I want to point out that the Musee has a new web site at

http://www.museemecaniquesf.com

It’s long story, but the old site is not owned or operated by Dan Zelinsky, the owner of the Musee. It would be great if you could change the link in your post to the new site. Thanks!

Yep, it sure does.

“Which is, you know, not often enough. So now I’m thinking I should make time this year to go visit him and his family (especially since his daughter apparently doubts my existence), or at least, y’know, call more often.”

Oh, you’re always welcome. Or at least, gimme a call.

http://geeksofdoom.com/2008/07/03/10-ways-to-make-a-kick-ass-version-of-space1999

In the interim, I’m hoping to have a short article published at Geeks of Doom (website) called 10 Ways To Make A Kick Ass Remake of Space:1999. Which makes it doubly odd to see this cool post from you, Michael.

John: Quark! Ha! Another marginal semi-SF series right along with The Fantastic Journey and Otherworld! Not to mention the execrable Space Rangers.

Unfortunately (?) Quark was basically rendered obsolete by the far better parody Galaxy Quest.

Mikey: I think to do an ongoing series you’d have to contrive something fantastic to make it work, e.g. the wormhole idea I mentioned. Or some sort of phenomenon a la Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin.

This sort of points out the meta-flaw in Space: 1999: It’s a generic science fiction adventure series, the things that make it unique are really incidental to the basic thrust of the show. It treats its setting as a generic near-future setting (obviously inspired a great deal by 2001), it has generic characters who are there to solve fairly generic adventure problems, and even the title is remarkable generic, not really saying anything about the series. Even Star Trek has a more descriptive title! All the neat stuff is below the surface, unfortunately so far below that it’s pretty well smothered.

And yet, some of the things you pointed out bring me back to it periodically. The design of the moonbase itself, and the Eagles, still hold up remarkably well, even if the costumes do not. There are occasional, serious attempts to suggest the hardship of the situation, the claustrophobia inherent in knowing that you might never be able to breathe unrecycled air ever again in your life and that these 300…oops, 299…oops…270 people are the only human faces you’ll ever see again, and every week someone else dies.

I also wonder if there would be any way to do a “Galactican” reinvention of this show, but I really don’t think you could. I think you could do a serious SF show about a stranded colony on an unterraformed world or moon, but not as a open-ended series. Because if you’re trying to be serious about it, you won’t have alien-of-the-week or even crisis-of-the-week. Most of the time, life would actually be pretty dull, assuming the colony survived the initial separation, however it occured. But you probably could do a limited series or miniseries focusing on the crisis itself.

Didn’t Space: 1999 feature a telepathic female called Maia, with funny beaded eyebrows and a ton of blusher on her cheeks? Or was that some other late seventies sci-fi show?

I never bought videotapes, but I did run across a couple of tie-in novels in a charity shop. They were really short novels, and the middle part of the book was stuffed with about 16 pages of black-and-white publicity pictures from the TV series. They were pretty fun reads, if I remember rightly.

I admit that my preference in comics art is for more “realistic” art, albeit with some distinctive style. George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, folks like that. I’m not a big fan of the “underground” style, which yours seems more in the tradition of. (Your style reminds me of Peter Kuper’s, actually.)

But yeah, I’ll stick around and see how Sparks pans out. Whether or not it’s my cup of tea, you guys seem enthusiastic enough that I do hope you find an audience!

The comic hasn’t yet fleshed out the cat. It does personify Gary Seven a little bit, so far. As I said, the second issue doesn’t really add anything to the series’ background, so there’s really only the first issue to go on.