Space: 1999 | Eagles Crashed & Lost: Year 1

[@GerryAndersonTV]

Anything we missed? Anything you disagree with? Be sure to let us know!

[@colinp2238]

Man's primary means of transport are his feet not a space craft.

[@michaelbergman1708]

so, what? you deleted my comment but you left frogsgottalent stand? I don't mind you deleting mine but at least be fair about it.

[@AlphanPeter]

how many eagle crash was Commander John koenig ? John was in most of the crash follow by alan carter

[@DJGallifrey]

can't wait for part 2! When will it be uploaded?

[@echozgus]

You missed my toy eagles, just kidding Im ready for year two.

[@richardmattocks]

This video shows the quality model work / cinematography of the show to the max 👍

[@jager6863]

Agreed, especially pre-green screen. Season 1 was pretty great and Season 2 was "Crap on a stick"

[@itstheterranaut]

I once sketched out an idea for a Space 1999 one-shot that I called 'Maintenance Duty'. It was a day in the life of an Eagle repair crew, based loosely on the B-5 episode 'A View from the Gallery' (if you know that one). In it, a pair of maintenance techs are reconstructing Eagle 1 after its been through yet another cosmic warp/atmospheric re-entry/encounter with Brian Blessed. We learn how unsung they are, and how they resent the punishment these machines are put through. There would be cameos from Victor, Alan, and John. This was purely for my own amusement and nothing else.

[@Thenogomogo-zo3un]

Remember watching this with my brother as a kid in the '70's Loved all the pyrotechnics (explosions) everywhere, couldn't get enough of them! Each episode was like a short feature film, movie, special effects were superb! Gerry Anderson was a genius!

[@SamStuart07]

Thanks for doing this fun count. I figured Alpha had a production plant to keep repairing and making Eagles otherwise they would have very few by second season.

[@robertray3225]

I like the updated 1999 graphics, it makes 1999 more enjoyable and keep up the good work.

[@bukster1]

The model and set work on this show was great. It looked fantastic for its time.

[@thewizzard3150]

It should, it took 2 years to build and cost millions. one of the most expensive series of its time.

[@blak1lyte]

I get so down at times that the younger generation of cgi junk has no clue of what it's like to build these models or models in general, with ones own hands. Let alone the love of art and craft these pioneering men&woman of puppetry & animation &set designs and scale modeling..oh dear the list is so long... these people LOVED &LIVED this amazing realm of 'real ' animation&miniatures going back to the GREAT Ray Haryhaussen.... it was the love of bringing these things to life... with your hands...t these shows & early trek is why i will always build models of things that they themselves, were actually models! There's something so special in that. You get my point...i hope.

[@Shadowkey392]

Ummmm...buddy I hate to tell you this, but I’m afraid you’re largely wrong. Sure CG is more prevalent today, but that doesn’t mean we’ve never seen actual physical models and special effects. Give us some credit! We’ve ALL seen Star Wars, and Star Trek, and TONS of other movies and shows like them.

[@colinantink9094]

Shadowkey392 a recent one I can think of is The Orville. Uses physical model.

[@minicle426]

You come across a bit whiny if I'm honest.

[@Amb3rjack]

Personally, I much prefer real models to CGI if it's of "Anderson" quality. The problem, as I understand it, is it's way too expensive to do movies this way any more as well as being massively time consuming. Have to admit though, the Transformers movies are absolutely exceptional, especially the first one. I suspect ancient people like me who watched this stuff first time around have a lot of nostalgia colouring our opinions.

[@Mikanojo]

i confess, i thought the spinning Eagle that crashes at the opening WAS the same Eagle that we see spinning away from the orbital station. It does make sense.

[@squonk86]

Loved Space:1999 and have all seasons on DVD and watch them all the time and the Eagles were the coolest Space ships at the time.

[@herbbluntman2287]

I've been watching 1999 since 1975 and I never thought about this much. Great job compiling this list and analyzing the on screen info to support your conclusions. Well done, sir.

[@SharpblueCreative]

Nice one. Space 1999 season 1 is by far the best. My most watched sci-fi is this & Blakes 7.

[@1locust1]

Aside from TOS USS Enterprise, Moonbase Alpha Eagles were my favorite spaceships. I loved the exposed open framework to which various modular components could be attached as needed or replaced if damaged. I could imagine all sorts of mission adaptations if the series had survived.

[@jager6863]

Seems to be based on the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane Helicopter.

[@Departures1]

This is brilliant, looking forward to S2 when Maya wrecks the entire landing bay. As well how many times the base came under attack yet was miraculously rebuilt with limitless supplies the next week.

[@doughesson]

They cannabilized the wreck Eagles for spare parts.

[@GraphicalRanger]

large scale 3D printer for the win ;)

[@MeBallerman]

Isn't this great? A HQ youtube vid dedicated to count Moon Base Alpha's Eagle accidents. 45 years after the show were airing. Amazing. Grreat. I was a huge fan of Moon Base Alpha when I was a boy. Still am, of course.

[@crazya3466]

Been watching this show since the 70s,still luv it,thx guys.. cA

[@paulsnell534]

Dragon's domain is possibly the best space 1999 episode ever. It's always been my fave and the scariest.

[@jimsin101]

I agree - still have nightmares about it to this day!

[@pedrotome9119]

People!!!: I feel so really happy, but So REALLY HAPPY, when I see that there are so many people still so much involved with Space:1999, after 40 years

[@maridaudran]

Thank you for this. I loved this show and always wondered how many eagles they had originally and how many were lost through the episodes.

[@justinplayfair4638]

I do feel that an Honorable Mention should've been given to the one lunar tank in Infernal Machine...not an actual Eagle, but definitely an Eagle-On-Wheels. Can't wait for the Year 2 list to see how the hangar scene in Space Warp is handled!

[@dave8181]

Loved the paper and cardboard Eagle observation!

[@johnstockdale1343]

Brilliant video... It finally resolves the answer to a question that has been troubling me since 1975! Back then the Alphans seemed to have a limitless supply of Eagles.

[@porkorosso7885]

Great video, thanks. I always used to worry about the lost Eagle ships when I watched the series in the 1970s. Loved the odd episode which showed the hanger.

[@sockthepuppet7296]

I always thought it would be interesting if they did a series about the havoc created on Earth after the moon broke away.

[@thewizzard3150]

the pilot episode does spend a couple of minutes on this , but yes I take your point.

[@smkemmett3562]

Does S1, Ep 16 'Another Time Another Place' come close enough?

[@DeepEye1994]

I personally like to headcanon that Space 1999 and Planet of the Apes are set in the same universe thus explaining why there's no moon in the sky according to Taylor's group.

[@neuvocastezero1838]

Yeah, that _couldn't_ have been good.

[@minicle426]

The Tech Talks (by Ed Straker) dabble in that.

[@epiendless1128]

I'd say the Eagle with the Meta Probe was almost certainly lost as they had no way to recover it even if it survived. The only way I can see that surviving is if the pilots were already aboard, the ship both survived and was navigable, AND the pilots headed for Alpha instead of Earth. On the other hand, it wasn't explicitly identified as one of Alpha's Eagles. .. I think I just talked myself into agreeing it's an honourable mention.. They did actually GAIN one Eagle - they kept Commissioner Simmonds' Eagle, which dialogue suggested wasn't one of Alpha's.

[@InFltSvc]

As a kid in America, this was an awesome show and I LOVED the eagles and hand lasers. Then came Star Wars and I was hooked for life

[@LordFalconsword]

The practical effects of the Eagles made this show all that much better for the era.

[@cornjobb]

even at a young age, i always appreciated the episodes where alan was in sickbay, wearing that wonderful hospital gown that showed so much of his hairy chest.

[@wlessfanable]

"Tag-Team of Eagle losses". Brilliant!

[@richmcgee434]

You know, the sad thing is I think I still destroyed more Eagles than Anderson & company did. Must have gone through three dozen of the old plastic model kits (Aurora, were they?) when I was kid. Some got blown to bits, some got carved up for parts, or smashed up as spacewreck dioramas, and a whole lot got used to build my own kitbashed moonbase on a spare door we had laying around the garage.

[@duartesimoes508]

Although a very young teen back then, I couldn’t fail to notice how Moon base Alpha lost an Eagle spacecraft almost every episode, but somehow still kept an adequate fleet! Another detail we all understood well was that if the Eagle pilot was not Alan Carter, he was surely going to die. 😂 I must have made hundreds of drawings of Eagle spacecrafts in the classroom, and even today the ship looks beautiful. The first season of Space 1999 was hugely popular in Portugal in the late seventies, we saw it every Sunday late afternoon in black and white - together with the magnificent “The world at War” - and were delighted. And there was a collection of cards too, and it was the only way to see “Space” - we all just called it “Space” - in colour until Portuguese TV started transmitting in colour in 1980. It was a great fiction series indeed, sober and with all the right actors. Somehow, made for European taste. The second season - Maya, etc - was by far less convincing. Star Trek went unnoticed, for some reason no one cared. We all knew Spock had weird ears, but that’s it. I found that during the Falklands War several British Army units used call signs based on this TV serie, which I find quite amusing. Those were good, simple and very rewarding times indeed. Not nowadays misery.

[@writerpatrick]

Complicating things is the modular nature of the Eagles. The three main components were the cockpit module, the space frame and the cargo capsule. They could reuse parts of one to fix another. They could easily have had more cargo capsules than Eagles. The space frames were mostly tubes and the engines. It's the cockpit module that would be the hardest to fix and duplicate. We also don't know if they had enough spare parts to create an Eagle from scratch, although they likely wouldn't have had spare cockpits. It would explain how they could store so many Eagles since they didn't have to keep them all assembled until they needed them.

[@brianartillery]

I think that abandoning both parts of Cellini's Eagle, in 'Dragon's Domain' was wise. Just in case... And I had forgotten that Bob Mathias flew an Eagle in 'The Last Sunset'. Nice to see him out of sickbay for a change.

[@CharlesFiddler]

🤔 Could've been a spinoff. "Doctor Bob's house calls" he could go around to all the little small encampments and sub moonbase. Maybe to the original UFO base and the prospectors from moon zero two.

[@crimsondynamo615]

The last thing Moonbase Alpha needs is a dragon in it

[@lezlezman1843]

@@CharlesFiddler Holy Yipe!!!! Moon Zero-Two! I had forgotten all about that gem. I saw it in the cinema in Australia when I was about ten years old. You've given me some movie hunting to do!

[@GEOFERET]

You know, I also used to keep count of how many Eagles were lost when I watched Space 1999. I was in the third grade! Those were the days!

[@DoktorJeep]

I had friends who had this toy. These aired when I was young. I never had this toy. :-(

[@ricardoortiz-wn6ff]

Just picked up the 14 inch eagle model can't wait to put it together

[@jroar123]

They should have made a movie called “The Eagle Has Landed”. O wait.......

[@harriehausenman8623]

*lol*

[@robguitarwizard]

The Eagle Has Crash Landed!

[@apmcd47]

I always wondered, with so many crashed and destroyed Eagles, how come they always had plenty for the next adventure? Plus, how many Eagles have been designated 'Eagle 1'?

[@LordElpme]

I had a theory that the number designation was to the command pod rather than the whole ship seeing as the eagles were totally modular.

[@crimsondynamo615]

Turns out the entirety of the moon was hollowed out during the construction of Moonbase Alpha and is actually full of Eagles

[@peterward2275]

Well that kid of explains why the radioactive waste was apparently not buried very deeply...

[@jervishorton7372]

Dont forget the pyramid on the moon that catches our souls to be reincarnated.

[@epiendless1128]

"My God, it's full of Eagles!"

[@crimsondynamo615]

@@epiendless1128 HAL approves of this reference

[@DoctorHades]

Those figures are spot on to me for Year One as someone who has watched 1999 since it began in the mid-70s and then on to VHS, DVDs and finally Blu-rays. Year Two is going to be interesting because that one has status updates from Doctor Helena Russell which state the number of days since the moon left Earth's orbit. This period spans years by the end of that season (The Metamorph is set 342 days and The Dorcons is set 2,409### days after the moon blasted away which is over 6.5 years). As such and at this point in the series, the Alphans would no doubt be manufacturing replacement Eagles and other equipment. We see several instances of mining operations for minerals in Year Two. ### = Got the dates from the Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook which I was lucky enough to receive as a Christmas gift from a dear friend back in the early 1980s. It is my most prized science fiction collectible. I believe it was published by the writers of the U.S. Starlog magazine (is that still being printed, I wonder?).

[@peterward2275]

Repaired? What resources are they using exactly?

[@AC-gb7do]

Darren Hodgson Starlog ended in April 2009 but most of its content is now online in archival sites.

[@3rdstone1]

The Eagles were totally awesome, and still look futuristic but somewhat realistic shuttles. I had an Eagle model kit as a kid back then

[@STho205]

My sister and I used to riff when they showed the massive underground Eagle hangar that the maintenance crews biggest job was painting new numbers on all the ships since they kept losing Eagle One. Infinite hardware on a castaway moon manned in 1999. Fiction is stranger than truth.

[@thewizzard3150]

there was no actual Eagle One. like air force one, it was what ever the commander was on.

[@explorer806]

The equivalent of red shirts in Star Trek

[@peterjf7723]

More like the Shuttle craft in Star Trek Voyager. Someone should make a list of how many of those were lost or destroyed.

[@edwardburek1717]

Whoever constructed the Eagle spacecraft must have also come up with Starbug as well

[@thanqualthehighseer]

Ironically the Danube class roundabouts in DS9 where inspired by the Eagle's and DS9 lost a fair few of them as well.

[@thanqualthehighseer]

Sorry the Danube class runabouts. Damm auto correct.

[@MontytheHorse]

@@peterjf7723 I believe there is a website that does list them.

[@mitchmcalistair2745]

Great intro by Chris. Many clips that added to the chuckles in the script. Well executed. Hoping to see a version where the rest of the content rockets away at the same pace.

[@mitchmcalistair2745]

Watching intro again. Again, 3/4 great juxter-positioned script followed by action laugh out loud moments. 1. "...many dangers and threats on their journey into the unknown" Visual: Roof caves in with mountains of dust onto and obliterating a main character (maybe their journey is over?) 2. "...the Eagles. That is when they work properly." Visual: Montage of crashes. 3. (Eagles) 'rather accident prone..." Visual: Total and utter disbelief on Alan's face as he holds up broken off truster lever into the frame of his face (Brilliant!) 4. "...repaired off-screen to be crashed another day" Visual: Konig seemingly hell on intent in crashing the latest repaired craft (Brilliant!) 5. "... a point will be given in each category." Visual: Main characters in total agreement - very fair. 6. "...... familiar with the show, the results won't surprise you." Visual: Defeated hunched Konig with head in hands looking up as if having been told of yet another crash. Well done Chris.

[@scifiguy26]

They must have a serious Eagle manufacturing plant on Moonbase Alpha somewhere😁

[@1locust1]

Or at least enough spare parts to assemble new eagles.

[@allenjones3130]

Gerry and his special effects staff liked to stage huge explosions!

[@iandeeley9033]

Brilliant Video Chris, can't wait for Part 2!

[@joelstiffler5137]

I suggest a running total of Eagles lost by Alan and Koening.

[@xaenon]

It would be difficult, since Martin Landau died a couple of years ago.

[@writerpatrick]

Given the number they seemed to destroy, I always wondered if they had enough.

[@lezlezman1843]

You forgot the two halves of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander with the callsign "Eagle". The descent stage was left on the Sea of Tranquility landing site at 17:54 on the 21st of July 1969 (UTC) while the ascent stage was jettisoned from the Apollo 11 Command Module at 23:41 (UTC). The Eagle ascent stage crashed onto the lunar surface - time and location unknown. It is presumed destroyed so I would class it as "Lost".

[@stevensonDonnie]

Eagle technicians favorite phrase “that will buff out”.

[@MrAvant123]

I could never understand how they could lose so much kit and next week all was perfectly okay again !

[@richardclarke376]

Gorgeous visuals and model work if only the stories had been better

[@evildrganymede]

Great tally - it sure felt like there was a lot more lost/crashed but I guess I may be thinking more of extra characters who died (that'd be an interesting video to make!).

[@infini1970]

Best "Practical Effects" crashes ever!

[@chrisdoyle8344]

I love this!!! Haven't laughed this much in awhile...

[@evildrganymede]

Are you going to do a body count too? There was always someone dying in Season 1, often in the pre-credits! ;) (and practically none in Season 2, which is one reason that sucked so much). I often wondered if the moonbase was basically down to 20 people by the end of S1, especially if they only had one birth (Alpha Child) and even that went horribly wrong :).

[@chronosschiron]

secretly they had buried inthe depths of the basement of alpha , a clone storage facility and you never got to see it cause its super duper secret ....oops

[@jukeboxjohnnie]

yes PLEASE do a body count episode its always troubled me..

[@jukeboxjohnnie]

The photo/video guy killed in Bringers of Wonder S2 was a really good death :-)

[@NeilPower]

@@seminolewar There was a SPACE 1999 website long ago that did a body count of people lost, but sadly I can remember the number but it would have definitely gutted the population of the moon base.

[@thewizzard3150]

this was a major problem with the show. no bathrooms, no food or eating areas, beds but no sex. this explains why people looked so miserable all the time.

[@jervishorton7372]

That was a fun historic tribute can't wait for the next episode and since iam quarantine in NYC iam gonna watch my box set of the series. I would love for u to count down all of MAYA'S META MORPHS. OR ALL OF HER FLIRTS.

[@billsummy2412]

I`m just glad they had alot of those Eagles :-)

[@RhodeIslandWildlife]

I actually wondered about this, watching re-runs and back in the day. The damn things dropped like flies. I figured GM must have had an assembly plant up there somewhere.

[@folginator]

Very entertaining Chris, as always

[@leokimvideo]

The most crashed spacecraft in Sci Fi history. They must have made them out of moon dust!

[@MontytheHorse]

There's a website somewhere in which it was worked out that over the series more Eagles crashed than Alpha had in the first place. :-D

[@jirokoshibailey2052]

I'd say starbug from red dwarf... the eagle is good tho

[@minicle426]

What about the shuttles from ST Voyager?

[@CharlesFiddler]

My guess is they can make a few more with parts in that huge hangar. But that's only a guess.

[@jean-jacquescortes9500]

As I am à fan of Space 1999 since the first episode seen in 1975, the ringtone of my iPhone is the Commlock ringtone taken from the circle of eternity episode

[@richardmattocks]

Ahhh... finally a companion video for my fave drinking game 😁🥴. This is why I love this channel. 😊😊😊

[@thegneech]

I've read that the series bible explicitly stated that the base always has X ships and Y people, no matter how many are ever lost in an episode. And you thought Star Trek's continuity was wibbly-wobbly!

[@glo-brain]

I was just telling my wife about this show, and how weird is was that there were constant wrecked ships and deaths. It was just as I remembered it from when I was a kid, and didn’t seem to make much sense for a show about survival.

[@blak1lyte]

Ps.. glad i found this channel

[@fericyde]

extremely entertaining! As a kid, this used to bother the heck out of me and I would worry that they were gonna run out of eagles someday (for real, yah, this used to bother me). Kinda like when I would watch a 3 Stooges episode and I would wonder "whos' gonna clean up this mess!?!?"

[@manuelvidal1387]

Add one more eagle to the count. I bought a Konami eagle transport, flew it around the house a bit. One of the weak stick legs fell off and got lost. I lost control of the vehicle and the eagle exploded as if taken a direct hit!

[@tubawritaguy]

Looking forward to part two. I do have a suggestion. How about a count of how many Alphans died during the series run? They had 311 at the beginning. In season two, Dr. Russell said the population was stable at 297. There is no way only 14 died. And we won't even include the episode War Games.

[@wrathofatlantis2316]

Wargames was an illusion, and I think you are wrong about the number being implausible, as is demonstrated here by a count of 11 Eagle total losses for a start of 30.

[@duanebrodnick5212]

@@wrathofatlantis2316 That is true. When you think of it, no one knows how many Eagles were on the base. They had to have enough in case they had to evacuate. How many passengers could each Eagle carry? Had to be enough for 311 souls. I'd still like to know how many died. As I said a year ago, the population couldn't just drop from 311 to 297. I know this question sounds morbid, but I'm interested to know the tally?

[@wrathofatlantis2316]

@@duanebrodnick5212 If you look at the episode where the count of 27 eagles is mentioned, the number of total losses at that point was 3. So 30 seems reasonable, plus one for the stranded politician, and likely at least a few complete ones from spare parts. 10 person per Eagle is conservative, given they are each about 100 feet long. Some have them sized quite a bit bigger, because the module's big side door is 5.5 feet tall when it is 6 feet in the sets. I think the sets were wrong, because a space walk by Allan clearly scales him next to the square on top of one of the landing pods, which compared to him are exactly 6 feet in the sides, so the big near two feet model was in my opinion a true 1:48 scale (as the current same size kit claims), with an ill-designed side door that was just 5.5 feet tall for no reason... The capacity of ten, even for space, is about right, and if you count the politician's Eagle it comes out to 31 for 311... Considering "natural" deaths over that population over a given period of time, you have to consider almost no elderly, except maybe one, and no sick or even badly out of shape people, so not at all the natural mortality of an average town of 300. The show still holds up in its basic design and presentation. The precarity of unplanned space travel is still a fantastic idea. The dialogues and much of the acting is what has aged the most, which affects some of the technical and especially the scientific considerations, often reduced to mere mumbo jumbo...

[@RX552VBK]

LOL! This was great fun!I always loved how Eagles crash landed with a slide--and that sound of escaping atmos when the blow up! Even though i like Maya and Tony I never enjoyed the 2nd season--so Ill skip the next vid!

[@TedRivers-1999]

AWESOME!!! Thanks again for a fantastic video!

[@richardmattocks]

I love the fact the eagles went boom so often... not only because it looks cool... but also because, following the logic of the show, they were never expected to need to be in “combat” or be used as they were. They were just designed as haulage workhorses for the moon.

[@Turrican60]

...yet they were still armed with laser guns, or whatever it was supposed to be.

[@richardmattocks]

@@Turrican60 i like to think the lasers were originally for mining and were repurposed 😁. Can’t have an Anderson show without explosions!

[@richardwicks4190]

How odd, at 4:10 the comlock is clearly showing a video inlay on its screen, but those comlocks were actually portable televisions and actually displayed pictures on a black and white television normally.

[@buzzcrushtrendkill]

Great early sci-fi, mainly the first season. I give the production leeway as it the had very limited time and budget. But it makes me smile how the moon had Earth like gravity and an oxygen rich atmosphere for all the fiery crashes and explosions

[@epiendless1128]

"the next time we see Area 2, the wreck is gone" You may be making an entirely correct assumption, but I supposed Area 2 to be composed of a number of similar-looking installations over an area. I admit I don't have anything to back that up, other than that the installation we see seems rather small.

[@Dolphination]

Great fun.

[@michaelthearchangel888]

best to have a main character with you in an eagle. LOL

[@markc5111]

The first thing I thought is AWESOME. I know it wasn't but it felt like loads. Actually it probably was loads. Just thinking about Breakaway, The Last Sunset and Wargames gives me a meltdown.

[@evildrganymede]

War Games at least technically didn't happen :P

[@markc5111]

Yes your 100% right it was a classic Anderson what if episode. So we can sit back and enjoy the destruction of 5 Eagles (3 on the pads and 2 in space) if I'm right.

[@starsiegeplayer]

@@markc5111 3 in space ( last laser equipped Eagle "destroyed" by a planetary force field as Koenig and Carter tried to force their way down).

[@markc5111]

Nice one. Yes thanks.

[@hankmessaros1835]

They just showed a 24hr binge of this on COMET TV . Comet T.V. is a sci-fi channel a billion times better then THE SIFI.CHANNEL. the play old and some what new sci-fi movies and TV shows. I love space 1999 and wish a good remake would happen. No one had specail effect like this for a tv show back then

[@TysonNeil]

There are the audio dramas from Big Finish. They are rather good.

[@starsiegeplayer]

There is a fan theory that Alpha had the ability to manufacture Eagles from minerals mined from the moon.

[@thewizzard3150]

The capability to manufacture and repair parts is certainly there, but circuit boards could be a problem.

[@testcase72]

Well, OK to be fair, back in the mid-70s, on my 15" TV where the pixels were about the size of a Tic-Tac, those paper Eagles were pretty passable for the split second they were on the screen!

[@tiborpurzsas2136]

There were no pixels @ the time ! It was different tech back than ! Ctr screens had electron guns aimed at horizontal lines ! As the gun fired electrons, the selected lines would lit up accordingly! Or something like that . Differently no pixels though !

[@woodspirit7701]

Well how many did they start with. Always thought this should be an issue.

[@andreajoki9758]

Well done - and very fun!

[@MGSBigBoss77]

After Wargames it was never made clear why Hawks were considered enemy craft in the Space 1999 universe, but had a design similar to Eagles of the Alpha Moonbase? What was the situation back home on Earth, were Hawks apart of some rival faction that threatened their space missions and endevours. This was never made clear outside the Wargames episode. And yet for decades toys were made of them. Begs the question why Moonbase Alpha didn't have its own 'Hawks' as a defensive measure, if they were more aggressive space crafts meant for space combat! The Eagle is a mere transport shuttle by comparisons!

[@alanboughey2450]

I've always assumed (on no evidence whatsoever) that the Hawks were left over from the original idea for the series as a follow on for UFO, in which case they make perfect sense as replacements for the Interceptors.

[@MGSBigBoss77]

@@alanboughey2450 Cheers for the answer dude!

[@BradleyMorris-ti6io]

Found the box set and didn't keep count on the eagles. I counted how many peeps were on the base, episode 1 said there were 311 peeps at end of the last episode 46 the show said 298 were left. Went back and rewatched it all again 61 peeps died , 54 men forks 7 women forks. ☠🤓☠👽 Miss the show💋

[@speeta]

The real reason you see Eagles crash so often, strangely enough, is because that's EXACTLY what the model spacecraft was built to do! The pilot episode script called for that to happen twice, so with an intentionally crash-worthy model on hand they could do it as often as needed to add excitement to the episodes.

[@SimonFittonDavies]

Can’t watch this. Far too upsetting 😭

[@dogwalker666]

They just had a dammed good maintenance department never seen never praised but able to put eagles back together from the tiny bits left after John and Alan had wrecked them.

[@jervishorton7372]

Thats one thing i would have loved to see back then a star or stars that was part of the eagle maintenance crew. Thats one thing i love about the GUNDAM ANIME series. The Gear heads added a lot of love and upgrades to the gundams. My favorite episode of SEASON 2 was when Maya flipped out and Destroyed the Hanger. We got a better look at the inside of it. I would love to see the Hanger crew scramble to prep the Eagles for specific mission duties. And I love the booster unit that attaches to its roof girders.

[@dogwalker666]

Jervis Horton agreed

[@marcusblackwell2372]

I haven't seen the show so this oughta be interesting

[@chronosschiron]

def try and find season 1 its a real good sci fi for its time n still holds up for entertainment....they dont make tv like that much any more...season two went for me anyhow a bit campy and commericialized....but also was good. and there is a real good fan edit that ties everyhting up if you can find it.

[@jacksoncrow7662]

I want to buy a model kit of an Eagle and build during lockdown! They are really expensive

[@jmckasyru]

I find it cornily humorous that during an attack on Alpha, some explosion, or some serious violent threat Commander Koenig consistently announced to the sick bay personnel, "Prepare to receive casualties!". So apparently he didn't expect any injuries, just casualties.

[@dinomonzon7493]

My fave variant was the Combat Eagle, which was armed with laser cannons.

[@bbbf09]

Which was interesting , no? Why would what was a scientific moon base have been populated with so many heavily armed attack craft?

[@dinomonzon7493]

bbbf09 Maybe to deal if the Russians or Red Chinese? There IS still a Cold War at the time.

[@Donleecartoons]

@@bbbf09 I figure the Eagles' weapons would have been modified digging gear adapted into weapons, once the Alphans realized they were on their own.

[@timmitchell3870]

It wasn't just Eagles that crashed. Pretty much every mission seen or even mentioned on the show resulted in the moon being blasted out of orbit, an entire crew being snarfed by a green alien with a swimming pool flood light for an eye, or an engine being put into commission that destroyed entire planets from a gazillion miles away. For that last atrocity, the inattentiveness of the NASA safety engineers the day that sucker was tested was truly inexcusable. "Gee Fred, that time it took out both Mars and Venus. Do ya really think we should pass it? Ah - what the hell."

[@danstevenson6612]

Never before heard of that Voyager episode.

[@johnkoenig326]

Maybe they crashed so often because the command module set had no front. Always wondered about that.

[@larryjaques2315]

After all these years I still have one of the eagle space ship toys

[@larryaugsburger8452]

I had one too, and I remember how heavy and unwieldy it was to “fly” around the house. Wish I could hold it one more time now, as an adult.

[@robguitarwizard]

Explains why there was no season 3. They must have run out of Eagles.

[@Songbirdstress]

The Eagles are basically Star Trek's red shirts lol. I never bothered about the endless supply because crashing them was so much fun :)