Dragon's Domain

Air Date: 10/23/75    written by Christopher Penfold    Directed by Charles Crichton

One of Alpha's residents, Tony Cellini, is having bad dreams - the dreams seem to be taking him back to a disastrous space mission in 1996. Back then, Tony, as captain of the mission, had been sent with 3 other crewmates on the first long range exploration space mission. The mission went well and without incident until it reached a graveyard of spaceships. At this point, the incidents are based on Tony's memories - his ship had been invaded by some kind of tentacled alien monstrosity with a huge glowing eye which hypnotized his crewmates and then killed them.    Tony had been in the front pilot's cabin when the invasion occurred and he managed to escape by detaching the cabin. Though he was well received when  he finally returned by himself, his story was generally not believed and he was mostly discredited. The one exception was Koenig, who stood by his friend.  Now, the moon and Alpha Base are approaching the same graveyard of ships; Tony sees this as his chance to redeem himself; Helena thinks Tony is close to cracking up; Koenig is worried. In any case, Koenig heads out to the ship graveyard with a team that includes Tony, but things do not go as planned.
This is one of the most memorable and famous episodes, mostly because it features a truly ghastly alien creature which kills humans in a horrifying fashion, a reminder that there are very dangerous things out there in space.    Other sci-fi series had their own 'monsters-in-outer space' episodes and these have traditionally always been fan favorites. In this one, the lethal creature appears to pull its victims underneath its body, swiftly consumes them of all liquids and pops out the remaining husks; it's a startling, disturbing visual. Unfortunately, there is still clumsy writing which strains belief: there is no explanation for why the moon encounters this graveyard of ships, even though the characters themselves voice the fact that this group of ships should be many light years away. At the start of the episode, Helena is narrating; she mentions that they are traveling between galaxies.   - sheesh, that moon really does get around.  There are no answers in regard to the alien creature itself; apparently, it was just waiting in the ship all those years for someone to return - what does it subsist on while waiting? The audience had to make up their own answers (it's probably some kind of other-dimensional entity, maybe an offshoot of the Cthulhu mythos). BoG's Score: 7 out of 10
Space Trivia: we get a rare actual figure of time passed since the moon broke out of orbit - Helena states it's been 877 days at the beginning.