Space: 1999
'Cuz they say two thousand zero zero party
over
Oops out of time
So tonight I'm going to party like it's
1999...
c.1982 Controversy Music (and Roger Nelson/Prince/The
Artist)
For those old enough to
remember, and young enough to care,
the 70s were a dreary time. Star
Trek was in reruns, the
season and a half of the animated Star
Trek in 1974 and 1975 is
too painful for words, and we had to endure
until Dec. 7th, 1979
and the premiere of Star Trek: The Motion
Picture. There was,
however, a short-lived British television
series in 1975 and 1976
which made the Trek-less years manageable--Space:
1999.
Basically a Martin
Landau and Barbra Bain vehicle, Space:
1999 envisioned a future where we
had established an outpost
on the Moon before the turn of the century.
Unfortunately for
the fictional inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha,
on Sept. 13th, 1999
a chain-reaction in their nuclear dump caused
a massive
explosion and hurled the Moon out of Earth's
gravity, off into
deep space, and some 43 (?) adventures.
Viewers fondly
remember the highly realistic communicators
of Space: 1999,
handheld two-way devices a decade before
Sony popularized the
"Watchman" televisions. I suspect
much of the then and
current interest in the show centers on
the title itself, Space:
1999. The end of the century
and dawn of a new millennium.
We love numbers.
The popularity of lotteries, scratch
tickets, and casino gambling is at an all-time
high. Recently,
oh-so-hip Madonna and the too-cool-to-drool
crowd have
encouraged number mysticism and the study
of Kabbalah, though
Sherman Hemsley ('George' on CBS's All
In The Family and The
Jeffersons) was the first celebrity
to discuss the Kabbalah and
related Jewish works in a TV GUIDE interview
during the early
'80s. As we get close to the end of
both the century and the
second millennium of the Christian (or Common)
Era, many have
begun to act goofy when confronted with
certain numbers. They
see 1999 as some pivotal year in human existence.
Me? It's
just another annual trip for Spaceship Earth
around the Sun.
Though we're all
equal passengers aboard Spaceship Earth,
we're deliciously distinct in appearance
and character, and
fiercely different when it comes to what
calendar we use. [For
an entertaining and useful resource of dates,
times, terms, and
calendars, click here.]
Our struggle to define and mark the
passage of time could very well be as old
as sentiency itself.
The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, as
well as the classical
Greeks and Romans, all tried their damnedest
to get a good,
dependable calendar going. All failed,
though in fairness, each
contributed a little 'something' to our
current calendrical
reckoning system.
Our Western convention
of dividing the time-line into events
before and after the birth of Jesus began
with the Scythian
monk turned Roman abbot, Dionysius Exiguus
(Denis the Little, in
English, also called the Menace).
Around 527, to avoid any
possibility of misdating a previous Easter
observance before
the death and alleged resurrection of Jesus,
Denis introduced
the designation Anni Domini Noster Jesu
Christi, later
shortened to Anno Domini ("in
the year of our Lord"). In this
system, the Christian (or Common) Era began
on A.D. January 1,
Year 1. Lacking an appropriate designation
(or interest to invent
one) for the years before Jesus' birth,
those rare scholars who
did speak and write concerning ancient days,
continued to use
classical Greek and Roman calendars, i.e.,
in the blah-blah year
of blah-blah's reign.
In 1627 another
Denis the Menace, the Jesuit scholar Denis
Petau(s), popularly known as Dionysius Aurelianesis
S. J. Petavius
or simply Petavius, published his monumental
two-volume work,
Doctrina temporium, in which he suggested
a designation for
those years before the birth of Jesus.
This work of Petavius
went through many editions through the mid-19th
century, but
none more important than the one published
in London in 1659
which established Before Christ or
B.C.
as the proper
designation for the years before the birth
of Jesus. Our
calendar of history was complete.
A.D. 1 followed 1 B.C. This
was helpful, of course, but ...not very
realistic and accurate.
Time begins from a fixed point, babies are
not born a year-old
(okay, so nine-months old in China, ...geez),
and to find absolute
dates, science needed yet another calendar.
Science needed a
zero year...
A change from the
Christian A.D. and B.C. to a secular C.E.
(Christian or Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before
Christian or
Common Era) goes a step toward making our
Western calendar
more acceptable to non-Christians, but science
(specifically
astronomy) needed a Year Zero for accurate
calculations.
Science has dropped A.D., C.E., B.C., and
B.C.E. from its counts
and uses the plus '+' and minus '-' signs,
with 1 B.C.E. becoming
Year 0, rather than -1. In astronomical
reckoning, -1 is the
historical 2 B.C.E., expressed as:
Historical Year minus Astronomical
Year equals Historical Year
(Astronomical Year plus
1) B.C.E.
Got it? If an astronomer cites (for
example) a date of -714, a
date of 715 B.C.E., according to the 'historical'
calendar, is
meant. So, ...this is WHY folks are
confused about the start of
the new millennium.
Before Space:
1999 chose to portray the near side of the
turn of the century, Arthur C. Clarke introduced
us to the far
side. Continued from his 1951 short
story, "The Sentinel,"
Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick gave
audiences the 1968
movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Still visually stunning after 30
years, the success of the movie inspired
Clarke to the sequels
2010 (also a movie), 2061,
and the series finale of the recently
published 3001. Captivating
science fiction which begins with
the next millennium and takes us through
to the following one.
Clarke's series is recognized as one of
the finest in fantastic
literature and he was recently knighted
in his native Britain.
[Note: The knighthood achieved controversial
status this last
February as shortly before the ceremony
an interview was
published in which Clarke admitted to a
lifelong pedophilia.
Ouch! ...Perhaps this explains Clarke
living in Sri Lanka since
1956.]
Whether one regards
the coming year as +1999, A.D. 1999,
or 1999 C.E., hopefully most of us will
look at it as just another
year, with all the necessary ups and downs
which are part of life
aboard Spaceship Earth. Have a safe
trip!
traveling standby,
Rick