Army. Suddenly, everything's going to be fantastic!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. TK and his friends are psychic — which is an illegal mutation in this nasty post-nuclear Newfoundland, which persecutes mutants. It's basically like the X-Men, with less technology and better liquor. Just when all seems hopeless, one of the telepathic mutants manages to reach all the way to New Zealand, which turns out to be a technologically advanced, enlightened society where it's actually cool to be telepathic. The New Zealanders randomly show up and rescue our heroes just in the nick of time. Yay, New Zealand!

IV. God Actually Shows Up.

Babylon 5. Sheridan is killed at the end of the third season, and war is looming and everything seems lost and horrible... until the nice Lorien, who's the first being to have attained sentience in our galaxy and has a great skin-care routine, saves Sheridan by imbuing him with his own life-force... but only after Sheridan confronts his fear of death and has the specially mandated Near-Death Catharsis (TM).

Forever Free by Joe Haldeman. According to BookSlut, Haldeman's The Forever War used time dilation and "the cold immensity of the universe" as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. But in this quasi-sequel, the disruption of the universe's physical laws turns out to be "just the effects of a god messing about with his creation." Also, we discover that a reckless experiment could destroy the entire universe, and then a few pages later we learn that there's a way to make humans totally non-aggressive. "All the problems that are introduced are solved with a wave of the hand," says Evelyn Leeper.

V. It's All A Test

Space: 1999. I've been searching and searching for this episode I saw when I was a kid, where Moonbase Alpha hurtles into a weird void where everything goes strobeadelic and regular characters start dying randomly, and everybody keeps seeing freaky ghosts, and a bunch of their Eagle scoutships crash onto a mossy planet whose atmosphere is pure LSD. And just when Commander Koenig cant stand this trippy-ass shit any longer, it turns out it was all just a godlike entity yanking on the waistband of his poly-blend pajama bottoms, just to see how he'd handle it. And now that he's shown he's not going to put up with this shit, the Moonbase can go on its merry way. (I can't find this episode in any episode guides. Did it exist? Or did I invent it?) I feel as though there are twenty episodes of the original Star Trek that follow this formula, too. But since O.G. Trek is full of godlike entities anyway, it's not as if the gods on Trek come out of nowhere — they come out of the show's limitless supply of gods. It would be surprising if a godlike entity didn't randomly show up.

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I was raised on Sci-Fi and am a die hard fan of the channel. However I have seen so much ***** on the channel it makes me not want to watch it. B movie marathons eating up the weekends. Giant Crocs, Spiders, Mosquitos and Killer Yeti are not doing it for me anymore. I remember when you could see a Star Trek title on Sci-Fi.

Our friendly Savage continues:

Did the channel get in a tiff with paramount? How about Space 1999, Babylon 5, the original Battlestar Galactica, and some classic movies like Laserblast, The Day the Earth stood still, and Battle beyond the stars. C'mon let's bring it back to the way it started.

I miss the old days when I could tune into Space 1999 on a young SciFi Channel. Those were fun times.

[Y]eah The sci-fi channel is setting it's self up for a buy out. That's what I see here.

What happened to the Sci-Fi Channel? [Scifi.com]

A.I. wasn't the only movie Kubrick failed to complete in the 1990s. He was also working on a movie version of A Shadow On The Sun, a cheesy 1960s BBC radio drama about a meteorite that brings a deadly virus to Earth. He got copies of the scripts and annotated them for hours, adding notes like: "DOG FINDS METEORITE" and "THE DOG IS NOT WELL" as he sketched the movie in his head.

The meteorite's virus gives people an unstoppable sexual appetite, leading to Eyes Wide Shut-esque scenes of depravity. In the radio version, it ends with this speech:

There's been so much killing - friend against friend, neighbour against neighbour, but we all know nobody on this earth is to blame, Mrs Brighton. We've all had the compulsions. We'll just have to forgive each other our trespasses. I'll do my part. I'll grant a general amnesty - wipe the slate clean. Then perhaps we can begin to live again, as ordinary decent human beings, and forget the horror of the past few months.

Disco producers felt a pulsating urge to create a futuristic sound and atmosphere, says Lawrence, author of Love Saves The Day :

A lot of this had to do with the "other-worldly" space of the dance floor, where a combination of sonic, lighting and drug effects generated a sense of entering into another dimension.

Disco also peaked at a time when America's love for space opera was at its greatest, says Pagan Kennedy, who wrote about disco in her book Platforms: A Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s. The music lifted a lot of its sparkly imagery from science fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Kennedy adds:

Don't forget Space:1999! That show featured the ultimate disco spaceship — every surface was slick and shiny and white and biomorphic. It was as if the astronauts lived inside a giant sanitized intestine.

She adds that disco included "skimpy silver clothes made of that 'space blanket' stuff," and promiscuous use of a NASA font on musical products. "It's hard to say whether space got disco-ized, or disco got spaced," Kennedy says.

Disco disintegrated in the early 80s, but dance culture still embraces the future. Just think of all those shiny raver kids in the early 1990s. Says Lawrence:

Sci-fi imagery has always permeated movements that are interested in changing social circumstances, and images of the future were particularly prominent in Detroit techno. This tradition ... has continued in newer dance genres such as drum 'n' bass and, more recently, dubstep.

Famous names: Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Barry Morse, Catherine Schell, Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson

Crunchy goodness: 3

Stunt casting: Joan Collins is Kara, one of the last survivors of a super-advanced race who wear togas and survive by stealing organs from a group of hairy barbarians. (Who'd begrudge Joan Collins a kidney?)

The shit: The camera always zooms into Catherine Schell's eye whenever her sexy shapeshifter turns into a bird or donkey, as the plot requires.

Life lesson: When you find a new home planet that looks perfect and idyllic, you might want to check for alien mind controllers, vampires, ancient intelligences or creepy blobs before you settle in.

Space:1999 Net, a collection of Space: 1999 themed websites