John Kenneth Muir
By Dr. Howard Margolin, host of Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction
Included below are several selected excerpts from the detailed interview.
Muir: It's a pleasure to be here with you again. Thank you for having me on.
Margolin: Well, I guess we should start by reviewing how this new series of Space:1999 novels came to be. Why did Powys Media pursue the license for a series that hasn't even been shown on television for ten years?
Muir: Well, Space:1999 is almost like a religion in some senses to the people who love it, even though it was only on for two years in the 1970s. The people who remember and who like it have a real devotion to it. And the editor and publisher at Powys is a fellow named Mateo Latosa, and he's a terrific guy and he's a huge Space:1999 fan. And he's also a fan of Doctor Who, and he wanted to pick up a series of Space:1999 books much in the way the Doctor Who books have gone. That was his charge,, and he worked very hard to acquire the license and pursue the series, and I was fortunate enough to be brought aboard early, and get on the slate for the second book.
Margolin: The last time you were on, you mentioned that Powys' license allows the novels - of which yours is the second - to tell stories in any period of the show, up to 25 years past the end of the series. With that much freedom, why do you choose to do a novel that bridges Seasons One and Two?
Muir: Well, Mateo and I felt that before we headed off into new territory, we wanted to answer some questions that surrounded the series. For instance, any fan of Space:1999 will remember that Barry Morse's character Victor, and Prentis Hancock's character, Paul Morrow, departed - and there were actually some others - between seasons. Not only that, but the moonbase appeared physically different in Year Two. Suddenly they had big laser turrets that would come up from the lunar surface. We thought that this presented a really interesting opportunity to fill in the blanks. So Mateo told me he wanted a bridge novel, and I thought that would be fun to do. Although I knew it would be controversial...
Margolin: Well, you do touch on the issue of the lasers on the surface of Moonbase Alpha and you also deal with the changeover from Main Mission to Command Center.
Muir: Right. All the physical changes on the moonbase. Also, one of the things we wanted to do is...there's a big philosophical change between Year One and Year Two. Year One is very ponderous and talking about the big issues of the universe. Year Two is a little more action-oriented, a little more personal. In the first year,
Margolin: Before we start discussing specifics of the story, how about a brief overview of the plot for the listeners?
Muir: Sure. For people who remember Space:1999, it's the story of Moonbase Alpha - a base of about 311 people on the moon, which is blown into space -- and they're in deep space for many, many months after this nuclear accident that propels them out of Earth orbit. The story of the Forsaken is about a signal that the Alphans receive from a solar system they're passing through. It takes a large amount of deciphering, and Commander Koenig decides that once they pinpoint where the signal came from, this planet, they'll go ahead and visit the planet, even while they're deciphering the signal. The downside of that is they don't know what they'll be facing. They do visit the planet and discover a strange culture there, where the primary language is music. But there's a lot more going on than that. Some of the people there are dying. Their civilization has been all but destroyed because of a strange radiation emanating from their sun, and it's a mystery. Strangely enough, it's a mystery that takes the Alphans right back to a previous event in their history.
I don't want to give away too much, but fans of the series will recognize elements from previous episodes. It's really about the Alphans confronting an action in their past on this planet where they've never been before. But they see footprints of their actions on this culture and their planet.
Margolin: That's something they were never able to do in the TV series. I don't think they ever referred back to previous episodes on the show.
Muir: They very rarely, if ever, did that. This was a fun opportunity to do that, to have these Alphan characters confront their past and their own actions.
Margolin: The foreword of the book is written by Prentis Hancock, who played Paul Morrow in Season One. And since the main focus of the book is to explain why Paul wasn't in Season Two, did you speak with him about his character before starting the story?
Muir: Mateo and I had long talked about the story and the direction we wanted it to go, and how we wanted it to end, and how we wanted to resolve some of the disappearances. Not all of the characters in Year One who disappeared have their send off in The Forsaken. There will be other books where characters have their send-off, so-to-speak.
We didn't decide to ask Mr. Hancock to join the team until later in the game, until we realized it was very rapidly becoming a Paul Morrow-centric story. And then to my delight, Mr. Hancock was very on board with it. He seemed delighted with the direction we had gone, and in fact gave us his complete blessing. So we were very happy. I think it was a good idea to include him. But I just had a sense about Paul - even without talking to him [Hancock] - that this was a man who must have been ambitious at some point, and wanted to be more than just a guy sitting in a control room launching Eagle spacecraft. He would have his own destiny he wanted to pursue. I thought that would be interesting to explore. It would be sad to always be second in command and not be in command. I thought that would be a really interesting story for Paul, and to my delight, Prentis Hancock was absolutely wonderful about it, and gave us his blessing.
Margolin: Your book starts with the funeral of Jackie Crawford, the first child born on Alpha. The episode in which he was born was the first episode of Space:1999 I ever watched, so I'd always wondered why there was never another reference to him. By starting with this point, you already had my admiration.
Muir: Thank you.
Margolin: But considering that your previous foray into the world of Moonbase Alpha was your 1997 textbook Exploring Space 1999, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that you were going to use this book to deal with a lot of the loose ends left in the series.
Muir: You got it. That's exactly what I wanted to do. The Jackie Crawford thing was also something that came very, very late. It was not in the original first two or three drafts, I would guess. Mateo has a good sense of story and he said 'We need something here at the beginning of this story to help explain some later events.' We talked about it, and I don't take complete credit for that. It's something that we came to together. Frankly, I was a little nervous about it. There are several fans out there who love the character of Jackie Crawford, and wrote their own fan fiction over the years about him being, a two, three, five-year old on Alpha. But, of course, on the TV series, you had a year-and-a-half where he was never referred to, or never seen growing up, so that didn't seem to be supported. So we decided to take a bold move, although there were some people who were afraid we might be pulling an Alien 3, where you kill Newt in the first scene and alienate all the fans thereafter.
But I think it works. I look at it now and I think it was a good decision. He was clearly not there in later episodes, or he would have been referred to. So it made sense to make closure to that point. I hope...
Margolin: As you said, one of your goals was not only to explain the physical changes of Alpha, but also some of the personnel changes. You mention that Sandra Benes is training to be a communications officer, which is essentially the position she held in Season Two. Two questions that come to mind from this are: What nationality is Sandra supposed to be?
Muir Oh boy, you're gonna get me on that one. I once believed that she was Italian. And the reason I believed that was her original name was Sandra Sabatini, but the director of one of the first episodes wanted to name her after a delicatessan in New York. So I was always working under the assumption that she was Italian, and that's how I wrote it, and then I was quickly told that she is not Italian, but Malaysian! So I don't know. I know that she's not Italian though.
Margolin: If she's named after a New York deli, could she be Israeli?
Muir: Could be. All the actors did a great job on the show, and people love their characters, but so much of the background detail was never filled in. You knew that Alan Carter was Australian and that Commander Koenig was American, but even basic things like 'where is Sandra from?' were not filled in on the show. Anything out there is just surmise, I think.
Margolin: That's no different from the original Star Trek where the little four didn't even get first names. Uhura never had a first name in the series. Neither did Sulu. They didn't get first names until the films and the books.
Muir: Unless we get Space:1999 films, we may not get that information [where is Sandra from]. Unfortunately, these days it would be a re-imagination, not a continuation.
Margolin: Let's not talk about re-imaginations, because that will bring up a whole world of Battlestar Galactica controversy. My other question: Is Zienia Merton's short film "Message from Moonbase Alpha" considered a part of official Space:1999 continuity?
Muir: I can say that it definitely is by the folks at Powys; by the pubisher. It's considered part of the canon, absolutely.
Margolin: Something that always puzzled me about the original series and the novelizations was that the people of Alpha frequently expressed surprise about Victor Bergman's emotionalism, despite the fact that he had an artificial heart. And since these were scientists living in the late twentieth century, why would they put such emphasis on the romantic but false premise that the heart is the source of emotion?
Muir: Actually, at a Space:1999 convention, I gave a little symposium called "Deconstructing Space:1999" and I talked about Bergman meaning literally 'man of ice,' and because he didn't have a real heart, he had an artificial heart, he was suppsed to be a man of ice, like Spock - a man of no emotions. That seemed to be the original intent, and it certainly is silly. I have no idea why that's the case. But Victor fans got on me - and they were right - because as the series progressed we saw that Victor was actually the most human character. All the books made that point, but certainly the TV series did not. In the TV series, Victor was a very warm and human character, but in the books, they were constantly bringing that fact up. Which is very strange. It has no basis in science or reality.
Margolin: Early in the book, you have the Computer translating a signal from the planet the Alphans originally call Havana and later Pyxidea, and you say that the message begins with a "point-of -view subjective shot." Is this your film student background coming through?
Muir: Yes. Absolutely. I was trying to see it cinematically. I imagined this as a message they were seeing on one of their screens. To me, when you see something like that, it's a point-of-view shot from the nose of whatever camera/computer was taking this image. That's my footprint, right there.
Margolin: My favorite line in the novel occurs when Security Officer Tony Verdeschi, who never appeared in Year One but was second in command at the start of Season Two, says to Victor "You'll never see Tony Verdeschi cozying up to extraterrestrials." In one respect, this is ironic since Tony ended up in love with the alien Maya in Season Two. However, it's also a true prediction, since Victor was written out by then, and thus never did see Tony and Maya get together.
Muir: This is why I love to be on Destinies. You're the only person I'm aware of who got both parts of that joke. Readers told me they got either one part of the other. Most people think it's referring to Maya, they don't get literally that Victor will not see it.
That was one of my favorite lines. There was some debate about whether that line was too on -the -nose, too over-the-top, too amusing. Some people suggested I take it out. But I couldn't, because it absolutely fits Tony. It's something you could hear him say. It just so happens that we have more information than either Tony or Victor, so it seems funny to us. But to Tony it was absolutely serious, and that was my reason for keeping it in. But there was some debate about whether it was too much of a joke to put into the very serious Space:1999.
Margolin: Considering the book is really set between Seasons One and Two, it's very prophetic, because it's foreshadowing something that's going to happen in the relatively near future.
Muir: Exactly. I thought that line carried a lot of weight. Not everybody agreed. Some people saw it as a cheap shot, where I saw it as elegant, funny and sad all at once. It's my favorite line too. It's interesting that you picked it up.
Margolin: You give John Koenig a long-time fear of spiders going back to the summer of 1975. Was this an autobiographical inclusion into his character, or something that was established in the character's history?
Muir: It was certainly not established in the character's history as far as any episode of the TV series. The only thing is that there was an episode called "The Bringers of Wonder," and in it Koenig went crazy and was flying an Eagle and he said "I haven't had this much fun since I burned grandma's wig." So I just extrapolated about his grandma and who she was. But I took the fear of spiders from my wife, Kathryn, who has a terrible fear of spiders. I gave that to the poor Commander, because I certainly identify with how she feels about spiders.
Margolin: Speaking of Koenig, you mention the death of Jean Koenig. Is this supposed to be John's mother or wife?
That seems to be the accepted name in Space:1999 fandom for his first wife.
Margolin: Which gives Helena and John something in common. They're both widowers.
Muir: Exactly. Some people don't necessarily like "Rules of Luton," specifically because of that section, because they feel it counteracts some of the history as established in the first year episodes. They also talk about how World War III ended racism and violence and all war, and mankind worked together. It sounded more like a Star Trekkian future, which didn't seem to jibe with Year One of Space:1999, in which the whole issue was caused by political machinations on Earth involving the nuclear waste. There's some discontinuity there. But that's one thing I can't bridge. I wouldn't even try.
Margolin: It's not giving anything away to say that the Alphans don't finally settle on Pyxidea...but at approximately the mid-point of the book as Koenig and company depart Pyxidea, I can almost see the ending of a Year One story, right down to the departure of the Eagle from the planet, to the fact that were so many unanswered questions about the adventure. Then, in the second half, the tone is immediately different, as you said earlier. The rest of the story is entirely set on Alpha with stronger elements of action and interpersonal relations. So in doing this, it's almost like the book is literally a missing two part adventure that links the two seasons of the show.
Muir: That's exactly what I wanted.
Margolin: I think it did. One thing I'm not sure about. You write that the Cryptodira have an allergic reaction to the Alphans. Helena wants to cure them with antibiotics. However, if it is an allergic reaction, why would she treat them with antibiotics rather than antihistamines or anti-inflammatory drugs?
Muir: Oh boy. That was another issue in forming the book that went through a number of changes. And we never could get it absolutely perfect. There were two issues there. One was that the presence of the Alphans harmed the Cryptodira. But we also wanted to make it clear that there was nothing the Alphans could do. The moment their moon - in the past - collided with the force, the space brain that had been protecting the sun of the Cryptodira - - the moment that happened, they were doomed. So we had these two sort of catastrophes we had to work with. It wasn't always an allergy. Originally it was a pesticide. The Alphans had a protective pesticide on them that ended up killing the Cryptodira. But we looked at episodes and said 'Look, they never ever discussed having a pesticide on their uniforms or putting a pesticide on to go explore planets,' so that didn't really work. That may be just a gap that we never absolutely filled just right. Perhaps it should have been an anti-histamine.
I do know that in treating the Cryptodira, who are very reptilian and turtle-like, I researched a lot the regimen of treatment for healing reptiles. And that's where I took that from. Maybe I made a mistake...
Margolin: It's hard to say what science is work when your hundreds of thousands of light years from home. Especially in Space:1999, when science wasn't always in the forefront of the plot anyway.
Muir: We tried to make it all fit...
Margolin: The creative freedoms of Powys' license have allowed you to answer some questions that fans have wondered about for over twenty-five years. Specifically, you not only show John Koenig and Helena Russell getting together for some stress-relieving sex, but you have Paul and Sandra sharing living quarters.
Muir: Yes... When you only have fifty minutes and you have to serve all these main characters and the story, and you have to fit in four commercials, there's not a lot of time for extraneous stuff. Just by its very nature, Space:1999 is about man dealing with crisis; fighting for survival in space. But in a novel you have a little luxury. You have a little time. You have to go to those characters, and they have to be interesting people... We thought that was something you would see. These folks are trapped on the base, and people would do...what people do. That's reasonable and rational, and we felt few readers would have a complaint if we added some intimacy to the series. And we sought to do that.
Margolin: I think it's a natural extension, especially since that's a point they always skirted around on the TV series. Then in the original novelizations, they'd say how John and Helena shared intimate looks and caresses and things like that. But that was just slightly more than they were doing on the TV series, but I guess that was the restrictions of those 1970s novelizations too.
Muir: Mateo at Powys has said that he wants these books to work not just as media-tie ins but as literature. And science fiction. And that means a sort of full-blooded approach. The characters are going to be more human and more flawed, and have a little more time to do the things that humans do. In this case, it certainly seemed logical and rational that people who had been in a crisis - John and Helena - would seek comfort with each other. And also that Paul and Sandra would, at some point, want to move in together.
Margolin: It added a tremendous amount of emotion to the sequence. I don't want to give that too much away. One of the scenes in the second-half of the book that still read like a first season episode is when Victor and John are discussing the Bible, and John wonders if he's a 21st century Noah. Is this supposed to be a reference to the Power Records story in which the Alphans go back in time and meet the actual Noah while he is building the ark?
Muir: That's a small in-joke. We wanted it to work thematically and it made sense to do that; and compare him to certain characters in the Bible. He's also compared to Moses. That seemed very very natural. That was my secret kick, writing that, because I happen to have an office filled with memorabilia. I happen to have that record, which I think is called "Return to the Beginning," and it shows Koenig, Helena and Victor floating in space in their orange space suits, and you see Noah's Ark flying through space. A very small in-joke.
Margolin: Speaking of the Bible, you have Koenig state that he was born in Brooklyn. Is that your invention or was that in the Series Bible?
Muir: That is Martin Landau's history, If I'm not incorrect. And I think that Bill Latham, the author
of Resurrection, was the first to incorporate that into the Space:1999 mythos. His book, which is the first in the Powys line - and which is really good - is the first who melded the paths of Martin Landau and Commander Koenig. I thought that was a great idea. There are times in the series when Commander Koenig barks an order and you can almost sense the Brooklyn in him.