I remember this one from when I was like in the first grade. You think Star Trek is serious…this series was downright morose. The three main characters(Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Victor Morse) were utterly straight-faced and, even combined, had no discernable personality.
I remember one episode that freaked me out the first time I saw it. I don’t remember the name but it involved some graveyard of spaceships and some monster that grabbed you, slid you into its maw and then spat you back out dead and cocooned. Chit gave me nightmares, afterwards.
After watching a few of those episodes you’ll find yourself yearning for William Shatner’s overacting and Spock & McCoy’s verbal diatribes. lol.
Wow, I’m going to have to go and Netflix this and watch some of it again----just out of pure nostalgia.
This came out roughly in the same era as Original Battlestar Galactica.
And one thing I remember distinctly about BSG and Space 1999 is that I had bitter fights with my older sister and younger brother about watching those shows. As a geek of 11 years old or so, I just HAD to watch these shows, and my siblings wanted NOTHING to do with them.
Even though Space 1999 was probably a pretty weak show, you have to put it in context: Back then there was NOTHING on TV that was true sci-fi aside from Star Trek TOS reruns. So kids like me were starving for shows like S:1999 and BSG.
One thing was I found amusing about S:1999 compared to Star Trek was that Gene Rodenberry made a brialliant choice inventing the idea of the transport.
In terms of TV production practicality, it was much much simpler to have characters just beam from a ship set to a planet set. Space 1999 in contrast, had to show footage of an Eagle shuttlecraft(?) taking off/landing whenever characters were going somewhere.
I remeber this show as a kid and I watched it about the same time that UFO was on the air. When the UFO DVD’s came out I expected them to be very poor compared to what I remembered, but even with the campy decore and plot holes you can pass a battleship through, the stories were actually really good and helpd up over time.
So that inspired me to get all of the Space:1999 DVDs.
As I watched, I kept thinking to myself, “The next episode can’t be as bad as this one.” and I was wrong every time. 
Still, the moon base looked and and felt like what a real moon base shoud be like, and I’m in a mood to start a rewatch of the episodes.
Oftentimes you could see the wires holding the ships in place.
I always wondered what condition the earth would be in, had they ever returned.
Space 1999was one of my favorites as is mostly anything by Gerry Anderson, but the second season went to hell with the addition of Maya the morph and the monster of the week scenarios to lower the budget. The first season still holds up well for its dark content despite wooden acting,.
1999 was awesome in terms of anything but acting or plot. I realized it was a silly scenario at the time (and I was like nine.) But the design and effects were good enough to keep me hooked.
Weirdly, UFO succeeded largely on the mysterious plot, and less so on effects, et al.
Yes, I watched Space:1999 faithfully for that reason. I even watched the reruns, always hoping it would get better. It never did, but I was grateful there was any scifi on TV.
Loved this show and ate it up when I was in grade-school. The ‘eagles’ - those space shuttle like craft they had were excellent. I recall the side-arm lasers looking suspiciously like re-touched staple-guns!
The premise of the show was ridiculous, put it was quite fun!
One show that sticks out in my mind was the one that had a planet with sentient plants.
OMG, I remember that one!
The bodies weren’t cocooned, but digested and the smoking skeletons were spit back out. Have both seasons on DVD, but never finished the second one. Nostalgia only goes so far.
OMG, I just remembered the bell-bottoms!
Bell bottomed jump suits. Even worse.
Nobody, and I mean nobody looked good in those.
Oh, and now I remember the hair. Yikes!
Sandra did.
sigh
Since NBC affiliates all dropped their local weather channels on the digital subchannels, my local station started running Retro TV. I could care less about most of the programming, but I have been watching Emergency. Firemen dress pretty much the same today, but the plaid pants, sideburns and hair on the doctors still give me a chuckle. The sets are plain and sparse, too.
I am smiling from ear to ear.
Flashback?
Flashback? Ooh ya.