If I were to give a score for the plot idea for this episode of "Space: 1999", I'd give it a 9--it was that creative and potentially interesting. Sadly, however, season two of the series really, really 'jumped the shark' and this really undid a lot of the good that could have resulted in "The Bringers of Wonder". That's because instead of the cerebral sort of show it was in the first season, season two really panicked and inserted tons and tons of stupid looking monsters into practically every episode--making the show look cheap and stupid. Think about it--when the show began, it proudly announced state of the art special effects and the highest budget on television. Now, in season two, most of the outer space effects were cheap and terrible AND the monsters looked like they came from 1950s-60s cheap sci-fi films--like "The Terror of Party Beach"! The show begins with Commander Koenig flying about in an Eagle craft as if he was drunk. Eventually, his insane stunts result in his craft crashing on the Moon and he's almost killed. To help him in his recovery, some weird futuristic sort of neural stimulator is used on him. While he's unconscious and recovering, an impossible to believe event occurs--a ship from Earth traveling at greater than light speed arrives and it's filled with people all very familiar to the folks on Alpha. Oddly (and this is a bit of a hole in the story), no one really questions the impossibility of all this--they just accept it as well as the notion that they'll soon be returning back home.
You really know something bad is afoot when suddenly a member of Alpha tries to kill Koenig while he's unconscious. And, when another member of the crew sees this, the 'friends from Earth' manage to distract him! Obviously these are NOT who they claim to be and they mean harm to poor old Koenig...but why? To find out more tune in to the second part--two of the only episodes of season two that really piqued my curiosity.
You really know something bad is afoot when suddenly a member of Alpha tries to kill Koenig while he's unconscious. And, when another member of the crew sees this, the 'friends from Earth' manage to distract him! Obviously these are NOT who they claim to be and they mean harm to poor old Koenig...but why? To find out more tune in to the second part--two of the only episodes of season two that really piqued my curiosity.