Startling Barbara Bain

The Metamorph. Season 2, Episode 1. First broadcast Saturday 4 September 1976. After just over six months, we’re back, and all the members of the Moonbase Alpha crew who weren’t killed off by the producers during the break are huddled in a cramped and airless cupboard some feet underground, awaiting the arrival of this week’s alien threat — played by Brian Blessed dressed as a badger crossed with an onion — who has no desire to kill everyone on the base — preferring instead to enslave and lobotomise them all before using them to train his latest Large Language Model. Which seems fitting, given just how dumb everything has suddenly got.

The Last Enemy. Season 1, Episode 24. First broadcast Thursday 19 February 1976. This week, the Moon becomes a reluctant missile platform for two implacable and entirely incompatible genders, both completely untroubled by the possibility that they might kill everyone on the base. Also, the show ends. Sort of.

The Troubled Spirit. Season 1, Episode 22. First broadcast Thursday 5 February 1976. The 70s have come roaring back on Moonbase Alpha this week — with a séance, some dank hydroponic weed, and a beardo hippy and his Coral Electric Sitar. All of which inevitably summons an irrational paranormal phenomenon intent (as always) on killing everyone on the base. But not before some urgent and profound philosophical questions are raised, including Why?, What on earth is going on here? and Death, eh? What’s with that?

Missing Link. Season 1, Episode 20. First broadcast Thursday 22 January 1976. This month, John Koenig awakens on an island full of noises, sounds and sweet airs: there he meets Temu Prospero and his daughter Vana, who is curious about this human concept you call love. Meanwhile, back on the base, Helena, Victor and Paul decide that killing the Commander would significantly improve everyone’s mood.

The Infernal Machine. Season 1, Episode 18. First broadcast Thursday 8 January 1976. This month, Leo McKern turns up on the Moon with his enormous scary spaceship husband, who threatens to kill everyone on the base and decimate its sizeable collection of Kenner die-cast model vehicles. But there’s also a moving depiction of grief here, and some kind of attempt to explore why exactly we all continue putting up with each other.

Another Time, Another Place. Season 1, Episode 16. First broadcast Thursday 18 December 1975. This month, an unexpected scripting anomaly returns the Moon to Earth’s orbit, where it will inevitably crash into another slightly older Moon, killing everyone on the base. But in the meantime, we experience a strange and elegiac meditation on having nowhere to belong and on our subjection to the vagaries of time. Haunting and inexplicable.

Earthbound. Season 1, Episode 14. First broadcast Thursday 4 December 1975. This month, to our surprise, Christopher Lee turns up on Alpha, not to kill everyone on the base for once, but just to be terribly nice to everyone. But Alpha harbours a villain of its own, one even deadlier than Christopher Lee, but mostly to himself.

End of Eternity. Season 1, Episode 12. First broadcast Thursday 20 November 1975. This month, Peter Bowles drops Jonty and Charlotte off at school before heading over to Pinewood Studios to spend the day throwing security guards at each other and threatening to torture and kill everyone on the base. While wearing a surprisingly lovely outfit.

Black Sun. Season 1, Episode 10. First broadcast Thursday 6 November 1975. This month’s eerie and irrational space anomaly is, of course, intent on killing everyone on the base, and so with no hope left, the crew have no choice but to discover love, tranquillity and grace. And to learn the valuable lesson that certain death is never certain when everyone is still contracted to do another twenty episodes.

Dragon’s Domain. This month’s eldritch alien threat is, for once, not intent on killing everyone on the base; instead it takes the more focused approach of killing everyone on a deep space probe and then hunting down and destroying Moonbase Alpha’s resident Italian big game hunter. Oh, and traumatising an entire generation of nerdy moppets in the 1970s.

Voyager’s Return. This month, John and Victor decide that the pursuit of a shoebox full of polaroids is a good reason to risk the crew’s lives — entrusting their safety to this week’s guest star, a Nazi rocket scientist or something with a secret past that inevitably involved killing a whole bunch of people in an easily foreseeable accident. However, things hot up with the arrival of three steatopygous spaceships captained by a heavily made-up alien with no facial expression, who is understandably resolved to kill everyone on the base and all the loved ones they left behind them.

War Games. Season 1, Episode 4. First broadcast Thursday 25 September 1975. This month’s ethereal immortal beings in a surreal Pinewood studio are Isla Blair and Anthony Valentine, who are (reasonably enough) so keen to avoid meeting the crew of Moonbase Alpha that they decide to just kill everyone on the base instead. Or do they?

Force of Life. Season 1, Episode 2. First broadcast Thursday 11 September 1975. An eerie blue glow invades Alpha and takes control of a young Ian McShane, who suddenly becomes prone to bouts of German Expressionism and freezing attractive young people from the 1970s. A star is born this week, in Force of Life.