Dave Davenport (dogspunk)

R.I.P. Martin Landau

Added 2017-07-19 00:37:01 +0000 UTC

When I was a kid, marinating in TOS and TAS Star Trek, Space:1999 came along and captured my imagination. The show began airing while I was in sixth grade. I was a fan immediately, though a lot of the heady stories of the first season went over my head. At first, I made little toy eagles (the shuttles of the series) out of erasers and thumb tacks. Soon, merch hit the stores... I bought model kits, novelizations of episodes, bubblegum cards. Before 6th grade was up, my fam moved to the middle of nowhere in Colorado. There was no television, no radio, no running water, no electricity...

NO TELEVISION!

I spent my time reading comics, and exploring the mountainside with my model eagles, pretending that the strange (to me) terrain was a planet that the rogue moon was passing, and me and the eagle were scouting for possible resources, or places to evacuate the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha to. I did my own versions of "kit-bashing" and turned eagles into hawks.

These were a few scant months, but Space:1999 was a big part of it.

I couldn't help but compare Commander Koenig, played by Martin Landau, to Captain Kirk. Kirk cared for his people and didn't like to lose a crewman, but Koenig was in a more desperate situation. The Alphans were largely at the mercy of circumstance, and often in situations that they were vastly out-powered. Koenig didn't like to lose his people, but as far as he knew, they were all that was left of humanity. Each was irreplaceable.

Anyway, I could go on ruminating about Space:1999, but this is about Martin. He was a big part of my childhood, and would later star in one of my favorite films, Ed Wood, for which he would receive a well deserved oscar.

2017 has so far claimed 2 of my 3 childhood sci-fi heroes. If I were Bill Shatner, I'd be making sure my affairs are in order.