Earthly ring about Elma’s problems

Press, 22 January 1979, Page 13

Earthly ring about Elma’s problems

I Television and Radio

By

DERRICK MANSBRIDGE

I have always been a sucker for science-fiction films and television series! — ever since reading H. G.| Wells’s “War of the! Worlds.” And although 1 scoff at those who talk so glibly about U.F.O.s and “little green men,” I always hedge my bets when put to the test. However, there is one thing I am certain about —i

if those who live in outer space and are (or are not) spending the summer holiday circling over Kaikoura look anything like the people who populate the other worlds of America’s popular sci-fi TV series, 1 don't want anything to do with them.

Take Friday evening’s edition of “Space 1999” as an example. Commander Koenig, that poker-faced, coldblooded astronaut from Moon Alpha, is forced to crash-land his Eagle on the moon of planet Elma after answering a distress signal. He finds it is just a detention camp for political prisoners, under the control of space Amazonians, the head of whom is hiding from the prisoners that something has

Elma ‘hat has Killed off the whole population.

, Take away the space craft and the fancy place names, ar«t the location might well Mve been Siberia and the •prisoners were Russian dissidents, The scriptwriters Blight have needed to add a btcie snow here and there, end asked us to believe that the N.K.V.D. had been taken

11 over by a Russian women’s i-lib, otherwise they would >jnot have had to add any- . | thing more. i! The inhabitants of Elma, I'apparently, are identical to i you and me. The nasty ones rare either Hitler 01 Stalm > and the good ones either, i Roy Rogers or John Wayne.! Not a "little green man” or' J a breathing, talking cabbage ■‘anywhere in sight. How sad

and disillusioning for anyone who sees more than enough of our kind every day of the week.

“Space 1999” might well be the continuation of “Star Trek” under a different name, for all the TV sci-fi scriptwriters are concerned. Is there something lacking in us? This need to hold up a mirror and see only our own likeness from here to infinity. And not only our

I likeness, but identical problems, desires, and fulfilJments. No wonder those! • “little green men” prefer to! ‘I fly over Kaikoura and not land in the high street. If [they can tune in to our telei vision programmes they I must be laughing their ; pointed heads off. , .i Surely, the day will come j when viewers around the . world will insist not only on scientific gimmicks and ■ mindless nonsense, but J scientific probabilities and ’ intelligent stories. c After all, are we so per--1 fectly shaped, so ideally constructed, that we cannot ; imagine anything better? As > my dog replied when toldj that 1 was beginning to look I > like him: “Do you think that} • flatters me?”

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