You thought some of the previous episodes were strange (and occasionally bad?), well this one, All That Glisters, is right up there. And it’s the first one up this week as we jump into more adventures with Moonbase Alpha.

Set some 562 days after leaving Earth orbit, All That Glisters was written by Keith Miles, and first aired on 28 October, 1976.

An eagle mission with Koenig (Martin Landau), Russell (Barbara Bain), Maya (Catherine Schell), Carter (Nick Tate) and Tony (Tony Arnholt) aboard detects a mineral on a nearby planet that may be of help to the Moonbase.

All of it is a ruse set by a strange rock creature that needs the water that Alpha can supply, or the Alphans… seeing as we’re composed largely of water. My question is why would a rock need water?

A lot of this actually isn’t spoken, but merely deduced by the crew of the Eagle, which spares anyone saying it outright.

There’s a bit of a jealousy thing happening in this episode with Tony and Maya when an Irish man with an affectation for Texas, David Reilly (Patrick Mower), takes a shine to her, and she isn’t rebuffing his advances.

And of course, Reilly is not only going to be a problem for Tony, who is in a coma for a large portion of the episode (caused by the rock), he causes the rest of them problems because he’s a geologist, and is now obsessed with studying the rock.

But everyone, except for Reilly, gets a bit of a happy ending.

Not the best story of the season to be sure…

The Taybor was written by Thom Keyes and first aired on 4 November, 1976. The Taybor (Willoughby Goddard)  is a traveling interplanetary salesman and trader. He’s larger than life, and he is rather enchanted with Alpha, and one Alphan in particular, Maya.

As they all get to know each other, Koenig realizes that Taybor’s ship could transport all of the Alphans all the way home. But he asks a very high price… Maya.

Of course no matter what the cost, we know Koenig and the rest won’t take the deal, Maya is one of them now, and none of them would be able to live with that decision. Not to mention, of course, what would they even be going home to? After the moon left orbit, the Earth would have been left in disastrous shape, and would they ever have been able to recover from that? Alphans are probably better off travelling that attempting to get home.

Of course the Alphans won’t take the deal, and Maya has a plan of her own to make sure Taybor loses interest in her.

Next week the journey continues as I travel with Moonbase Alpha, in Space: 1999!