Episode 4: RING AROUND THE MOON
First of all, I would like to point of that now matter how excellent WAR GAMES is, an excellent episode by all means, to me RING AROUND THE MOON is a much more fascinating episode to watch. Quite interestingly, as the intellectual content of WAR GAMES is perhaps one of the greatest contributions in the total of SPACE:1999, the stylistic aspects, and yes intellectual aspects as well, of RING AROUND THE MOON makes this even more interesting as far as I'm concerned.

In WAR GAMES we have the issue of Zen Buddism as an answer to problems inherit within the inner life of modernity, a very fascinating definitely to-the-point observation, I would say, which also makes WAR GAMES highly interesting viewed in contrast and communication with episodes like BLACK SUN and GUARDIAN OF PIRI, that also touch this issue, although from a slightly different angle.

RING AROUND THE MOON, on the other hand, seems like a much more psychological approach to the same type of problems, and in stark contrast to the episodes above, that use the social environment as a sort of premise, the point that di Lorenzo seems to make with RING AROUND THE MOON is the necessity of looking inwards to investigate the central issues that may be the reason for the problems inherit with modernity in the first place.

In RING AROUND THE MOON, di Lorenzo's first, and in my opinion his best, contribution to bringing intellectual content to the SPACE:1999 series, the issue at stake is the place that knowledge and search for knowledge makes in the building of modern society.

While of course knowledge is necessary in order to survive, the question Victor makes in the epilogue, what seems to be a question concerning the tradition of German metaphysical epistemology, i.e. whether knowledge is the answer after all, is answered negatively, or, rather, it is not answered at all, it is just blatently obvious that when the Triton probe is blown to pieces, what was the point of all it's world knowledge?

Of course, di Lorenzo continues to investigate the conclusions of RING AROUND THE MOON in his next epic, MISSING LINK, but that is another story.

One of his best points, however, in RING AROUND THE MOON, contrasting this episode with WAR GAMES and GUARDIAN OF PIRI, is how Helena seem to be completely trapped more or less involunteerly in the world of science, or perhaps the world of logical positivism, the intellectual structure of modernity. In fact, the episode is quite similar to GUARDIAN OF PIRI in this respect, although with the great contrast that she does not appear apathetic or drunk as the inhabitants of techno-paradise do on Piri.

On the other hand, nor does she appear trapped withing a one-room intellectual world, free of fear, as she does in WAR GAMES, but trapped she is nevertheless although apparently she does not know it until she falls down exhausted from doing scientific work such as punching on the main mission keyboards.

Quite wonderful, isn't it? I don't think I've ever seen scientific behaviour so efficiently and well described on TV ever as in RING AROUND THE MOON. In my opinion the obsession of Helena is this particular epsiode is what makes the series slightly comparable with 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY, not only on visual terms, but also be incorporating some of the intellectual components that made and still makes 2001 the definitive science fiction film together with the only other contribution to this genre of equal callibre, namely Tarkovski's SOLARIS which also show strong similarities with RING AROUND THE MOON.