Episode Guide: Year One
Title: "The Full Circle"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
While investigating a nearby planet, the Alphans mysteriously disappear -- and pre-historic Stone Age humans begin to appear...
Production Number: 015 (Season One)
- filmed Tuesday, September 24 - Tuesday, October 8, 1974
Original U.K. airing week: 11 December 1975 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 30 January 1976 (syndication)
Written by Jesse Lasky, Jr. and Pat Silver
Directed by Bob Kellett
Backplot
- In the year 1999, lunar nuclear waste storage dumps have exploded, due to magnetic radiation, sending Earth's moon into interstellar space. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, unable to escape, are seeking a new home.
- The Moon has finished it's encounter with the ice planet Ultima Thule and the lost Uranus Probe crew from Earth in the previous episode, "Death's Other Dominion."
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
The centuries roll back for the occupants of the Moon through a time warp of 40,000 years to the Stone Age and meeting up with themselves as cavemen.
The discovery of a planet, given the name of Retha, has a bewildering outcome when a seven-man landing party fails to return. The Eagle in which they were traveling, brought back to the Moon by remote control, is found to be empty except for the body of a Stone Age man.
Commander Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) immediately orders a fullscale rescue, led by himself with Dr. Helena Russell (BARBARA BAIN), Sandra (ZIENIA MERTON), Alan Carter (NICK TATE). A successful landing is made on the strangely beautiful plant, and Koenig and Helena set off through a misty atmosphere.
Worried because contact is lost with them, Carter follows, leaving Sandra behind in the Eagle, but he falls into a cleverly camouflaged pit, where he is trapped by cavemen until managing to escape through their being distracted by hearing Sandra's voice and seeing her face on his comlock. But there is even greater danger for Sandra as she is carried off by a caveman, taking her to a vast cave where the Cave Chief has his lair, with his Cave Wife and other cave people sitting around fires.
To the obvious jealousy of the Cave Wife, the Chief takes an immediate interest in Sandra who looks at him first in fear, then astonishment. Under the thick hair covering head and face, he looks just like John Koenig, but there is no sign of recognition from him as she pleads for help -- but help does come from him when her captor, offering her a beautiful jaguar skin, tears at her tunic.
In the fight that follows, Sandra's captor is defeated and Sandra, grabbing a stone, crashes it on to the Cave Chief's face and escapes, only to be recaptured and taken back to the cave. The Cave Wife is tending her husband's blood-stained face, but it is clear he is going to die.
Meanwhile, Professor Bergman (BARRY MORSE) and Kano (CLIFTON JONES) have followed in another Eagle and have found Carter. Searching for the others, they come across Koenig lying unconscious in a clearing, his face covered in dried blood. He is taken back to the moon, where the results of the test on the dead caveman in the early Eagle are coming through. He undoubtedly belongs to the Cro-Magnon period of 40,000 years back -- yet his teeth are capped and as the significance of this sinks in, finger prints and blood group tests prove him to be the pilot of the first recce (recon) to Retha.
It is the now-conscious Koenig who realises that he has been through a time warp back to the Stone Age becoming the Cave Chief of the era. The Cave Wife must be Helena: the cave people the other members of Moonbase who have landed on Retha.
All are facing death. Carter has set out to find Sandra, ready to kill with his deadly ray gun -- and if he succeeds, the people he will kill will be Helena and his own comrades.
SCREENPLAY BY JESSE LASKY JR. & PAT SILVER
DIRECTED BY BOB KELLETT
with
PRENTIS HANCOCK as PAUL MORROW
CLIFTON JONES as DAVID KANO
ZIENIA MERTON as SANDRA BENES
ANTON PHILLIPS as DR. MATHIAS
NICK TATE as ALAN CARTER
OLIVER COTTON as SPEARMAN
Unanswered Questions
Analyses/Observations
- The Alphans have deigned this planet Retha, from the Greek meaning "Best One." (The specific reason for the naming of the planet "Retha" isn't revealed.)
- This is a rare occasion for David Kano to pilot an Eagle.
Comments
Memorable Lines
"Damn. I mean an incredible experience like that and no first hand information. I mean, you go through a time warp, you go back forty thousand years and no one can tell me what it felt like." - Victor Bergman
"Under the skin, do you think we've changed that much in forty thousand years?" - Helena Russell
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