The series was set on Moonbase Alpha, the Earth’s first manned base on the moon, during routine movement of the bases nuclear waste stores, an explosion occurs which rips the moon out of the Earth’s orbit, and throws it into space. Knowing there is no way to get back to Earth, the Alphans embark on a journey to find a new planet to live on.

The series had an all star cast for the time, with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, highly successful stars of ’Mission: Impossible’, as Commander John Koenig and Dr. Helena Russell. Also cast was Barry Morse as Professor Victor Bergman.

The Series changed quite radically, when it returned for a second season, bringing in Catherine Schell as a shape-changing alien called Maya. An interesting fact is that Look-in actually changed to this second season format for the strip, quite a few weeks before the TV episodes first screened. With nothing like the internet, or much advanced press at the time, it must have left a few readers bemused, to see all these new characters, and the disappearance of Victor. I certainly was anyway.

The picture strip appeared in Look-in on 13th Sept 1975, replacing ‘The Adventures of Black Beauty’, and also the same week the programme aired, they were this sure it would be a success. The first strip was drawn by John M. Burns and written, as they all were, by Angus P. Allan. The strip ran for three stories before moving to a black and white format, drawn by Mike Noble. Mike continued for the rest of the run, bar one, which Burns returned for. The strip finally finishing on 26th March 1977, it was replaced by ‘Just William’ the following week.

Now relive the excitement of SPACE:1999 once again, click the link above to read the stories in an uninterrupted order. As time goes on, more strips will be added to fill in the gaps until the full run of Space:1999 is represented.