Earth II

After setting up the cast and situation, the majority of this movie is almost entirely a bomb-defusing procedural, padded out with Mariette Hartley's dead-doll impression. (Seriously, I don't think she makes a single expression even once, despite committing a majorly emotional act mid-story. Gary Lockwood looks like he wishes he'd gone into selling life insurance instead of acting. Almost nobody seems to feel anything, and every room is devoid of personality or interest; I guess sterility seemed futuristic in 1971.

Despite this, the show clearly had some real intelligence going into it, and actually made televised political debates interesting by adding subtext commentary. Less bomb defusion and warmer characters could have made this a minor classic.

This was sort of a cross between 2001 and Marooned. It made a very early attempt to make a scientifically accurate sci-fi series. The station was populated by people from all nations. They set up thier own government, and they led very politically correct lives. Any adult could disagree with the station's government and put the disagreement to a vote via an interactive TV. The show had some very interesting ideas about the future development of technology. Early in the show, a national election takes place by people turning on their home lights, and an spaceship in orbit counts the votes. Worth seeing if you can.

I saw Earth II as a Friday Night movie of the week back in 1971 as an eleven year old. The special effects and production design gave this film a great look, but the story charting the establishment of an independent nation on-board an orbiting space station lost me.

Forty years later, I had the chance to see it again through adult eyes. Surprisingly, I remembered several scenes and plot points, but, the entire production was brought down by one simple fact: it's boring. The film has a lot of incident but little action. The cerebral dialog is interesting, but the performances are wooden in the extreme. Only Anthony Franciosa's opinionated character rose above the colorless performances of the rest of the cast.

While I understand this was an effort for an intelligent SF series, the lack of human drama kept that series from happening.

I saw this TV-movie when it aired in 1971. I liked it then and saw it a few times in syndication. Now I own it on DVD.

The premise is that an orbiting space station is created by the United States and then is set up as an independent nation named Earth II. This nation is completely democratic, with a council that executes policies for the station. If someone disagree, they can challenge that decision and all the citizens can vote.

A situation occurs where the "no weapons" policy is challenged. A nuclear bomb is orbit around Earth, and passes close to the station on every orbit. The citizens have to make a choice whether to interfere with the bomb, in order to protect themselves and Earth.

The movie stars Gary Lockwood of "2001: A Space Odyssey" fame, Hari Rhodes and Scott Hylands. In a supporting role is Gary Merrill. Since this was probably a pilot, the guest cast included Tony Franciosa and Mariette Hartley.

While the film is dated and some of the science not so accurate, it is still very well done and for science fiction fans, should be seen.

One complaint is that there are two excellent actors playing Chinese representatives. These are Soon-Tek Oh and James Hong. They are uncredited, which is unfortunate.

A couple of years before Gene Roddenberry was trying to start new series with his movies "Genesis II" and "Planet Earth" (or is that "movie"?), this superior film with the oddly similar name paved the way. Alas, the road came to a dead-end, as all movies of this kind in the early '70s failed to understand that good story is better than bad sfx. This one is about a space station that has a unique social structure intended to eliminate conflict. The concept was handled in a simplistic way, but it nevertheless had a kind of wistful hopefulness about it that seemed not entirely incredible in 1971.

Like Roddenberry's films, this one fits into a short-lived era of TV sf that seemed suspended between Chesley Bonestell's airbrushed vision of the near future of space colonization, and Ralph McQuarrie's grittier, plumber's-nightmare versions that would soon follow. A bit of "2001" can be seen here and there as well (for example, when the characters walk "up" a wall).

If you liked the kind of austere models and similarly inornate acting (scripts, too) of early '70s sf, you'll like this one. The dilemma faced by the characters is familiar, as is its solution (but please overlook the glaring error involving the sun, the Earth, and the station's rotation). Still, there's a lost sense of "coming real soon now" in modern sf that this film might bring back to your memory. In 1971, it seemed we were _all_ going to fly in space and get to walk up walls. You know what happened next, but you didn't see it coming when this movie was new, so you believed it more then than you would today. See it again, if you get the chance, and ask yourself how we lost interest in going into orbit ourselves.