399 – Space: 1999 – The Immunity Syndrome

A giant space amoeba invades our galaxy, threatening all life and the valiant crew of the starship Enterprise must save us all or die trying.  Whoops, sorry.  Wrong DVD. Let’s try that again: Cmdr. John Koenig and the Alphans encounter a nonsensical planet. Ben and Eugene discuss. Episode Synopsis:   2310 Days after leaving Earth’s orbit, Alpha has been surveying a promising planet for two days.  There is a strange, inaccessible alien structure, but otherwise the planet seems deserted.   While everything looks good, John Koenig has imposed a strict quarantine on eating or drinking anything until it’s all been checked out.  That is, unlike all the previous planetary surveys when they just started munching the moment they arrived. [expand title=”More…” swaptitle=”Less” tag=”strong”] But it’s not the local foods they need to worry about, first a disposable crewman sees a mysterious light and goes murderously insane, nearly killing Tony and then Tony sees the light with similar results. On Alpha, Maya reviews the survey results and everything looks amazing.  It looks like Alpha may have found a home! Koenig and security track down and eventually subdue Tony, who lapses into a coma.  They must get him back to Moonbase Alpha immediately.  Koenig and Carter take Tony back to Alpha, but the Eagle starts to malfunction.  It literally is falling apart as they fly  On the planet, the quarantine period is over and everyone who ate or drank anything dies. The Eagle crashes.  Everyone makes it out alive, but the other Eagle is suffering the same fate.  All their metals and electronics are corroding, the atmosphere is turning lethal and all the food and water is poisonous. Using solar cells from the alien structure and plastic transmitter bits, Koenig and team build a transmitter, ordering that Alpha refrain from any rescue attempts.  No one is to come down to the planet. Given a direct order, Helena decides that she must go down to the planet because perhaps her frozen face can halt the planet from turning into a lethal death trap for everyone.  Maya decides to join her because of course she does!  While they have no helpful new information and no plan to help, they do have a plan to get down there.  They’ll use Alpha’s carbon fiber re-entry glider for a one-way trip to the surface. Fortunately, they gain access to the alien structure and find the Captain’s logs explaining how this alien expedition arrived on the planet and it was a paradise, but soon everything turned to poison.  Then they discovered there is a power alien life form on the planet that, when it attempts to communicate, drives everyone insane and ultimately dead. Helena and Maya crash the glider, but escape OK. The aliens had created a suit to try to communicate with the alien, but a flaw in the suit resulted in the alien leader going insane and dying, too.  Koenig and the gang fix the suit, Koenig talks with the alien, which had no clue that any other beings existed.  It also learns that it accidentally killed all those other beings and feels much regret.  The planet returns to normal and Bill Frazier in the orbit Eagle returns and picks everyone up to go home.  The moon is moving out of range and they must abandon this planet.[/expand]