We first heard word of a Space: 1999 reboot a little over a year ago. Given that the show’s original date is now 15 years in our past, the show was getting a title upgrade to Space: 2099, and it’s being developed and executive produced by HDFilms’ Jace Hall, who previously served as EP on ABC’s 2009 V reboot. Aside from that initial announcement, things have been pretty quiet on the 2099 front, but now Hall has provided an update, which basically amounts to: it’s still in the works.

Hall provided the update on the project’s official website, assuring readers that the project hadn’t quietly slipped into development hell, but reminding everyone that this sort of thing takes a while to pull together. Hall says the main focus during the past year has been on writing the script and developing the characters, and that’s certainly good news. For one thing, the original premise of Space: 1999 was pretty damn silly: an accidental explosion sends the moon careening through space, along with the crew of a moonbase on the surface. In spite of the explosion having enough energy to send the moon rocketing off into the void and incredible speeds, somehow the crew of Moonbase Alpha survives. And that’s not even getting into the notion that they keep encountering aliens and having adventures on a weekly basis.

Daylight savings time is here. It’s getting dark sooner, so there’s no point in going outside, right? All you want to do anyway is get inside to stream this particularly awesome assortment of sci-fi fare. And even if you’re too busy farming, you can just watch something on your mobile device.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Netflix Instant)
A love-it-or-hate-it film that will probably see more adoration on this website than others, Buckaroo Banzai is a cult classic in the purest form. With a plot that involves Peter Weller’s surgeon/physicist/rock star bringing aliens into the world and having to destroy them, along with a high-grade bunch of ragtags, this is a mindbender of the highest order. There are maybe five minutes in this movie that aren’t driven by badass imagination and wackiness, but even those are damn awesome. We still somehow never got to see Banzai take on the World Crime League, nor did Yakov Smirnoff ever become the National Security Advisor. In present-day America, 8th dimension opens you.

A couple of weeks ago Josh launched his Futures Past column with a look at how the kitschy ’70s British sci-fi series Space: 1999 thought the future would look like. Its setting of Moonbase Alpha was relatively tame and realistic compared to other fictional worlds with warp drives and time travel and whatnot. In fact, as Josh pointed out, it’s a setting we very well could be living in right now, had our love affair with space exploration flamed out. Still, while we may not love paying to explore the final frontier these days, we still like it in TV form. Now Space: 1999 is the latest property to get the reboot treatment, with a new version in the works under the handle of Space: 2099.

Deadline reports that Space: 2099 is being developed by ITV Studios America and HDFilms. The project will be exec produced by HDFilms’ Jace Hall. Rebooting a cult classic should feel right at home for Hall; he previously headed up ABC’s V reboot. It’s still too early for casting news, and the story doesn’t include any details of how the new version might update the original concept. Aside from, obviously, moving the setting forward a century.

This week my obsession with the way we used to see the future takes me to Earth’s moon, hurtling out of orbit in Space: 1999. Blast off with the latest installment in GFR’s ongoing series, Futures Past, right now.

Six years after Apollo 11’s historic 1969 landing on the moon it seemed as though man was taking the first step to something bigger and grander. By comparison to some of the other science fiction being produced in the time period, Gerry Anderson’s (Thunderbirds, UFO) British produced television series Space: 1999 actually took a fairly conservative approach to what man might accomplish in the depths of space. Yet even Gerry’s view, realistic though it strove to be, turned out to be far too optimistic.

Still, in 1975 it seemed entirely plausible that man would have a permanent base on the lunar surface within the next 25 years. So Anderson set out to make a show based in what, at least then, seemed like an inevitable future.

Here’s Martin Landau in the very first episode of Space: 1999, which was believe it or not, at the time the most expensive television program ever made. Watch it and I’ll see you afterward to discuss how they did at predicting the future…