[3] 2306 days after leaving Earth orbit, the Moon is passing a solar system containing a pair of potentially habitable planets.
A sensor sweep of the larger world reveals a breathable atmosphere, vegetation, a city, but no life-signs except a single person.
Beside him stands Crael, a senior prisoner, pleading his case to Elizia, mistress-governor of this penal colony.
Elizia decrees that any prisoner offered the chance to outwit the Hunters and reach the 'Sanctuary Column'—winning instant parole and a return to Ellna—will accept the challenge.
Elizia has withheld all knowledge of the disaster from both prisoners and guards in order to maintain the status-quo on Entra.
After the transbeamer conveys the man home (and to his death), Crael questions why the government has stopped sending new prisoners to Entra.
The inmates are also unhappy with the recent rules banning live contact with Ellna, but Elizia responds with plausible lies.
As an announcer recounts false news of friends and family, the angry prisoners attack Koenig for lying but he is saved by the guards.
Phirly does as he is told, but Elizia reactivates the fence early, vaporising him so that she can make it appear that Koenig died there.
Elizia feigns sympathy as she relates her version of the tragedy—the two men, having survived the crash, blundered into a boundary fence before help could arrive.
Koenig seems to capitulate, taking her in his arms and kissing her—then sends her tumbling into her personal guards before escaping into the forest outside.
Elizia instructs her guards that as Koenig has shown contempt for their culture and authority, he must die slowly when captured.
As Elizia and company board the ship, he salvages a homing transmitter and a fire extinguisher before jumping down the command-module escape hatch.
Entitled "Devil's Moon" until post-production, the story would undergo other adjustments: (1) The Alphans were to have received a distress signal from Ellna; this was the reason Koenig was flying with a member of the medical rescue team; (2) Significant dialogue between Elizia and Crael was cut.
It was inferred that Crael had served his sentence, but remained out of a sense of duty to act as defence counsel for the inmates.
More dialogue about the rights of the imprisoned was also excised; (3) A sequence in the security ward was removed where, faced with Fraser's threat of attack, the Entrans view Koenig's knowledge of Earth warfare.
Library footage would have depicted the history of war from marching Roman legions to the Hiroshima atomic bomb[6] The supporting cast was to include Bill Fraser, Doctor Ben Vincent and Sandra Benes.
[6] While John Hug would appear as Fraser, Jeffery Kissoon was no longer available and his role was given to newcomer Sam Dastor, playing Doctor Ed Spencer.
Sahn was also replaced, as Zienia Merton was committed to a lead part in the Norwegian film Kosmetikkrevolusjonen.
She had intended staying long enough to film this episode, excited that her character would leave the confines of Moonbase.
However, delays in the Space: 1999 shooting schedule further pushed back the starting date and Merton was forced to depart for Norway.
Her character, also called Alibe, is a communications officer and would be given all of the Sandra Benes scenes and dialogue for the rest of the series.
[8] In the reworked omnibus Space: 1999—Year Two, the absence of Helena, Maya, Verdeschi and Carter is rationalised by placing them out of communications range on the Eagle fleet housing the Alphans while repair crews tend to the damage done to Alpha by the waste-pit detonation in "The Séance Spectre".