#science fiction #television 

It was 1976, I was 15, and on Sunday afternoon the whole family, wherever we were, ran home to see the episode of Space 1999. At that time there was no Raiplay, there was no TV on demand and there were no VCRs. What was transmitted was ephemeral like the "stories" of Instagram, if you lost it it was forever and, perhaps, you had to wait years to see it again.
Space 1999 was a British science fiction television series created in 1973 by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It told the story of a group of people in a lunar space base. Following the explosion of a nuclear waste deposit, which brings the Moon out of its orbit, the protagonists find themselves wandering adrift in space.
On September 9, 1999, John Koenig takes over command of the Alpha lunar base, and from there the story unfolds. It brings the protagonists into contact, from episode to episode, with alien civilizations, sometimes benevolent, others hostile. 1999 seemed a future and very distant date, open to every development and possibility. Then came the fateful 2000, which seemed like an era, in fact, of science fiction films, but, by now, since that mythical ending of year, century and millennium, alas, almost four decades have already passed.
The contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations, which materialized in the various episodes, led to philosophical reflections on the meaning of life. Precisely the kind of discussions that interested my father, who transmitted this intellectual curiosity to me, for what is beyond our mental reach, such as the concept of infinity or eternity. I remember summer evenings spent observing the stars, reasoning about the fact that, thanks to the "slowness" of the light, what we were looking at was, in fact, the sky of millions of years ago, and that those same stars were probably now off.
The scenographies and furnishings of Space 1999, for the time very accurate and effective, would be naive now, but then they made us dream. All it took was a helm station, a few buttons and some tight onesie (still in black and white) to make us imagine aboard portentous spaceships, launched towards a future that, unfortunately, is turning out to be a real rip-off for our poor planet.

Space 1999