The current War Against Silence music-zine opens with a lovely reminiscence of “Space: 1999.”
And Space: 1999 was never intended as academic futurism, so critiquing its vision of a future we’re now past is a wildly pedantic exercise, but part of the reason I’m still going to watch the rest of the episodes is that they depict a simultaneously mis-extrapolated and poignantly naive idea of the future that has become basically unrecoverable in the two and a half decades since. The technological errors are the most blatant, of course. The moonbase has a single computer (called “Computer”, the way you call a stray cat “Kitty” and then get stuck with it), which has the expressive intelligence of a middle-school math teacher and the analytical power of a small toaster oven. Every device and instrument on the base has a special-purpose user-interface, most of which consist of rows upon identical rows of unlabeled buttons, which lends any effort to operate one while on camera the approximate verisimilitude of a four-year-old steering a chair around using a frisbee. The abundant CRTs are apparently only capable of transmitting video feeds or oscilloscope waves, so all actual important data output is produced on little scraps of calculator tape, which technicians are forever tearing off and puzzling over as if they’ve just been issued a receipt for the last line they spoke. All doors, despite having intricate control-panels on the wall beside them, are opened and closed using what appear to be Sears-surplus television remote-controls, which in close-ups turn out to have telephone keypads that do not contain zeroes. The feet of the space-suits seem to be Converse All-Stars with the logos scratched off…