How I Would Salvage SPACE 1999
I posted a version of this over on sclerotic_ring's LJ.

So we were discussing how very odd it that an apparently unpromising show like the Battlestar Galactica of the 1970s could have a reasonable show inspired by it. This led to a discussion of other shows of the same era that did not reach their potential. I decided to see what could be done with SPACE 1999.

This is how I would make it not suck.



OK, basic elements that have to be kept:

The entire Moon has somehow been ejected from the solar system in some way that ideally doesn't destroy it or the solar system. This happened as the result of a mishap.

There were people on the Moon, from a variety of backgrounds.

The Moon was actually fairly developed, in terms of industry.

These people would like to return home (Part of the motive may be because the Moonbase was designed with the idea that there would be a habitable world 4 days away and the life support system cycles may not be all that closed).

Stuff that has to go:

No massive explosion.

SPACE 2020:

There's the beginning of space industrialization. Due to its location, the Moon is useful for a number of purposes, from supplying cheap fuel (from regolith) to providing a place where moderately dangerous experiments can be carried out safely (for the people on Earth).

There's a new Theory of Everything, one that seems to suggest inertia can be fiddled. This could have commercial possibilities. There was a mishap on Earth involving a billiard ball so the actual tests were moved to the Moon. A big test is coming up.

Someone points out an interpretation of the model that suggests that the volume in which inertia will change could be a lot larger than is expected. This interpretation is not the consensus so jolly bets like the ones about Trinity igniting the atmosphere get made and the test goes ahead as planned.

The signals from Earth suddently cut off.

On inspection, the stars are different. One entire hemisphere of the Moon appears to have been polished smooth and all the people there are presumed dead. Luckily, our brave researchers are not among the dead. Since they've just marooned everyone on the Moon umpty light years from home, they are not very popular but on the other hand, the only hope people have to getting back to Earth is to get a handle on what went wrong and retrace their footsteps.

The effect isn't that easy to direct so each time they use it, a little more of the Luanry surface is lost. Changing the rotational period of the Moon is Out, so if they want to head in a given direction, they have to wait until the Moon has rotated so that as little as possible of the surface will lost.

It should take a while for people to realize that each light year they travelled put them a year into the future and well, they are tens of thousands of light years from Earth.

Civilization survived the loss of the Moon and the subsequent slump of the tidal bulge in the ocean. The ToE inertia fiddlers let humans settle a large chunk of
the galaxy. Time has let humans become very odd. Happily the first people they run into are from about their era, thanks to relativity, but they are also the kind of people who'd have a reason to relocate ten thousand light years from home. These are also the people closest in time to the Oops, people who may have reasons to hate the scientists for what happened during the Big Slump. Sticking around here is probably a bad idea....

The closer the Moon-ship gets to Earth, the weirder things get.