50 Years Ago (on WPIX): Space:1999 "Force of Life"

This episode of Space:1999, which first aired on WPIX Channel 11 in New York 50 years ago today, sees a mysterious ball of energy - an alien life-force - infiltrate Alpha. 

In particular, the alien focuses on Nuclear Generating Area Three and Technician Anton Zoref, played by Ian McShane. Before long, to the dismay of Anton’s loving wife, Eva (Gay Hamilton), the technician begins to change.

In particular, he can’t seem to stay warm. 

By seeming osmosis, he begins to drain all the heat from a lamp in his quarters, then a lighting panel in a corridor, and so forth...his appetite for energy and heat ever-increasing. 

Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and his team, including Victor Bergman (Barry Morse) and Dr. Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) register the energy drops, but don’t yet realize Zoref is the cause. 

Before long, Zoref is seeking to stay alive (and warm...) by draining the heat from living human beings: his fellow Alphans. 

Koenig and the others catch on, but not before Zoref marches right into the Nuclear Generating Area and absorbs its heat...causing a tremendous explosion on Alpha.

Out of the smoldering rubble of the devastated nuclear plant, the energy sphere re-emerges whole -- stronger than before -- and heads off into space, no doubt carrying remnants of Zoref with it. 

There are no definite answers about the strange and dangerous alien encounter, but Professor Bergman speculates that the Alphans may have witnessed some kind of creative evolution, the birth stages of a star, perhaps...

"Force of Life" is my favorite episode of Space:1999 (1975-1977). I am nostalgic about the series and many episodes, and I also have tremendous affection for "Dragon's Domain." But "Force of Life" is a perfect representation of the series format, in my opinion.

Specifically, the episode makes no bones about the fact that the Alphans don’t understand a lick about the alien that has come knocking on their doorstep. These are not the knowledgeable, highly-evolved humans featured in many popular science fiction series.  They are people like us, in search of answers.

I admire the episode’s haunting coda, wherein Dr. Helena Russell tries to comfort Anton’s wife, in mourning over the loss of her husband:

"We’re living in deep space, there are so many things we don’t understand," she says. "We don’t know what that alien force was, why it came here, or why it selected Anton. But we’ve got to try to help each other understand..."

In other words, the episode perfectly reflects the essence of our human condition. 

There are things in this universe we don’t understand -- fate, life, death, you name it -- but what we can do is reach out to other humans in pain; provide comfort and succor. For me that’s a very human and touching message in what is otherwise a spine-tingling episode with a hard-edge.

For an example of the latter quality, I need only recommend you to the scene in which Astronaut Alan Carter (Nick Tate) fires his laser at Zoref and chars his skin off. Completely.  

This was not something a five year old kid expected to see on television in 1975.

Some folks, including the late great Buster Crabbe, just didn’t like "Force of Life," and that’s certainly their right. Back when Space:1999 was on the air, he complained about the episode on a talk show in which the other guest was series star Martin Landau. Mr. Crabbe wanted to know what the alien was, what it represented, and what the whole episode meant.

But of course, that would have spoiled the fun if everything had been explained. Then we wouldn't have gotten the alien life-form as a mirror for all the great unknowns of human life.

Better, isn’t it, to leave some things unclear; to allow the viewer to fill in the gaps? Think of Hitchcock's The Birds. Would any explanation really satisfy you as to the reason for the avian attack on humanity? The same holds true for "Force of Life."  

The motives of the alien are...alien.  

Over the years, I had the honor to speak with Johnny Byrne, Space:1999's script editor, about many series episodes, including "Force of Life." This is what he told me about the episode in 2001:

"It was a process of a life force traveling through space, chrysalis into butterfly. That’s entirely all it was. Why can’t people see that? Just last night, I was watching this program about the universe, about the incredible ways life can survive. These scientists study these tiny microbes found on Mars, or learn how life can survive literally anywhere. 

It’s incredible. I didn’t know about these things when I wrote "Force of Life," but it is the same thing. The life force had its own agenda, and there were no philosophical discussions to be had. It couldn’t express itself verbally, because it was very different from the Alphans. I mean, was it going to pop in and say ‘charge me up and send me on my way’? That would have been ridiculous."

"The Alphans didn’t understand the process," Byrne continues, "but remember, we weren’t dealing with super smart space jockeys, we were dealing with near-future people caught in a very un-Earth-like situation. But the process was purely that of the caterpillar transforming into something else."

Beyond the interesting story, "Force of Life," is worthy of spotlighting because of its startling visualizations.

I’ve always loved Space:1999 because it is a TV series that adroitly manipulates film grammar, and in the process cogently transmit its themes. It is a visual masterpiece dominated by mind-blowing imagery. David Tomblin directs "Force of Life" with a quiver full of stylish film techniques including a tracking camera, slow-motion photography, distortion lenses, and most famously of all, a slow turn of the camera into an inverted position.

The aforementioned upside-down camera turn -- the final shot of the episode’s shocking teaser -- is efficacious because it symbolically and visually suggests that Moonbase Alpha will be turned on its head by the alien energy force.

Even more effectively, the use of extensive slow-motion photography in the chase sequences prolongs the terror of Zoref’s victims, and heightens audience suspense. The menacing low-angle shots of the technician stalking his prey also contribute to the episode’s overall feeling of dread and paranoia. 

These moments - which fill the screen with the imposing image of the homicidal, starving Zoref - depict strength and the invincible nature of this alien intruder.

The color changes and focus shifts on Zoref’s face further reflect that this human is in the grip of an alien force by alternating dramatically from blue to red (symbolically cold to hot...) as Zoref drains his victims. All of these remarkable and stylish touches make "Force of Life" appear more like a full-fledged feature than a TV show. As in the best of productions, form reflects content. This isn’t just a pretty melange of master-shots/close-ups, but a clearly-thought out tapestry that carries distinct visual meaning and thus thematic weight.

"The way it looked took some thought," Johnny Byrne told me, "and was beautifully expressed by David [Tomblin]. I don’t understand why people don’t get it..."

I must say, I also like the little joke about Zoref’s name, which Byrne insists was unintentional. Jumble the letters around a bit and you spell the word...froze. Nice touch.

The essence and driving concept of Space:1999 is always that outer space is a realm both frightening and wondrous, so unlike the series' detractors, I believe it totally unnecessary to explain where the alien in "Force of Life" originated, how it thinks, why it selected Zoref, where it’s headed, and so forth.

If all those questions had been addressed, the mystery would vanish, murdered in the rush to find an authentic-sounding scientific explanation or some pat psychological motivation for something that -- to the Alphans -- should remain inexplicable. There would be no room for horror, no space for awe, and thus no sense that the Alphans are strangers in a strange land.  And that's the very thesis of the program.  "Force of Life" delivers that thesis in near-perfect format.

So today, I wholeheartedly champion Space:1999's ninth episode, "Force of Life." It credits the viewer with intelligence, and doesn’t rush to spoon-feed us every last detail.In its deliberate ambiguity and impressive technical skill, it represents a remarkable installment of an often misunderstood or underestimated TV series. 

After you watch it, you might look up at the stars and shiver. There are things up there we can’t even imagine, and every now and then science fiction TV programming has a duty to look beyond laser duels, tales of good vs. evil, or even metaphors for our political world, and focus instead on the universe of mystery inherent in the cosmos.

That’s precisely what "Force of Life" accomplishes, and the genre is stronger for it.

30 Years Ago: The X-Files: "War of the Coprophages" (January 5, 1996)

Thirty years ago, writer Darin Morgan returned to The X-Files (1993 - 2002) with "The War of the Coprophages," a humorous installment of the series that gazes at humanity with unblinking and unromantic eyes. In particular, the story involves the “insect mind” as it relates to cockroaches.

However, “The War of the Coprophages” also compares the relative purity and simplicity of the insect mind to the “over-developed” human mind, a biological machine which permits for non-useful responses or “reactions” to threats; responses such as paranoia or hysteria, for example.  

These mad human responses are highlighted specifically in the episode’s townspeople of Miller’s Grove, MA, who display ignorance, the mob mentality, and terror in the face of the impossible: an apparent concentrated attack on the town by cockroaches.

Importantly, and humorously, all the gruesome deaths in the episode are a result not of roach attacks at all, but irrational human responses to the proximity of roaches, creatures that our eyes and minds register as “monsters.”  In fact, the gory deaths in the episode have the same effect on us, as viewers, as they do the townspeople.  We are not able to put aside our discomfort with the bugs long enough to take them out of the “suspect pool.” This fact gives the episode a highly reflexive quality: we are squirming in our seats at the grotesque bug swarms while the characters on the screen do approximately the same thing.

Finally, the last piece of this complex and funny puzzle is the fact that some of the roaches featured in the episode are actually outside observers of mankind, alien probes who are visiting our world…and find us with all our over-developed neuroses and psychoses on full display.

What, "The War of the Coprophages" wonders, must aliens make of this strange human species?

The tiny town of Miller’s Grove, Massachusetts has a bad bug problem.  It is teeming with cockroaches, and murderous ones at that.  Mulder (David Duchovny) is in town to investigate reports of UFO activity, but the roach attacks merit his full attention soon enough.

Although Scully (Gillian Anderson) scuttles the notion of swarming, attacking cockroaches, Mulder learns of a top secret Department of Agriculture experiment in town examining a new breed of roaches.  

More curious than that, however, is evidence that suggests the roaches may be metallic, perhaps alien probes sent from another world to examine this planet…

In Morgan’s “War of the Coprophages,” the gorgeous and intelligent Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (Bobbie Phillips) notes that cockroaches “eat, sleep, defecate, and procreate” and yet have no sense of romance, mythology, or exaggerated sense of importance about these rudimentary biological activities.  

This dialogue is a deliberate voicing of Morgan’s theme in the episode, that beings such as cockroaches see life in a clear, practical, and real way that human beings simply do not.  This thesis applies as well to our treatment of insects, as the episode’s final "squashing" scene reveals in spades.

To wit, even intelligent, educated, sensitive Fox Mulder can’t overcome his irrational human programming of terror when confronted with an insect.  In the end -- and even in light of everything he now believes about the cockroaches of Miller’s Grove -- he can’t resist the temptation to squash a bug.

The (defensive) violence is ingrained. It’s hard-wired.  And it is absolutely, patently irrational.  Mulder's head may want to offer "greetings from Planet Earth" to the possibly extra-terrestrial bugs, but his heart wants to destroy that which is different, and that which has terrified him since childhood (when he first saw, up close, a preying mantis).

Importantly, “War of the Coprophages” twice makes mention of my all-time favorite science fiction film: Planet of the Apes (1968), and in particular, the final dialogue on the beach shared between Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) and Colonel Taylor (Charlton Heston).  The discussion there is explicitly about destiny, and how it concretely exists, whether Taylor will “like what he finds” or not. 

In the case of “War of the Coprophages,” Morgan's point may very well be that biology is our destiny. 

Therefore -- to some extent, our destiny is irrationality: a fear of that which is different.  We look at bugs (or any creature) across a vast gulf of suspicion and fear and can't make peace with them.  This gulf is explicitly visualized in the episode during one impressive composition, which features Mulder and a police detective staring down a sink drain at an escaping bug.  This shot transforms the drain into a kind of a tunnel, and so subtly suggests mankind's "tunnel vision" when viewing things which are "alien" to us.  

Somehow, we are always looking at these"alien" things over a vast, irreconcilable distance...

The theme “irrationality is our destiny” plays out in other aspects of the tale as well.  Mulder lies and claims that he loves insects, all in an attempt to woo the desirable Bambi.  He has thus placed great importance on “winning” this attractive woman, so much so that he would betray his own core principles, and friendships (as we see in his curt telephone responses to Scully, once Bambi has arrived in the picture).  

Meanwhile, Scully -- who provides a lecture on rationality to the townspeople of Miller’s Grove -- is equally irrational and unable to overcome her hard-wiring. She has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the deaths in the Massachusetts town are unrelated, and that there is no need for her to travel to the burg to check things out.  But when Mulder mentions Dr. “Bambi” on the telephone, Scully races up to the scene of the crime, intensely jealous and afraid of being outclassed by the entomologist.  Her hard-wiring tells her to fight for the man with whom she has invested so much love, support and time: Mulder.

Again, the inference is that we place unnecessary importance on (and mythology around) simple acts, like procreation, so much so that we don't even understand why, sometimes, we do the things that we do.

The “War of the Coprophages” also returns The X-Files to its epistolary roots (harking back to Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein...), by prominently featuring Mulder’s written (and voice-over narrated) summation of the tale. His computer report concerns man’s apparent inability to rise above his hard-wired fears and irrationality and Mulder is clear-headed and thoughtful in his presentation.  He wonders what aliens must make of us, and our emotional, nonsensical acts.  He sympathizes with the "other," which is his gift as investigator.

Then, acting emotionally and nonsensically, Mulder squashes a nearby bug with his case report file.  This is a perfect Morgan-style ending to the episode.  The writer often delves into nihilism and absurdity, and here he positions Mulder -- our heroic protagonist -- as someone totally incapable of growth, no matter the power of his intellect.   The final destruction of the (harmless) insect by psychologist Mulder is all the evidence anyone needs that man's destiny, his programming, is most difficult to overcome.