At the time the series was spawned, it was very conceivable (and we all wanted to believe) the man would be stationed in space and upon the moon before the dawn of the new century.<br /><br />The success of the Apollo missions, Nixon having visited China, the planned rendezvous of the Apollo-Soyuz mission. The Cold War was ending, and we all had tremendous hope for a future in which we could all work together, and move forward. The timing of the series couldn't have been more perfect.<br /><br />The story line each and every episode strove to balance our possible future fears (fear of the unknown), with our current compassion, common-sense judgment, and morality. The production and writing staff seemed to keep the Alphan basics as: "that is possible before the new millennium." The Moonbase, the travel tubes, the medical advances, the computer control, the slow, hard to maneuver, limited-distance Eagle spacecrafts. Only the Alphan's encounters each episode seemed to push the envelope. Uncharted planets and stars, unknown energy forces, higher beings and entities, advanced technologies, physical improbabilities.<br /><br />Space 1999 was a giant leap for mankind closer to reality than Lost In Space, Star Trek, The Starlost, though I treasure those series as well for what they offered. And if you watched Space 1999 closely enough, you'd have recognized a handful of the episode plots recreated within future sci-fi series (i.e., one episode surrounding a biological computer, a collection of many minds from many different intelligent species, where Commander Koenig is forewarned that "to resist is foolish").