By Kinggodzillak

"403 days after leaving Earth's orbit. Dr Helena Russell recording. For the sixth consecutive day we've been travelling in an area of deep space where the stars are so close that we're constantly bathed in a lovely blue light. There are no patients in the Medical Section, our life support systems are functioning smoothly, and the Universe about us is incredibly peaceful."

Interestingly, that whole 'lovely blue light' thing has no relevance to the story - and surely having the stars close enough to give off such light means a high risk of going into orbit (or worse) around one of those stars? It doesn't matter anyhoo, cos we don't even get to see it. What we do get, however is another status report about midway through the episode, but I'll mention that in the quotes section...

Friday, October 20th, 2000.

A fleet of fifty-three alien capsules enter into orbit around the Moon, and John orders that one be brought down to Alpha. Forcing their way into it, the Alphans find a young man named Cantar, whom they eventually revive. He tells them that he and the others in the capsules are exiles from the planet Golos, and requests that the other capsules be brought down to Alpha. The base's life support systems could never support fifty new people, so Cantar and his newly-thawed wife Zova are given permission to enhance those systems...but can these exiles be trusted?

What do you think?

Kidnapping Helena and Tony, Cantar and Zova use the adapted life-support system to transport themselves to Golos, seizing control of the main life-plant. The pair make a simple demand - if the Alphans bring down and revive the other exiles, Helena and Tony will be returned. Of course, if they do that, then Golos and all its people will become the slaves of Cantar and his followers...

Donald James.

Ray Austin.

Tony Anholt, Nick Tate and Zienia Merton.

Peter Duncan (Cantar), Stacy Dorning (Zova).

Margaret Inglis (Mirella), Anthony Blackett (Stal), Peggy Ledger (Old Lady), Anton Phillips (Dr Mathias).

While mulling over the problem of what to do about the capsules in orbit around the moon, John lets us in on a little bit of his past that shows why he is the man he is.

Now, it's a nice attempt at fleshing the character out by showing us what guides his thinking, and believe it or not this will be back to haunt ol Koeniggy in a later episode. After sharing this with Helena and Tony, they convince him to give the Golosians a chance, so Koenig calls Cantar to his quarters...

And shoots him.

Yep. All that character development goes straight out the window as our fearless hero just shoots the poor guy down, taking both Helena and Tony by surprise. "Have you gone mad!?!?" cries Tony, and for a moment, yes, John does look like he's gone completely bonkers. "I had to see whether our weapons were effective against him." replies John. "I had to stun him."

Er...no you didn't.

And then, to round it all off, after Helena confirms that Cantar is in fact alright (why does she need to check? Did she suspect John might have actually just murdered him? If the laser is set on stun, then surely he should be stunned...but in fact, as we learn later, he's faking it, so Helena, with all her medical training, should actually realise that...but anyway...) John then says "Alright, let's let them work on improving our life support system."

Uh huh...he's just shot one of them and now expects them to work for him. I admire the logic there. Even if the Golosians weren't evil, I would still expect them to kick up a stink about this, but they just calmly accept that the Commander is a little bit cuckoo...

Later on, he shoves a security guard out of the way so that he can get into a room first, and then later deals with Zova by shoving her out of an Eagle and into space. He's a wild and crazy guy...

This episode is the first to establish the somewhat silly idea that Maya can only remain in another form for one hour, a rule that exists mainly to put the character in danger should she need to hold that form for longer - and also to be ignored by writers when it's inconvenient to their story.

Transformations this week include Helena (oddly, her usual transformation sound effect is missing), a guy in a monkey costume with a green face to lift a girder (see below), a panther to scare Cantar and Zova, and an old woman to provide end-of-episode larks with Tony.

The panther thing is probably worth going into in a little detail, because it raises the question of how intelligent she is when assuming another form. After Cantar and Zova break into the power section, Maya and Tony arrive to deal with them. Tony gets zapped almost instantly, of course, but Maya leaps towards the villains, performing a rather nice mid-air transformation and landing in front of them in panther form. Both Golosians scream and back away quickly, dropping the laser they stole from a security guard. However, Maya-panther just sits there, satisfied with a job well done, as Zova very slowly picks up the laser again...and shoots her.

Hmm. That could have gone better, methinks.

No beer gags here, folks, although the guy does seemed to have lightened up a bit this week.

I mentioned Maya turning into Helena above, and that's because the two of them know that the episode is underrunning and want to use the extra time to play a little trick on our good commander. Can he tell which of them is the real one? Of course he can, and the result is a fairly cringeworthy scene with awful music and it's all fairly unpleasant to watch. Particularly interesting is that Helena is perfectly happy to let new girl Maya snog her man - not just a little peck, but full-on mashing. Interesting.

This episode is the first to show Maya and Tony's developing friendship - and at the moment, it is just that. Nothing more.

Oh, and Petrov seems to be arranging a date with Nina. More on that in a mo...

No unexplained disappearances this week, although Alan doesn't get much to do...

Surprisingly, for an episode set mostly on Alpha, there's no important one-episode Alphan lurking around at all...

Quite a good episode for the extras, this one. It's quite nice that some of them were often given a fair bit to do.

Peter is, as usual, lurking in Command Center throughout the episode. Nothing much out of the ordinary there. Let's see what the others are up to...

Hello nurse! Yes, this week, Jenny is working as a nurse in the medical section, and she's wearing...um...

Yes...well...look, I'm in a bit of a pickle, here. Frankly, what I want to say is "Phwoar!" - but, that's not a very PC term, really, is it? However...I never say "Phwoar!" about anyone...so surely I am entitled to, given that it's not something I usually do, yes?

I think I might just drool, actually. Moving on...

As mentioned above, Nina (wearing Jenny's ID badge, I note) seems to be getting chatted up by Petrov, and actually gets a few words to say. Those words being "Mmm-hmm", "Yes", and "Argh!". These lines are very clearly dubbed, and she has an American accent. She speaks again in a later episode with the same American accent and there she doesn't look dubbed, so...maybe it really is the actress speaking. Whoever she is.

Why "Argh?", you ask? Well, as soon as Petrov walks off screen, there's a great big explosion. He himself has not exploded, apparently it's something to do with what Cantar and Zova are doing, but it's not really explained. Anyway, there's flames and wreckage, and piles of boxes with a desk on top of them (?) and Petrov with a big metal beam 'crushing' his legs. Nina to the rescue! Yes, she leaps straight in to save the poor guy, bravely risking life and limb, and, although John and Tony are just a split second behind her, it's she who has to clear a path for them. And there's exciting action music playing as well, and he's holding her hand while she tries to pull him free. Aww. They have a thing for each other.

Anyway, the girder is lifted by Monkey Maya, and Nina starts to pull her boyfriend-to-be free - when John suddenly leaps in to help, which kind of ruins it, actually, as the Nina actress is already pulling one way when Landau comes in and steals her moment of glory by pulling in a completely different direction. Hard luck, that. Still, it's a big scene for her first appearance...

Later on, the great security guard Pierce Quinton makes an appearance as he and John try to break in to the power room to stop the Golosians. He even gets a line - "The door is jammed, Commander!" - which is the first of (I think) a grand total of two for the entire season.

JOHN (on the Golosian pods): "Detonation possibilities?"

TONY: "Three. Pressure, time-fused, or remote control."

Say what? Do you mean what you could do to detonate them, or what whoever you think controls them could do? Because if you mean the former, then how would you ever access them for remote control? And if you mean the latter, then...I don't think you're covering all the options (not least of which being that they might not actually be missiles, as indeed is the case)...

-

HELENA (on Cantar): "There's a plastic membrane covering his entire body...oh, you can't see it, it's as fine as tissue..."

What? Plastic covering everything? Yes, apparently, that is the case...so, do you need to breath? Or eat? Apparently this membrane also prevents aging, but I'll go into that below...

Nope. There are a few jokey scenes this week, but no real stupid lines that stand out...

"It's some kind of..." -

JOHN: "Moving parts. There's some sort of mechanism inside."

"It's out of this world..."

HELENA (on the Golosian pods): "It looks like a swarm of space-bees..."

TONY: "Yeah. Every one with an atomic sting in its tail, maybe."

Oh, ouch. Just...ouch...

-

HELENA: "John, they're so young. Must you always assume the worst?"

JOHN: "Yes."

"I'm a joyless old bastard and the only pleasure I get is from shooting people when they least expect it..."

-

HELENA: "Moonbase Alpha Status Report. Supplemental. Doctor Helena Russell recording. For almost thirty hours Cantar and Zova have been working to adjust our life support systems. The rest of our personnel are back on daily routine, doing their jobs when on duty, relaxing when off. We're all grateful for the compassion Commander Koenig has shown for the aliens. There is once again a warm feeling of well-being on Moonbase Alpha."

What - everyone's grateful? I doubt that. I'd imagine your average Mr Waste Recycling Technician couldn't give a toss what the stupid aliens get up to...

-

JOHN: "Tony. I'll be with Doctor Russell if you need me - for anything!"

"No matter how small it seems, it's got to be better than talking to her. In fact, if you could call through about five minutes after I get there and fake a report of an alien invasion fleet or something, that would really help me out..."

Helena and Tony take a trip to planet Golos ("Known to us as the Peace Planet.") with Cantar and Zova. There they find some bearded men in grey pyjamas guarding 'the main life-plant', and scare them into bringing the leader of the planet over to see them. Turns out that it's not some fellow named Ragnor, as Cantar was expecting, but is instead an old woman named Mirella - "Chief councillor of Golos".

All the Golosians have red spots on their forehead and temples, thus proving their alienness.

The Alphans fall for Cantar's plan hook line and sinker. They're allowed to rewire the entire life support system, and are watched over by Helena and one guard. That's all. Just the one. So when these friendly aliens turn out to be not so friendly after all, said guard is next to useless.

There's very little model work in this one, but what there is is reasonably good. No explosions, but there are a few nice shots of Eagles over the Moon, and I like the rather trippy scenes of people travelling to and from Golos...

Eagles 1 and 2 are sent to intercept the Golosian pods, then recalled to base when John, Maya and Alan show up in Eagle 4. Although this is apparently a transporter Eagle, it has a grab thingy on it, which is used to transport pods back to Alpha. Eagle 4 is used again near the end of the episode.

Alpha gets away quite lightly here compared to last week. One entire corridor is trashed, and Petrov may or may not have lost the use of his legs (also, an off-screen voice tells the Commander that "We have another casualty in here!" just as Petrov is being stretchered away). Koenig later shoots out the door lock to the power section, and presumably whatever it was that the Golosians did to the life-support system needed to be undone...

Here we see the first appearance of the life-support section; it'll have different appearances in later episodes, so we can assume it's an entirely different room.

Right next door to this is the Power Room, which will also change appearances for later episodes.

Best we can do here this week is a scene where Rescue, Medical and Decontamination are called to the underground bunker where the capsule is being brought into. Lots of running, including Jenny in her short skirt...and...um...er...actually, there's a rather nice bit of music accompanying all this. It's somewhat military-ish, recalling the old Thunderbirds style music, a rarity for this series. In fact, all the music in this one is rather good...

No props, models or actors to mention this week. However, the basic plot of this episode is very similar to the first season episode 'End of Eternity', where the Alphans inadvertently release from a passing asteroid an unstoppable alien killer in the shape of Peter Bowles, who had been imprisoned inside said asteroid . After rampaging through the base and killing one or two people, and after all else had failed, John ended up tricking him into an airlock and opening the door, blowing the evil guy into space just as he does to Zova here. At the end of that episode, Helena actually said "We meddled. We interfered in another people's justice. We must learn to leave some things alone."

Evidently, that lesson was not learnt very well.

Helena mentions that no new births are permitted on Alpha, which may or may not conflict with the birth seen in the first season episode Alpha Child...

'A cylinder-shaped object floating in space is recovered with a young man named Cantar, this marks trouble.'

What? Ignoring the fact that there was more than one cylinder...'this marks trouble'??? Honestly, what of sissy-ass talk is that? Even 'this causes a spot of bother to all concerned' would have sounded better...

Traitors of Planet Golos.

First point - when we last saw her, Maya had just lost her beloved father and everything she'd ever known. This week, she's fully integrated into the Alphan community as if she's always been there, and she's the new science officer - replacing the one her father killed, no less. Now, surely someone somewhere on the writing staff had to think that the story of Maya's arrival on Alpha and struggle to fit in was a story that the audience would want to see? It's full of dramatic possibilities; Maya's possible resentment towards Koenig for destroying Psychon and killing her father, and resentment from the Alphans towards this alien whose father killed quite a few people last week. With a little work, this episode could have easily been that story, placing the insecure Maya on the side of the Golosians as she recognises that their situation is similar to hers. She could even have demonstrated that naive streak again by siding with them, only to look stupid when the Golosians do turn out to be nasty pieces of work...

I have to question a few points related to the handling of these containers...why bring them down? Why why why? Why do the containers need to be opened on Alpha? Surely a laboratory Eagle in orbit would be the safest place to carry out a basic examination. If it goes up in smoke, then damage is minimal...

Cantar is assumed killed when the Alphans blast their way into his capsule. He is then taken to Medical Center, where his apparently-being-dead-ness is monitored by lots of computers. Why? And why does it take so long for him to revive? He wasn't even injured...

Why, when Cantar points out that the capsules will shatter if left in orbit too long, does no-one suggest bringing them down to Alpha but not opening them? If they've survived for three hundred years, then presumably they'll survive another 300 - by which time the Alphans might have found a home? At this point, no-one suspects the Golosians are evil exiles, so why not bring the containers down and just store them somewhere until these fifty extra people can be supported?

When John stuns Cantar, Mathias tells Zova that he'll "regain consciousness in an hour." As soon as he leaves the room, Cantar wakes up. Later, Tony is stunned twice, and wakes up after about five minutes each time. In fact, he and Helena are conscious when they arrive on Golos, despite having been out of it when they left Alpha. I think all this is meant to mean that either the writer forgot his own idea, or that Mathias is just a really bad doctor who doesn't know what he's talking about. Given that he disappears after this episode, it's probably the latter...

He's probably done it before and I've just not really noticed until now, but John for some reason shouts all his lines whenever he wears a spacesuit. Everyone else talks - loudly, but it is just talking - and he's yelling. Odd.

The underground research facility seems pretty badly designed - one small room at the end of a long tunnel down in the catacombs. There's no visible way in or out except that tunnel (even though the travel tube somehow got there) - so if the capsule had exploded, and there had been a cave-in...well, it would have been all terribold and disasterscraden, oh folly folly...

Zova is a cutey.

Peter Duncan is dubbed throughout. Very badly.

Footage of both the previous episode and of an episode yet to come is used while Helena makes her supplementary report. A shot of boosters being fitted to a laboratory Eagle is lifted from The Metamorph, while footage from episode 6 (The Taybor) offers a model shot of Fraser driving a moonbuggy, as well as lots of bikini-clad ladies oiling each other up in the Solarium. Sadly, Nina and Jenny are not among them, but Kate is, and so is a pre Allo' Allo' Vicki Michelle...

Apparently a sequence cut from the 'let's confuse John' scene in this episode had Helena and Maya discussing ladies fashions. I probably wouldn't have mentioned it, except that the first frame of that scene as it appears in the finished episode (see the top of this section) makes it very obvious that the scene was originally longer.

Sculpture is apparently a hobby of Helena's, as here she's made a copy of her own head to give to John. This talent is never mentioned again, and only exists here to allow Zova a means to telepathically torture her (mashing up the sculpture's face causes her pain).

Aside from being obvious padding, the whole Petrov-getting-his-legs-crushed thing isn't quite so dramatic when you notice that the actor's got plenty of room to move his legs and is wiggling them like a good un...not to mention the fact that the girder is obviously a polystyrene one. Not only that, but when the medics arrive they pick him by his legs and he doesn't even react. Nerves of steel, that boy.

A particular sound effect heard on Golos has been used in Gerry Anderson productions since Fireball XL5. Just thought I'd mention that...

Everyone seems very surprised to learn that Cantar, Zova, and the rest of the exiles left Golos three hundred years ago...that is, until Cantar provides a wild theory that could just be the key to the whole mystery: "Of course!" cries he. "Time on Golos continued while we floated frozen in space!"

Really? Wow, thanks for that. Poirot, you've done it again.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, Koenig deals with Zova by shoving her out of the Eagle. Earlier on, she'd said that "your life support systems are now tuned to my mental processes.", meaning that if she wanted, she could somehow telepathically destroy them. For some reason, she doesn't actually do that when thrown into space. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe she was lying. At any rate, she seems to be slowly faling to her eventual death out on the lunar surface. Charming.

Death swiftly follows for her husband Cantar. While he's distracted by Tony acting like an idiot, Helena sneaks in close and sinks her nails into his face - piercing that plastic membrane which, you will recall, protects his entire body. Now then, what would you expect to happen here?

a) He bleeds a little, but that's it.

or

b) He, for some reason, ages three hundred years in about a minute.

Well, I'm sure it made sense to somebody.

At the end of the episode, the Alphans magically send the Golosian pods on their way by means of an 'antigravity effect'. Great. Really super. So why the hell didn't you do that in the first place???

I hope you at least stapled a warning notice on one of them, for future travellers unlucky enough to cross paths with them...

While not as impressive as the first episode, this one is still rather good, despite a few silly scenes to pad out a very simple story, and quite a bit of bad dubbing. But again, it feels like an episode from the first season, which is nice.

Technology, of the future!

"Two episodes in, and no-one's so much as lifted a fist to beat me up yet. Time to go, I think..."