Space 1999 - Lunar Attack

Lunar Attack by John Rankine. Novelisation of "War Games", "The Troubled Spirit", "The Last Enemy" and "Space Brain". Rankine's second outing is a solid novelisation in the same spirit as his first, and the four stories remain faithful to their script origins. His prose style remains brisk, but includes more descriptive passages (as if he had viewed these stories before getting down to writing). The attack theme is carried through all four stories, with three depicting assaults on Alpha from external forces and a fourth from within the mind of one of their own. Teleplay purists will note more than a few discrepancies as "The Last Enemy" and "Space Brain" were extensively re-worked after completion of the principal photography. Changes include: (1) The music programme in "The Troubled Spirit" is a string quartet led by Bergman. (2) In "The Last Enemy", Dione receives reports from a male Bethan regarding the status of the wandering Moon. (3) None of the action onboard Dione's battleship Satazius appears, as this was scripted and filmed after the fact as filler for this severely under-running episode. The whole "men v. women" idea is mostly lost without Dione's glamour-girl crew. (4) The ending of "The Last Enemy" is that of the unrevised shooting script. The sequence with the two planets both threatening Alpha with destruction over Koenig's provision of co-ordinates for Satazius does not occur, nor does his desperate gambit to dispose of Dione and company. Koenig simply transmits the co-ordinates of the Bethan gunship to Talos on Delta, who immediately sends a missile strike to destroy it. (5) In "Space Brain", the lost fight between Carter and Kelly excised from the final cut is restored where a Brain-controlled Kelly attempts to send the Eagle into the centre of the Brain. (6) The ending of "Space Brain" is that of the unrevised shooting script. Koenig has a last-minute epiphany: if the antibodies are intentionally allowed into the Alpha complex, they cannot crush it, and orders all airlocks opened. The Brain survives intact, gently deflecting the Moon from its collision course.

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