Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 00:42:04 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Stefano Alpa )reste@mbox.ulisse4tag.it)
Subject: Space1999: Just another point of wiew...

One of the more interesting appearances of the show is that aliens, which
are almost more and more evolved (spiritually and technically) to the
humans, they have however an absolute need of the Alphans.
Above all in the first series where there are less monsters and
"naturalistic" allegories than the second and aliens have (or engage) often
human semblances and ways of thinking, almost never they want to destroy
humans (they could do it- I suppose- in almost all episodes); they need them
(or their bodies).

In that, they are not different from the Alphans; both wants the same thing:
survive.

This process of assimilation, to which the Alphans always escapes in more or
less realistic ways, feeds the positivity of the show and the awareness that
sometimes, before of "fight the future", is better first try to "understand
it". 

Stefano



From: Petter Ogland (petter.ogland@dnmi4tag.no)
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 13:43:59 +0000
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...

Excellent thoughts here, I think.  I wish you could elaborate your argument
with a few more examples, Stefano, but, nevertheless, the search for
meaning and understanding is quite poignant in Year One, I feel.  Episodes
like MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH goes into length about searching for meaning
in the future by looking into the past, and we, of course, have episodes like
RING AROUND THE MOON which dives deep into the mysteries of knowledge
and existence.

I suppose you are familiar with Martin J Willey's interesting web sites,
Stefano.  Martin's approach to the series seem to be "Journey into the
Unknown" and "Journey into Humanity" as being main themes for the two
consequetive seasons.  There is definitely something to this way of
lookin at it, I think, although if not too many episodes concerned with
understanding in the manner of BLACK SUN and RING AROUND THE MOON in
Year Two, ecological awareness of the type presently being discussed in
connection with JOURNEY TO WHERE is quite apparent in many Year One
episodes, I think.  ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE is one good example, I
think, SPACE BRAIN and THE LAST SUNSET are others, although admittingly
more mysterious and also quite concerned with man's misguided understanding
of nature and the universe.

Your points about assimilation are very good, I think.  An episode like
THE EXILES is farily down to Earth, I suppose, and although not much more
than a remake of ALPHA CHILD, it poses interesting questions about
assimilation, how people living by different values can live together and
to what extents we go for our own survival by considering when assimilation
is right and when it is not.

One possible interpretation of THE EXILES, within the conext of our current
discussion of JOURNEY TO WHERE, would perhaps be to consider if perhaps
Cantor and Zova were in Donald James' mind considered to be representatives
of the Hanna Barbera world of Fred Freiberger. Freiberger was himself more or
less an American exile at Pinewood, and Helena's talk about the exiles being
so young could indicate that James may consiously or subconsiously be
thinking of Freiberger's fascination with the world of cartoons, this
being his personal experience or flavoured by discussions with Johnny
Byrne who had been hoping to continue the voyage of the prevoius season.

Anyway, while the cartoon-characters ask of being assimilated into Alpha,
Koenig rejects strongly, and soon we discover that not only are they
determined to reach their goals, they are planning to destroy Alpha as well.
This must have been the same threat many felt as Freiberger killed of
characters like Bergman, Paul, Kano, Sandra, dr. Phillips and almost
managed to throw out Alan as well.  More relvant from Donald James and the
writers presumed point of view, perhaps, was that intelligent writing
was being abondonned in order to juvenile the scripts with comic-strip
plots and dialogues.

Assimilation is an interesting point of view, I think.  If THE EXILES
may have had even the slightest to do with the speculations above by
anyone while the episode was being made, JOURNEY TO WHERE is, of course,
a very different story, focusing more of natural assimilation than
cultural assimilation.  The third Donald James contribution, THE SEANCE
SPECTRE, focuses perhaps more on social phenomena again, and once again
there is a cultural conflict, although this time more along the
social hierarchy than cultural barriers.  Then again, one could of course
speculate if the questions about Alpha hierarchy had someting to do
with how Donald James experienced the writers hierarchy with Freiberger
majestically on the top.

Petter



Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 22:14:57 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Stefano Alpa (reste@mbox.ulisse4tag.it)
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...

>Then again, one could of course
>speculate if the questions about Alpha hierarchy had someting to do
>with how Donald James experienced the writers hierarchy with Freiberger
>majestically on the top.

Alpha/writers hierarchies?
That's a good point (as usual), Petter.

I have always found strange that in the Y1 there has not been many occasions
of contrast about  the hierarchy on Alpha (maybe except the mutiny in The
Guardian Piri that however could not be considered "voluntary").

I think too that Freiberger's influence in Y2 has been too much "deep and
total"; he made changes that he thought correct to the show, apparently
without any interferences.

I don't know (but I would like know it) how much power and control Gerry
Anderson had in Y1 as regards Y2, and if, according to you and to the main
opinion, Freiberger could choose freely about elimination of characters and
about how a script must be (also with writers as Byrne that had given much
to the previous series) or each decision was the result of common choices.

Why has not been separate the roles of producer and script editor even in Y2?

Ciao to all list members!
Stefano



From: Petter Ogland (petter.ogland@dnmi4tag.no)
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 08:47:26 +0000
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...

> I have always found strange that in the Y1 there has not been many occasions
> of contrast about  the hierarchy on Alpha (maybe except the mutiny in The
> Guardian Piri that however could not be considered "voluntary").

You have a very interesting point here, Stefano.  Early on during Year One
there is much focus on Alan not willing to accept Koenig's decisions.

MISSING LINK, THE GUARDIAN OF PIRI and COLLISION COURSE all make use of
the command hierarchy as a part of the plot, but neither seem to question
the structure of the organisation as wich may be the case in Year Two episodes
like THE SEANCE SPECTRE and SEED OF DESTRUCTION.

SEED OF DESTRUCTION is perhaps the most politically interesting episode in
this respect, in that it shows how unstable a political structure like
the Alpha command structure is.  While John Goldsmith wrote for other ITC
series, this was his only contribution to SPACE:1999, so it is difficult
to speculate about if the script was in any way inspired by his experiences
with the organisation of work in the writing and making of the second year.

Anyway I think SEED OF DESTRUCTION makes a nice point about structural
instability and vulnaribility in any organisation slightly reminicent of Alpha.

> I think too that Freiberger's influence in Y2 has been too much "deep and
> total"; he made changes that he thought correct to the show, apparently
> without any interferences.

This is indeed a very interesting point, I think, and I feel the tension
between Freiberger and ITC New York on one side and Gerry Anderson and
his lot on the other side may explain much of Year Two, a tension that was
much more strained during Year Two than during Year One from what I understand.

> I don't know (but I would like know it) how much power and control Gerry
> Anderson had in Y1 as regards Y2, and if, according to you and to the main
> opinion, Freiberger could choose freely about elimination of characters and
> about how a script must be (also with writers as Byrne that had given much
> to the previous series) or each decision was the result of common choices.

Actually I'm not too sure about how freely Freiberger could operate.  It is
my belief, however, that he wanted to eliminate more or less the whole
cast of Year One and instead base the the series around his new character Maya.

He managed to eliminate Paul, Kano, Tanya before the shooting of THE
METAMORPH and further during the process, dr. Mathias and Sandra were
eliminated.  Freiberger also wanted Alan out of the series, but was apparently
convinced by market research that Alan was too much liked to be left out.

It also seems like Freiberger was not too happy with Landau and Bain in
the leading roles.  John and Helena were supposed to be of age 35 and 29
according to his rewriting, I seem to remember, an idea that does not seem
too fitting for this particular cast who in my opinion seem much more
fit with the character definitions from the previous season.

Obviously Freiberger wanted to revitalise the show and was perhaps afraid
of keeping too many of the elements of Year One he did not understand or
find fitting for his streamlining for marketing of the show.  After all
he was more or less ambassador for ITC New York, and did perhaps feel that
he wouldn't like to stick his head out for Gerry Anderson and his people
having fun instead of playing safe and stick to the formulas he knew by
experience were working.  His sense of quality of the show may perhaps
have been more pragmatically identified with its ability to survive in the
highly competitive US telenetwork market than an artistic judgement of
quality by, for instance, listening too writers and directors who perhaps
were more interested in competing with other writers and directors or making
things they themsleves found interesting than actually have too many
concerns for the end users.

It is quite interesting to try to understand the processes at play during the
making of SPACE:1999.  I suppose we can dig significantly deeper into
Freiberger's part of the venture in about two weeks time when we are
going to investigate THE RULES OF LUTON, the first of the three very
interesting writing contributions he made for the series.

> Why has not been separate the roles of producer and script editor even in Y2?

This is also a very interesting question.  Gerry Anderson gives some clues
to the reason for this on the interesting SPACE:1999 DOCUMENTARY, but they
are of course biased.  I'm not too sure of how much creative control Anderson
had during the second season.  During the first season there is no doubt that he
was very much involved, often to the frustration to people like Byrne, Penfold
and di Lorenzo it seems, although mostly to the pleasure of the group, I
suppose, making the production team more into a family than a business perhaps.

Petter



From: Costopoulos Andre (costopoa@ere.u44montreal.ca)
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 09:22:52 -0400 (EDT)

> MISSING LINK, THE GUARDIAN OF PIRI and COLLISION COURSE all make use of
> the command hierarchy as a part of the plot, but neither seem to question
> the structure of the organisation as wich may be the case in Year Two episodes
> like THE SEANCE SPECTRE and SEED OF DESTRUCTION.

We have discussed command before on this list.  To me, this is clearly
one of the strongest and most interesting aspects of SPACE 1999.  Here
Petter touches on the twin concepts of formal and contextual hierarchies,
a complementary opposition well known to anthropologists studying
early social complexification.  The seance spectre is an especially
interesting study of the friction (in clausewitz' term) which occurs
between a formal hierarchy and its contextual counterpart.  In theory,
Koenig is in overall command of Alpha, but Sanderson's team clearly
express the thought that in certain contexts, his judgement and
authority are unquestionned.  Under some circumstances, the crew
does not even think of koenig.  The only source of authority is
Sanderson.  This is not because of any formal differences in rank,
but because of Sanderson's acknowledged value in some contexts.
Any army must deal with this problem.  I have seen a sargeant
tell a young lieutenant in no uncertain terms what to do, and the
lieutenant would have been insane to question the non-com's "orders".
No one would have listened to him.

Life on Alpha sometimes involves situations (contexts) in which
pragmatic hierarchies, elaborated by experience and over time,
sometimes take over from the formal structure in a split second,
such as when Helena, Victor, Kano, or Maya make calls based on
their expertise.  Koenig acknowledges, but that doesn't make
a difference.  In some extreme situation, such as the Sanderson
led rebellion, the tension between the two structures is such
that there is an outright contradiction.  In fact, from
exerience I would argue that the occurence of such contradictions
in SPACE 1999 is underscored rather than exagerated, given the
conditions.

				Andre Costopoulos
				Departement d'anthropologie
				Universite de Montreal



From: Petter Ogland (petter.ogland@dnmi4tag.no)
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 15:28:58 +0000
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...

> We have discussed command before on this list.

Yes indeed we have.  This issue often appears when discussion MISSING
LINK, I think, but I can't remember if that was the episode that
triggered an enormous amount of antropologial insights to the Alpha
hierarchies the last time.  It may also have been COLLISION COURSE which,
from a certain point of view, seem to image many of the basic features of
the command hierarchy and problems relating to this as in THE SEANCE SPECTRE.

> The seance spectre is an especially
> interesting study of the friction (in clausewitz' term) which occurs
> between a formal hierarchy and its contextual counterpart.

Do the antropologists have classical examples from history that could
parallell the instances in this SPACE:1999 episode?

It is interesting how the round table conferances that were so central
in Year One suddenly disappeared in Year Two.  I believe there were
some speculations about the round table in Year One being the way
Gerry Anderson and the lot were working and making decisions during Year
One while the erratic behaviour and social friction prevailent in so
many Year Two episodes was a reflection of how that season was managed.

> Life on Alpha sometimes involves situations (contexts) in which
> pragmatic hierarchies, elaborated by experience and over time,
> sometimes take over from the formal structure in a split second,
> such as when Helena, Victor, Kano, or Maya make calls based on
> their expertise.  Koenig acknowledges, but that doesn't make
> a difference.  In some extreme situation, such as the Sanderson
> led rebellion, the tension between the two structures is such
> that there is an outright contradiction.  In fact, from
> exerience I would argue that the occurence of such contradictions
> in SPACE 1999 is underscored rather than exagerated, given the
> conditions.

Marvellous!

Your contribution to this list is outstanding, Andre.  This is certainly
the type of comments that gets my adrenalin working.  Excellent!

In the early episodes, such as BREAKAWAY, MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
and BLACK SUN the command structure, contextual and formal hierarchies
were very much a focal issue in the plot, it seems.

The less complicated format in Year Two make such problems even more
focal to understanding the episodes.  THE SEANCE SPECTRE is a wonderful
example, I think.  Another episode with interesting antrological consequences
would be THE EXILES, I suppose, also written by Donald James.  THE EXILES
seems to me to be much more a study of social or antropological phenomena
than a character study, not unlike ALPHA CHILD which also boosts of
antropological content ready to be analysed.

The episode of the week is THE TAYBOR, however, if Mateo verifies this,
an episode that perhaps is more about the antropology or sociology
of trading, the structure of our economies and philosophical and
psychological problems relating to alienation and than accessing directly
the problems of power and social structure.

For whatever point you prefer to look at it, I look very much forward to
whatever you might find of antropological value here, Andre.  This episode
focusing more of social phenomena than, say, JOURNEY TO WHERE, I hope
this will inspire you!

Petter



From: Costopoulos Andre (costopoa@ere.u44montreal.ca)
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view...
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 14:15:22 -0400 (EDT)

Petter,

	Breakaway is a classic example of tension between
a formal and a contextual hierarchy.  It could almost
be analysed line by line in terms of those concepts.  And
this also ties into a recent discussion of the nature of
Alpha as an institution.  The sudden change in context
(the breakaway) alters the hierarchical environment in
such a way that certain organisms (the civilian structure)
which had been prospering suddenly become extinct (if you
want to use a Darwinian analogy).  The new and obligatory
focus on short term survival call for a much tighter
type of organisation and leads to the reinforcement of
the military side of alpha'a administrative legacy.

			Andre Costopoulos
			Departement d'Anthropologie
			Universite de Montreal



From: South Central (Tamazunchale@web44tv.net)
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:12:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Space1999: Soulmates

I don't know about the rest of you but I think Petter has found a
kindred soul!  :-)

Mateo



From: Petter Ogland (petter.ogland@dnmi4tag.no)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:39:16 +0000
Subject: Re: Space1999: Just another point of view... / The Taybor

Wonderful Andre, absolutely wonderful!

I suppose this also gives insight to the point of view that Simmonds was
being more or less "forced" out of Alpha in EARTHBOUND, reading this as
a continual part of the evolution of the renewed social organism adapting
to short term survival.  Simmonds has obviously no function in this
new organisation, and Koenig is forcing him to desperate actions as he
cannot give him a viable substitue to the function of being Earth command
representative.  In some ways EARTHBOUND could perhaps be seen as a
narrowing focus on some of the social mechanisms portrayed in BREAKAWAY,
I suppose.

Now, Andre, as THE TAYBOR is the episode of the week, do you think you
would like to comment on some of the antropological aspects of economic
society in regard of this episode?

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  This note now turns to discussion of "The Taybor,"
this week's Episode for the ExE metathread, merging this thread into the
middle of that thread.]