By Scott Lindvall
Let me get this out of the way up front. I’m a nerd and a fan of the 1970’s cult sci fi show Space: 1999. The TV show, which was made in England by producer Gerry Anderson, filled a niche between Star Trek and Star Wars. It was imaginative, mysterious and trippy, and it had the best special effects ever seen on TV at the time. It starred an international cast of actors, led by Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Barry Morse. And it had another star attraction: the Eagle.
Jeffrey Morris has made a wonderful new film called The Eagle Obsession. Ostensibly, it’s a documentary about that fictional spacecraft from Space: 1999 and the loyal – okay, obsessive – following that the show’s fans, including Jeffrey, have for it. After watching the film, though, I find it less about the spaceship and more about the inspiration and passion that it represents in Jeffrey’s life. It is a personal journey that takes him all over the globe.
The Eagle is the starting point of the journey, and it’s at the center of every interaction throughout the film, but it’s just a jumping off point as Jeffrey speaks with authors, actors, astronauts, filmmakers, special effects technicians, fans, and, in an especially uplifting episode, a childhood friend. The interviews and interactions are fun and funny. And the message is clear: art often inspires life as much as life sometimes imitates art.
The Eagle is a very cool spaceship. It is a bug-shaped rocket with thrusters that allows for atmospheric flight as well as space travel between Earth and its moon. It has a pilot module at the front of a girder structure that supports four landing pods with maneuvering rockets and four bell-shaped thrusters at the rear. The underside has rockets for vertical takeoffs and landings. The girder structure also holds interchangeable mission-specific modules, such as a passenger pod, a medical bay, a cargo platform, and more. In Space: 1999, the Eagle looks and feels like a real spacecraft. It could have been a next generation of the Lunar Excursion Module that NASA used to send men to the moon just a few years earlier.
In Jeffrey’s documentary, his fascination as a child with NASA’s moon missions led to his love of science fiction adventures, including Space: 1999 and Star Trek. This, in turn, helped inspire his own ambitions as a storyteller and filmmaker. He tells of his parents’ encouragement to follow his dreams. Many of the people he speaks with in the film talk about the Eagle and Space: 1999 as an inspiration to pursue their own dreams. Jeffrey even showed off the fifty-year-old iconic spaceship to a new generation of grade school students, perhaps inspiring them towards futures in aerospace design, medicine and science. Who knows?
As a fan of Space: 1999, myself, I followed the production of The Eagle Obsession for the past couple of years. I admit, I expected the film to be more of a geeky love letter to fans of Space:1999, showing off mammoth collections of Eagle models, telling stories of conventions, and celebrating fifty years of fandom. The final film certainly touches on some of those aspects, but it is less a story about science fiction fandom and more of a personal exploration of the storyteller. It’s a better movie as a result, with an uplifting message throughout.
After two years of production, hours of filmed interviews and miles of footage, Jeffrey has revealed that he has plenty of material for that tribute to fans that I was originally expecting. He plans to release Beyond the Eagle Obsession later this year as a companion to The Eagle Obsession. Given the love and passion he put into this first film, I’m betting the second will be fun and fascinating as well.