Startling Barbara Bain Flight Through Entirety

This month, we’re faced with an alarming metaphysical choice: eternal life among a bunch of absurdly hot models in Hugh Hefner’s second least favourite Swiss chalet, or a normal lifespan cleaning up the corridors of Moonbase Alpha after its latest nuclear catastrophe. Victor, Helena, Bob and Alan all want to make the obviously correct (if basic) choice, but their fun is inevitably spoiled by miserable old John Koenig and the second law of thermodynamics.

This month’s ethereal immortal beings in a surreal Pinewood studio are Isla Blair and Anthony Valentine, who are (reasonably enough) so keen to avoid meeting the crew of Moonbase Alpha that they decide to just kill them all instead. Or do they?

Moonbase Alpha is on a collision course this week, ineluctably destined to crash into a giant pustulent planet. Or is it? Commander Koenig — overcome by the charms of Queen Margaret Leighton — doesn’t think so, and so he turns up to Main Mission in his pyjamas like a Moonie and threatens to gun down anyone who attempts to prevent the collision, including, upsettingly, our own Barbara. But — inevitably — it all turns out for the best, and we end our second episode in a row staring out the window...

An eerie blue glow invades Alpha and takes control of a young Ian McShane, who suddenly becomes prone to bouts of German Expressionism and freezing attractive young people from the 1970s. A star is born this week, in Force of Life.

September 13th, 1999. A nuclear waste dump on the moon is destroyed in an explosion so violent and so catastrophic that it creates a major science fiction show on ITV and the commentary podcast which tells its story. But before that, we witness some harrowing deaths, some attractive moustaches, and the quivering emotional restraint of Dr Helena Russell, from which this podcast gets its name.