Cosmic Princess (1982) (TV)

I've never been a fan of Space: 1999 - and this changes nothing, 12 February 2008

I grew up during 1960s and 1970s and there's still a lot of television from this period that I enjoy – The Avengers, Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, Charlie's Angels, and Mission: Impossible just to name a few examples. I bring this up because Cosmic Princess is essentially two episodes of Space: 1999, a syndicated sci-fi television program produced from 1975 to 1977. I was never a fan so cobbling two episodes together and calling it a movie has very little appeal to me. In a word, it's as dull as dishwater. Things take forever to happen. It's tedious to the nth degree. The sets and scripts make the original Star Trek (another show I'm not a big fan of) look like they spent a fortune. Maybe someone who actually enjoyed Space: 1999 would find something to like about Cosmic Princess (and I know the show has fans), but I'm not that person.

Because Cosmic Princess is two episodes of Space: 1999, there are two distinct plots. The first (originally called The Metamorph) finds the crew of Moonbase Alpha in the clutches of Mentor (Brian Blessed) who wants to drain their souls to power a machine he hopes to use to restore his planet to its former glory. I'll admit, Blessed's performance is a treat. The man is an awesome actor. The crew escapes with Mentor's daughter, Maya, just before the planet blows up. In the second half of Cosmic Princess (originally titled Space Warp), Maya transforms herself into a hideous being and goes on a rampage attempting to escape and return to her home planet. The highlight of this segment is an unintentionally hilarious moon buggy chase.

Like many people who have seen Cosmic Princess in the past few years, I did so via a low quality DVD-R of an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. This particular episode of MST3K was part of the Minneapolis public-access run before the show hit the "big time". Some of the jokes work, but like a lot of the KTMA shows, the riffs are far too inconsistent to call it good. I'll give it a 2/5 on my MST3K rating scale.

3/10