Helena Russell

Doctor Helena Russell
Space: 1999 character
Barbara Bain as Doctor Helena Russell
Portrayed by	Barbara Bain
Date of birth	5 August 1960, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Home planet	Earth
Affiliation	Moonbase Alpha
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Posting	23 February 1999, first tour of duty on Moonbase Alpha
Rank	Doctor, Chief Medical Officer
Section	Medical

Helena Russell is a fictional character from the television series Space: 1999. She was played by Barbara Bain. She is American and apparently in her early forties.

Helena Russell is a doctor of medicine and a scientist, and as of the time of "Breakaway", the first episode of Space: 1999, she was Moonbase Alpha's Chief Medical Officer.

In September 1999, a mysterious rash of deaths hit Moonbase Alpha. Eleven astronauts — nine workers at Nuclear Disposal Area Two, and Frank Warren and Eric Sparkman, the two pilots for the manned probe to a newly discovered planet christened Meta — experienced all the symptoms of radiation sickness: malignant growths, disorientation, irrational and violent behaviour, before lapsing into comas and dying. Doctor Russell believed that the astronauts' deaths were being caused by radiation leakage from the nuclear waste disposal sites on the Moon. Repeated tests of the waste disposal areas revealed no detectable leakage.

She attempted to convince Commander Gorski, then commander of Moonbase Alpha, to allow her report her findings to the World Space Commission authorities on Earth, but he refused (under orders from Earth Command to conceal the incident behind a 'virus infection' cover story). Gorski was subsequently relieved of duty and replaced as Moonbase Alpha's commander by John Koenig. Unlike Gorski, he investigated her suspicions and they proved to be true - the astronauts were all affected by a previously unknown form of magnetic radiation effect produced by the accumulated nuclear waste and building towards a massive explosion. When it happened, the Moon was hurtled out of Earth orbit and plunged into deep space.

Following the Moon's breakaway from Earth, Dr. Russell and the other Alphans have one encounter after another with mysterious and often hostile alien races and inexplicable forces. In the second episode, she encounters her long lost husband, Lee Russell, who had been declared dead after the Astro Seven mission to Jupiter on which he was serving was lost. He is discovered living apparently alone on a habitable planet named Terra Nova by the Alphans. In the episode's climax, he revealed that he has been transformed into a being who is far superior to normal humans, possibly anti-matter in nature.

In Series One, Helena Russell often appears to be a somewhat cool, emotionally flat individual, especially in responding to the various crises which occur during the first season. However, over the course of the first series, she develops an emotional attachment to John Koenig. Koenig is equally smitten with Helena. At their first meeting in "Breakaway", there was an obvious spark of attraction; subsequent episodes indicated a growing, if discreet, relationship (see "Matter of Life and Death", "Black Sun", et cetera). In an alternate future, Helena married Koenig, only to lose him in an Eagle crash. In "Missing Link", she was seen in throes of an emotional struggle as her professional duty required her to terminate the life-support systems of the man she loved. In "War Games", her feelings for him allows her to tap into an alien power to bring him back to life after his having been fatally shot, and later rescue him from certain death after his having been marooned in space.