The Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual

"The Moonbase Alpha Technical Manual" was published in October, 1977. It was compiled and written by David Hirsch, with technical drawings by Geoffrey Mandel and David McConnell. The project was semi-official, and was commissioned by "Starlog" magazine in order to cash in on the perceived dearth of information about the recently-cancelled series, "", and the unexpected success of "The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual".

Somewhat unusually for fictional blueprints, this manual was not published in a normal book binding, but rather came in a red three-ringed binder, with sixty-or-so removable pages. The manual was conceived of as an ongoing project that would be periodically updated and expanded, and the binder format was thought to be an easy way for the manual's owners to insert new pages as they were published. Indeed, the manual even came with a coupon for the purchaser to fill out and mail in, so as to be included on a mailing list informing them of updates as they became available.

However, the pages lacked binding reinforcement and quickly tore around the binder-fit holes. But this was a minor quibble compared to the information errors in the manual. Second season episode logdates given by Dr. Helena Russell in the episodes themselves and therefore canonical, were only sporadically listed correctly in the manual. Gross errors in this regard resulted in episodes being very much out of proper sequence in the chronology section of the manual. Episode summaries also left much to be desired in terms of accuracy, and the episode guide for Season 2, though professing to be in production order, was not. The accuracy of some of the blueprints was also questionable, for at no time in the television series was there ever said to be more than 4 levels of floors inside Moonbase Alpha. The manual alleged the existence of more than twice as many floor levels.

Unfortunately, the book was not terribly popular, and did not earn much revenue for its publishers. It only went through one printing, and no updates were ever published. It is unknown if any were ever produced.

Fan draftsman Keith Young produced several score pages of updates in the format of this manual on his own initiative, and sold these as fanfic. Produced between 1987-1991 they are considered good quality and sought by some fans.

External links

* [http://www.space1999.net/~catacombs/cybermuseum/MATN/matnindex.html Most of the Manual available online]