Episode Guide: Year Two
Title: "The Exiles"
Within this page: Overview | Backplot | Plot Synopsis | Unanswered Questions | Analyses/Observations | Comments | Memorable Lines
Overview
The Alphans encounter spaceborn cylinders, bearing frozen prisoners from another world.
Production Number: 002 (Season Two)
Original U.K. airing week: 11 September 1976 (ATV Midlands)
Original U.S. airing week: 11 September 1976 (syndication)
Written by Donald James
Directed by Ray Austin
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.
Plot Synopsis
(From the original ITC Press Release.)
Mysterious objects in the space sky. In them: humans from another planet, preserved in a frozen state for 300 years. Two who return to consciousness on the moon have a grim story to tell. But can they be trusted?
Red alert!
Trailing across the space sky are fifty cylinder-shaped objects. But instead of the expected attack, they go into orbit around the moon. When Commander John Koenig (MARTIN LANDAU) brings one down to Alpha, the insertion of nitrogen gas causes a violent explosion. The now open cylinder reveals the unconscious, frozen body of a young man whose name, they later discover is Cantar (PETER DUNCAN)
Examined by Dr. Helena Russell (BARBARA BAIN), he is found to be in a state of deep freeze. A thin, almost invisible, plastic membrane covers his body.
When returning to consciousness, he appeals to Koenig to recover the other cylinders and save his people. They are, he says, floating in pairs and family groups and have been cast by invaders from the planet Golos.
Cautiously, Koenig gives instructions for Cantar's twin cylinder to be brought down. In it, they find Cantar's beautiful young wife Zova (STACY DORNING). But Koenig hesitates to save the others. Instinct warns him against doing so. He is also worried that the moon's life support facilities could not cope with any more, but agrees to let Cantar go ahead when he claims that he and Zova can use their skills to increase the moon's recycling capacity. They have only 36 hours to prove this before the moon's gravity shatters the containers now in orbit.
Koenig's distrust is justified when, with only three hours to go, Cantar makes for the power section. Helena and a guard try to stop them, but both collapse when he touches them on the spine. Picking up the guard's stun gun, he then fires as security chief Tony Verdeschi (TONY ANHOLT) as he touches the alarm switch.
Maya (CATHERINE SCHELL) hears the alarm, transforms herself into a snarling black panther and corners him. But she is stunned when Cantar fires at her, and both he and Sova get into the power room and begin working at the controls. The room is filled with spectacular pulsations of light and sound until Koenig manages to force his way in - only to find the room empty.
Helena and Tony return to consciousness to find themselves on the planet Golos, where Cantar and Sova are demanding that the planet's ruler Ragnar be brought to them. The truth is revealed. Cantar and Zova were leaders of a rebel group, cast out for crimes against their own people. But they have overlooked one thing. Three hundred years have gone by. The ruler is now a striking woman called Mirella (MARGARET INGLIS), a descendant of the long-dead Ragnar.
With Helena and Tony held hostage by Cantar and Zova, Koenig finds himself facing the demand that he saves the others who are still in the cylinders in exchange for Helena and Tony, with the added warning that the moon's life support systems are now tuned to Zova's mental processes and can be destroyed by simple concentration.
On Golos, Cantar is proclaiming himself the new ruler. But Helena sees one chance. If she can rip the protective membrane which has preserved his life for over 300 years, Cantar will wither rapidly into wizened, enfeebled old age...
SPACE 1999 - SERIES II
CAST LIST
EPISODE NO 2 - "THE EXILES"
DIRECTOR - RAY AUSTIN
KOENIG - MARTIN LANDAU
HELENA - BARBARA BAIN
TONY VERDESCHI - TONY ANHOLT
ALAN CARTER - NICK TATE
SAHN - ZIENIA MERTON
1ST OPERATIVE - SARAH BULLEN
MAYA - CATHERINE SCHELL
CANTAR - PETER DUNCAN
ZOVA - STACY DORNING
DR. MATHIAS - ANTON PHILLIPS
STAL - ANTHONY BLACKETT
MIRELLA - MARGARET INGLIS
OLD LADY - PEGGY LEDGER
Unanswered Questions
Analyses/Observations
Comments
Memorable Lines
"I want a transporter Eagle on the pad ready for immediate lift off. We've got to check them out. We certainly can't leave fifty missiles hanging over our heads." - John Koenig
"I'm a doctor, John. I save life for the sake of saving life." - Helena Russell
"You asked what kind of people they are. What kind of people are we?" - Tony Verdeschi
"We can't even permit any new births here on Alpha. We can barely sustain the people we have." - Helena Russell
"Helena, when I was an astronaut cadet I was on a resupply mission to a Venus space station. As we were preparing to dock, a computer diagnosis informed us of fourteen of the scientists up there were sick. Three already dead. They had a disease unknown to Earth against which we had no antidote. My commander had to make a decision. He couldn't bring that disease back to Earth. We left those men to die." - John Koenig
"Is survival all important? What sort of society is it that abandons fifty innocent beings?" - Tony Verdeschi
"You're too feeble to fire that gun. Cantar, you're three hundred years old." - Helena Russell
"Shallow. That's what you are, Tony. What does it matter what I look like on the outside. It's still me, inside. Kiss. Be known as a man of principle." - Maya "I'd sooner be known as a man of taste." - Tony Versechi
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