DIDJA NOTICE?

 

Eagles 2 and 7 are in use at the beginning of this episode.

 

At 0:29 on the Blu-ray, Eagle 2 is seen flying through space with the cockpit windows visible. Alan can be seen in the pilot's seat with a spacesuit collar visible on his neck and no one in the co-pilot seat. Yet, when the scene changes to the cockpit interior, Ken Johnson is in the co-pilot's seat and both men are wearing standard uniforms, not spacesuits.

 

In the episode, the planet the Alphans cross paths with is called Ariel. The Zack comic book adaptation reveals that the planet's sun is called Daius.

 

The alien probe miniature changes a bit from shot-to-shot and its attachment bsit to the Eagle cockpit changes position.

 

The alien probe appears to have alien writing on it. This large prop version of the probe is much more detailed than either of the two miniature models seen previously.

 

When the alien device unexpectedly begins emitting gas, Koenig quickly rushes Dr. Russell and Bergman out of the Technical Section room and seals the door, telling them, "Helena, prepare to receive casualties. Victor, analyze that gas sooner than possible!" It's hard to say whether the "sooner than possible" line was a flub made by actor Martin Landau or written that way intentionally to convey an ironic sense of urgency.

 

The alien objects pour an Earth-level atmosphere over the Moon and Sandra reports that the gravity is also increasing to Earth equivalent. In the Powys novelization, she also reports that the Moon's rate of rotation has increased to a near twenty-four hour cycle. 

 

At 11:41 on the Blu-ray, the towers seen on the Moon's surface as Morrow and Sandra walk out of the base airlock to test the atmosphere are presumably some of the gravity towers, but they look different than those that appeared in previous episodes.

 

At 11:41 on the Blu-ray, seam lines of the background "sky" can be seen on the wall of the set.

 

    After breathing the new air of the Moon, Morrow and Sandra rush to hug each other and, as they do, Morrow's open helmet visor falls back down to cover his face and they both laugh about it and Morrow raises the visor up again. It seems as if this may have been a blooper that occurred while shooting and the production decided to leave it in.

    Notice also that the pair try to kiss, but their bulky helmets get in the way, another glimpse of their romantic relationship as glimpsed in previous episodes.

 

Playing badminton on the surface of the Moon, Tanya and Alan are wearing Alpha Moonbase tank tops!

 

At 13:05 on the Blu-ray, a globe of the Death Star is seen among the outdoor revelers.

 

At 13:16 on the Blu-ray, a handle that was never seen before is suddenly in place to allow the window in Koenig's office to be opened! Why would open windows ever be an option on the Moon when the base was built?? However, the Powys novelization (and the original 1975 novelization, for that matter) explains that the window was just installed to take advantage of the Moon's new climate and that the room it is in is actually in the Technical Section, not Koenig's office (though it looks much like Koenig's office!).

 

Part of a ceiling structure of the "outdoor" set can be seen to the left of the gravity tower at 13:44 on the Blu-ray.

 

During her stroll on the Moon's surface with Paul, Sandra remarks that the personnel of the base have done the longest tour of duty ever.

 

Bergman is excited about the prospect of starting rain cycles on the Moon and growing crops in the lunar dirt. Koenig reminds him that it took 25 years to reclaim the Sahara desert. In reality, the Sahara has not been reclaimed and, in fact, the desert continues to grow larger. In the more technologically advanced Space: 1999 universe, it seems this was not the case.

 

When it starts raining on the Moon, Bergman rejoices that soon the Sea of Tranquility will be an actual sea and the craters will become lakes. Koenig rains on his parade by pointing out that Alpha is built inside a crater, so it could soon be underwater. According to most Space: 1999 sources, Alpha is located in Plato crater.

 

At 17:25 on the Blu-ray, a stray hair can be seen stuck on the camera lens at the left of screen.

 

At 17:31 on the Blu-ray, Alpha personnel are seen bringing supplies into the survey Eagle from the exterior doors on both sides. But the previous establishing shot showed the Eagle on the landing pad with just the starboard door docked. It seems that the interior scene was meant to be of an Eagle still in the underground hangar.

 

Carter flies Eagle 28 as the Alphans survey the newly-habitable Moon for the best places to live.

 

In the Eagle, Morrow points out that there is a heavy rain cloud forming over the Taurus mountains. This is an actual mountain range (usually referred to in Latin as Montes Taurus) on the Moon, named for the Taurus Mountains in Turkey.

 

After Eagle 28 crashes, a number of Eagles are ordered into the air in a search pattern: Eagles 9, 12, 24, 19, and 14.

 

After the crash, Carter remarks that there are 27 serviceable Eagles available at Alpha to search for them.

 

When the rescue Eagle flies nearby searching for the crash survivors, why don't Carter and Morrow attempt to contact with it their commlocks?

 

Dr. Russell discovers that briassic acid has leaked after the crash and contaminated the food, medical supplies, and water. "Briassic acid" appears to be a fictitious acid.

 

At 33:21 on the Blu-ray, the last water jug on Eagle 28 is sitting without it's cap on when Morrow grabs it to pour a cup for Sandra. He doesn't put the cap back on when done. Yet, the jug suddenly has the cap on just half-a-minute later. And then seconds after that, the jug is seen with the cap off again! Also the water level in the jug changes between shots.

 

    Morrow calls the camp he sets up outside the crash site for him and Sandra a new Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden, of course, is the land of paradise created by God for Adam and Eve at the beginning of mankind as described in the holy texts of the Abrahamic religions.

   Morrow also refers to the new mushrooms now growing on the surface as manna. Manna is the name given to the divine food which miraculously appeared to the Israelites for 40 years during their exile in the desert as described in the Biblical Book of Exodus.

 

Morrow remarks that the improvement in Sandra's condition is born of hope, "But man should not live by hope alone." He is changing up the idiom "man does not live by bread alone" from Deuteronomy in the Bible. Later, his mushroom-induced delusion has him using other Biblical phrases like "milk and honey" and "sacred bread".

 

At 44:16 on the Blu-ray, Dr. Russell's medical supply kit is seen to hold Gillette Sabre scalpels, an Avon Surgical blood administration set, and a Twinlite diagnostic set. Something that looks like an unlabeled container of Tic Tacs is also seen to appear as pills!

 

Eagle 28 is destroyed as Dr. Russell blows it up as a signal to the rescue Eagle flying on the horizon.

 

At 47:50 on the Blu-ray, Koenig and Morrow topple a stack of futuristic plastic crates in their tussle and we can see that the bottoms of the crates are just plywood!

 

At the end of the episode, it seems that Alpha plans to grow more of the extremely nutritious mushrooms and remove the hallucinogenic compounds so the mushrooms can be used as a steady source of food.

 

The original alien probe that finally leaves the Moon and beams a short message to Alpha is not the same more squat probe that was seen arriving, but one of the thinner models that arrived later.

 

This episode seems to hint of a relationship between Alan Carter and Tanya Aleksandr.

 

Notes from the novelization of "The Last Sunset" by John Rankine as it appears in the Space: 1999 Year One omnibus published by Powys Media. The page numbers presented here come from the full Space: 1999 Year One omnibus. "The Last Sunset" begins on page 313 of the book. There will also be notes (as appropriate) from the original adaptation of "The Last Sunset" by Rankine as it appeared in Space: 1999 - Moon Odyssey, a merged novelization of the episodes "Alpha Child", "The Last Sunset", "Voyager's Return", and "Another Time, Another Place", first published by Pocket Books in 1975. (Chapters 2-4 cover the events of "The Last Sunset").

 

CHARACTERS APPEARING OR MENTIONED IN THIS NOVELIZATION, NOT IN THE EPISODE

 

Sue Crawford

Jackie Crawford

Dr. Linden (mentioned only)

 

DIDJA NOTICE?

 

Sue Crawford and her baby son, Jackie, previously appeared in "Alpha Child".

 

The Dr. Linden who is mentioned by Sue Crawford on page 313 appeared previously in "Cargo" and will have an important role in "Voyager's Return".

 

On page 318, as Morrow and Sandra are chosen to be the two officers to first experience the Moon's new atmosphere, the two come to be affectionately viewed by the rest of the base personnel as the first pair for a new Garden of Eden.

 

After the Moon gains a climate of its own, page 319 states that the Alphans were turning the base into a Lido, working around the clock. "Lido" is a British term for an outdoor swimming pool and its facilities.

 

In the episode, Sandra says to Paul, "Do you know what Earthly sounds I have come to miss the most in the silence of space?" and Paul guesses, "Birdsong?" It stays at that in the episode, but in the novelization she corrects him that it's the sound of children playing, which seems to hint at the thought of the two of them having children now that the Moon is a living sphere.

 

After Morrow builds his campsite, it is described as a Heath Robinson structure at best, but he saw it as if it was a Winter Palace. Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was a British cartoonist known for drawings of goofy contraptions built from whatever assorted parts a character had lying around. "Winter Palace" probably refers to the famed and opulent Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia that was the home of Russian Emperors from 1732-1917.

 

The end of the tussle between Morrow and Koenig here is somewhat different than the one seen in the episode and the original novelization, with Morrow suffering a broken arm. Due to this, his arm is still in a cast and sling in Alien Seed.

 

Notes from the "The Last Sunset" comic strip adaptation German comic strip Zack #15 Koralle-Verlag GmbH Text: Farinas Art: Cardona 1978

 

Zack was a German comic magazine, 17 issues of which featured a Space: 1999 strip. Many of the strips were original stories, others adaptations of the televised episodes. All were written by Farinas and drawn by Cardona (Spanish artist José Maria Cardona Blasi).

 

DIDJA NOTICE?

 

When the alien objects begin landing on the Moon and releasing gas on page 5, Commander Koenig orders the magnetic protective screen to be raised around the base. In the TV series, Moonbase Alpha is never specifically said to have a magnetic screen or force field to protect it, though in "Black Sun" Professor Bergman develops a way to push extra power to the base's gravity towers to deflect the massive gravity of the black hole the Moon falls into. Possibly, Alpha is still able to use this as a defense mechanism.

 

The ending message from Planet 16 (Ariel) is quite different here than in the televised episode and novelization. The alien speaker gives the name of the planet as Antar and tells the Alphans that Antar will explode in a few years and they had hoped to make the Moon habitable and live among the Alphans. But their calculations were wrong and the experiment did not work and now the Moon is continuing its own trajectory away from the star system.

 

MEMORABLE DIALOG

 

sooner than possible.mp3

we've got an atmosphere.mp3

the longest tour of duty ever.mp3

we'll build a new Alpha.mp3

if it rains as hard as you hope it will.mp3

it wasn't a bad trip.mp3

human nature.mp3 

 

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