Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 15:49:56 -0700
From: balinson@inch4tag.com
Subject: Testament of Arcadia
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Date: Sun, 21 Apr 96 18:47:44
To: space-1999@quack.kfu.com
Subject: Testament of Arcadia
X-Mailer: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v0.99x
How come there are so many psychos on alpha?
They definitely need a better base psychiatrist/psychologist!
Jon B.
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 05:11:47 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)
Cabin Fever? Perhaps their oppressive leader drove them to such extremes!
I hadn't seen this one in 15 years. Someone mentioned the blooper of
the eagle flying out from behind the sun, and it was hilarious seeing it!
What I wondered was: why was the deserters' eagle so empty-looking?
It was supposed to have a 3 year supply of food plus everything they
would need to survive. Supposedly they were taking so much that the 300 other
alphans were going to starve. I imagined an eagle packed to the ceiling with
containers. Well, where was that stuff?
I also wondered: If the deserters were going to become farmers and grow
grain, then why did they land in such a rocky looking part of the planet?
There were outcroppings of rocks a meter high! Don't these silly alphan
deserters know that grain doesn't grow on rocks? You want to grow grain
on flat ground with no rocks! They were doomed to die!
Well, it was the last episode of Year1. Perhaps things got sloppy at the end.
What I really would like to have seen was that moon buggy pulling a plow!
Ronald
"It would be facile to compare it with 'Star Trek,' but nonetheless a helpful
comparison. 'Star Trek' provides a useful takeoff point for 'Space 1999."
But 'Space 1999' is like a 'Star Trek' shot full of methedrine."
Benjamin Stein, Wall Street Journal, 7 November, 1975, p. 16.
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 06:59:09 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)
Upon rewatching it, I wondered if the combination to the protein stores
as read aloud by Ferro was actually the number punched in by Davis in the
following scene. Luckily, there is no blooper there. It appears to be
a telephone style set up, with the numbers arranged like this:
0
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
After watching it a dozen times, I concluded that actress Lisa Harrow
does indeed punch in the correct numbers. OK, here's a trivia teaser:
What was the combination to the protein stores?
Unfortunately, there is a glaring mathematical improbablilty in
"Testament of Arkadia". Helena says that Alpha has enough supplies to
last 300 people half a year. That comes out to 150 man-years of food.
Well, I will succumb to political gender correctness and call it 150
alphan-years of food. The two deserters took enough supplies for 3 years.
That comes out to 6 alphan-years of food. 6 is 4% of 150. So how come
taking 4% of their supplies would cause everybody else to starve? Koenig
characterized what the deserters demanded as "half of out supplies".
Someone in this episode was mathematically ignorant, or lying. Could it
possibly be that Koenig was lying, and wanted to keep everybody under
his mad dictatorial control on Alpha?
This episode would have been even better if you could have seen everybody's
breath when the talked in the supposedly cold Alpha. It was cold enough
to form ice on the windows after all.
Paul doing pushups to keep warm looks silly. It is undignified for the
guy in charge of Main Mission to be on his hands with his face to the
ground. Heck, why not have Sandra doing jumping-jacks too? They could
make the Moonbase Alpha Exercise Video.
Those silver coats are a welcome addition to the bland wardrobe, but look too
short and too tight fitting to have ever been comfortably warm. Why didn't
they have gloves too? Or thermal trousers? The Security guards had better
looking coats in terms of size, but the orange-red color is really garish.
Here's something potentially explosive: Is "Testament of Arkadia" racially
biased? When the skeletons reanimate, they have white skinned hands.
The language on the wall is Indo-European. Linguists have theorized
that all the languages of Earth descended from something called "Nostratic",
but it is not widely accepted. They just don't agree on how Indo-European
languages could possibly have once been linked up with the languages of
Africa and the Orient. Sanskrit inscriptions on earth are old, but even
older is the non-european language of the Sumerians, who lived in Iraq,
and wrote in cuniform on clay tablets. Is "Arkadia" implying that the
white/caucausian peoples of Europe are from Arkadia, and thus that the
black skinned peoples of Africa and the peoples of the Asian Pacific
are possibly the indigenous peoples of earth, and we are not really all
of the same race? The trees of Arkadia were all European too.
That caucasians are colonists from space might explain why they/we have
displayed such an urge to colonize the planet.
Or did Koenig just happen to land in the part of Arkadia populated by
Proto-Indo-Europeans, and if he had landed somewhere else on the planet,
he might have found dead african trees, and a cave with a Swahili
inscription and skeletons that reanimated with black skinned hands?
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 08:03:52 -0700
From: Michael Jerry Decker (mdecker@mail.orion4tag.org)
Subject: Hi Ronald (fwd)
Hi there Ronald.
I just read the post about Testament of Arkadia, and you bring up a lot of
good points. But seriously, wasn't this episode a massive
Hippie/Survivalist wet dream come true? ;)
Just a thought. "Headin' out to Eden, yea brother."
Michael
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 12:43:31 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)
I thought Survivalists were gun nuts, like the Freemen in Montana.
I thought Hippies were drug users, like fans of the Grateful Dead.
OK Ferro & Davis are loopy fanatics, more like the Symbionese Liberation
Army underground who kidnapped/recruited Patty Hearst, which was at the
time 1999 was being made. In fact, the FBI nabbed Patty/Tanya around
August or September of 1975, when 1999 debuted.
This episode is virtually religious, with Ferro & Davis getting on their
knees when the "Miracle" happens. Perhaps they ought to be compared
to Branch Davidians?
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 03:47:43 -0700
From: Michael Jerry Decker (mdecker@mail.orion4tag.org)
Subject: Re: your mail
Okay, I can buy into that. They're still nuts, just in a religious sort
of way. Holy Nuts! (Down, Boy Wonder, down!)
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 18:29:56 -0700
From: PatriEmb@aol4tag.com
Subject: Re: Arkadia
>Unfortunately, there is a glaring mathematical improbablilty in
>"Testament of Arkadia". Helena says that Alpha has enough supplies to
>last 300 people half a year. That comes out to 150 man-years of food.
>Well, I will succumb to political gender correctness and call it 150
>alphan-years of food. The two deserters took enough supplies for 3 years.
>That comes out to 6 alphan-years of food. 6 is 4% of 150. So how come
>taking 4% of their supplies would cause everybody else to starve?
Writer's license?, Maybe tofu just doesn't stretch the way it used to ?
Maybe Paul needed a little extra to manage his aerobics classes! :)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 11:29:59 -0700
From: Donna Kettelkamp (dkettelk@flash4tag.net)
I believe the issue was that Alpha was loosing power and the estimate =
was based on their inability to replenish their own food supplies - =
hence they had enough for 300 to survive 6 months without any =
replenishment. When the moon continued on its course at the end of the =
episode and Alpha regained all of its power, Koenig decided not to send =
the Eagle on down to recover the supplies that were taken because they =
could now replenish what they used.
Just my two cents :)
Donna K.
Irving, TX
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 12:10:37 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)
What I meant was NOT why didn't they starve AFTER the power came back
up to 100%, but rather would they really have starved when the power
was down at 50%?
Ferro & Davis took 6 out of 150 alphan-years worth of food, that is,
Ferry & Davis took 4% of the on-hand supply of food.
It just doesn't seem plausible that Koenig et al. were so concerned
about starving when they were going to keep 96% of what they had before.
The alphans had determined that even at 50% power rate, they could survive,
so I assume that the rate of food produced equals the rate of food consumed.
Unless this was achieved, it wouldn't have mattered how much Ferro & Davis
were going to take, because in the long run, Alpha would run out unless
rate produced = rate consumed.
If the food on-hand were an emergency supply, then alpha had about a 180-day
supply for ~300 people before Ferro & Davis took their cut, and 172.8 day
supply for ~300 people after. So, why was Koenig determined to get back
enough food that would last ~300 people for only 7.2 days?
Ronald
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 11:55:06 -0700
From: "THE PEOPLE'S POET\"" (boomershine@ACAVAX.LYNCH44BURG.EDU)""
Subject: Testament of Arkadia discussion
Greetings from Lynchburg, Virginia, USA!
I just wanted to chime in on the whole issue of why Koenig, et. al. were so
determined to stop Ferro and Davis from taking only 4% of their supplies,
maybe we should consider for a moment the need to maintain discipline in the
Moonbase. Koenig can't let other Alphans getting the idea that they'll all be
better off stealing an Eagle and bunches of supplies and flying off to find
better/more natural living conditions, can he?
After all, Alpha is run like a feudal technocracy. I don't think the
writers really addressed this issue well enough during the series. How do you
keep 300 or so highly trained professionals under the thumb of higher
management 24 hours a day, every day, possibly for the rest of their lives? I
guess that's one of the things I did like about this episode: here you had two
brave, adventurous talented people who were in love with each other, wanted
a better shot at freedom and happiness than what the Moonbase could offer, and
so they took matters into their own hands.
(As resourceful as Ferro and Davis were in stealing the Eagle and the
supplies, it's a shame Commander Koenig and Controller Morrow couldn't have put
them to better use much earlier... but then everybody fits that description on
Alpha.)
What I want to know is, what, beyond writer's licence, was causing
Alpha's nuclear reactors to fail to produce energy? It's been a while since
I've seen the episode, someone please help me out!
Thanks!
- John Boomershine
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 12:37:15 -0700
From: Amardeep_Chana@xn.xerox4tag.com (Chana,Amardeep)
Subject: RE: Testament of Arkadia discussion
> What I want to know is, what, beyond writer's licence, was causing
>Alpha's nuclear reactors to fail to produce energy?
It was the Mysterious Unknown Force (aka MUF -- gee that actually is a
very bad acronym...) that everyone refers to in Season I. The same
force also brought the moon to a halt.
Amardeep
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 16:48:27 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)
Subjects: Alphan Love, and What Was Really in the Protein Stores?
THE PEOPLE'S POET\John Boomershine writes:
> guess that's one of the things I did like about this episode: here you had two
> brave, adventurous talented people who were in love with each other, wanted
> a better shot at freedom and happiness than what the Moonbase could offer, and
> so they took matters into their own hands.
Were they really in love? I don't remember hearing them say "I love you" or
kiss eachother. Might their embraces have been more like that of comrades
than lovers? Russians and arabs embrace and even kiss out of commaradrie
rather than love, and Ferro & Davis could be compared to fanatical subversive
revolutionaries, such as the Simbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped/recruited
Patty Hearst at the time "Arkadia" was made. Such relationships are built
shared wacko philosophies, not biological attraction.
Or, perhaps 1999 Year1 was really hostile towards physical affection.
I used to think that Regina kissed Alan in "Another Time, Another Place",
but upon rewatching it a few days ago, I failed to see a kiss. The other
Helena did kiss Koenig, and then died! This might be saying something about
the writers'/producers' attitude. I don't remember Helena and John ever getting
affectionate in any other Year1 episode. Even TV slut-star Joan Collins didn't
plant any mouth action on Koenig in "Mission of the Darians"! I wonder what
her 900 year old (multiply transplanted?) alien mutant lips might have been
like? YUK! Correct me if my memory is failing, but the kisses that come to
mind were:
Couple Episode Comment
1. Other Helena - Koenig "AT,AP" Kissed him & died!
2. Victor - Helena "Black Sun" Just on the cheek
3. Jarak - His Mother "Alpha Child" Yukky Incest?
4. Servant - Koenig "Guardian of Piri" She was just a robot
5. Vana - Koenig "Missing Link" ?
6. Paul - Sandra "Last Sunset" ?
Perhaps #5 & #6 explain the philosophy of Year1. No hanky panky until you
become free of Alpha, and have a new world to live on. Otherwise, attraction
between the genders in Year1 seems always doomed and deadly:
1. Anton & Eva Zoref ("Force of Life") were married, and even shown waking up
in bed, but the whole episode was all about how lethal it was to touch Zoref.
2. Helena didn't seem very affectionate to her long lost husband Lee in "Matter
of Life and Death", and again, touching him proved to be a shocking
experience for Helena (and even Dr. Mathias!)
3. The unseen Jack Crawford was dead even before "Alpha Child" began. Is
this the price for fathering a child in 1999?
4. I don't remember "Space Brain" much. Were Kelly & Melita married, and did
they kiss? Anyway, it ended in a soapy death.
5. In "Troubled Spirit", Laura Adams' concern for Mateo seemed to be more than
just that of an associate/co-worker, and she wound up dead.
6. Last of all, Caveman Koenig got a little too friendly with Sandra in "Full
Circle" and she let him have it on the head with a rock! (Of course, he
probably deserved that, unless it was all just some kind of misunderstanding?)
Freddy turned all this around for Year2. Lots of affection with no
deadly side effects, and married couples that didn't die by the end
of the episode, like the Frasers in "Metamorph" and the Osgoods in "Catacombs"
Even Taybor survived his attempt at loving/kidnapping Maya, without his head
being bashed in, like Sandra did to Caveman Koenig.
Of course, if Ferro & Davis weren't in love when they started out on Arkadia,
eventually their natural urges would drive them to eachother. Of course,
their descendents would all be inbred, unless you consider just what did
Anna Davis really rob from the Protein Stores?
Here's my wacky theory of the month:
The Protein Stores also contained sperm samples, and as part of their mad plan,
Davis intended to inseminate herself with lots of diverse samples, so as to
produce a genetically diverse next generation of Arkadians! Yes that's it,
she was going to be a queen bee, and pop out twins or triplets every nine
months, each by a different father. Ferro was going to be a sterile worker
bee, and had to get those crops growing for his queen to eat after she had
gobbled down all that food Koenig was so worried about.
Notice that you didn't see Davis carrying arm loads of edible protein after
she rejoined Ferro in Main Mission. So, what did she really take from the
Protein Stores? This is why Koenig et al. were really worried. Some of that
"protein" was Koenig's.
Ronald
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 18:35:13 -0700
From: JOHN BOOMERSHINE (boomershine@ACAVAX.LYNCH44BURG.EDU)
Subject: Arkadia, Protein Stores, and Insane Planetary Colonization Plans
Ronald Dudley brings up that other thing about "Testament of Arkadia" that has
always bothered me --- which is to say, the lack of forethought Davis and Ferro
demonstrated in executing their plan without bringing along a viable gene pool.
I don't wish to engage in eugenic chauvinism, but I would think twice before
establishing a colony on a habitable planet with only two people available as
breeding stock (...but at least Davis and Ferro's chromosomes would have job
security), lest the descendants begin displaying numerous undesirable traits.
In America the unfortunate results of such marginally viable gene pools are
commonplace, some of them have even become President. But I digress.
My bet is that Ferro and Davis passed out and died from eating nothing but
protein. They should have remembered to raid Alpha's carbohydrate and fat
stores, as well.
Were they in love? Good Lord, I hope so. Wouldn't it drive you completely crazy
to be stuck on an empty planet with someone you did not already care deeply
about? They planned it this way, so I can only assume Ferro and Davis were 100%
committed to each other, and ready to do some heavy-duty population
engineering. I guess I like to believe that they were in love, because otherwise
the audience loses sympathy with their cause, and the whole subtle "Adam and
Eve" theme ends up wasted.
This episode also sports the mysterious Eagle with the passenger module that
can "dock" with other Eagles in mid-flight. That's a neat feature, but wouldn't
it make more sense to mount docking ports differently, so as to preclude the
necessity of a long, extensible tube to cross the relatively large distance
between the passenger modules of two horizontally-linked Eagles?
And does anyone have a tally of the number of Eagles supposedly available
during the "Breakaway" episode, and the number actually lost or irretrievably
wrecked during the two-year run of the show? I bet the second number is much
larger than the first...