The lastest film gump on space travel, Interstella has not moved far forward from the older takes. I'm thinking. This one though has a go at depicting a fifth dimension......assuming that the fourth is Time which got interwoven  in this tale with the fifth. AS I recall older space fiction films did not tangle with explaining proofs and I'm not sure that the ones explained in Interstalla were right anyway. And, I'm just being curious here, would map references (given from someone to himself  from the future to the past -from the 5th dimension... yeah, it's that sort of film) would they have been in binary? I thought hexadecimal would be more economical for making marks in the dust. Unless you have seen the film this sounds like rubbish - and more so if you have, is my guess. Anyway, the human race is saved enough to be able to play baseball on a satellite station circling Saturn......oh that we should all be so lucky!

I watched one (on dvd) last night Battleship which was total rubbish*
Anyone who wants to view it for themselves, tune in to Channel 4 this Saturday at 8pm.

*Entertaining rubbish though, with aliens and explosions and CGI warships

Triceratops wrote:

I watched one (on dvd) last night Battleship which was total rubbish*
Anyone who wants to view it for themselves, tune in to Channel 4 this Saturday at 8pm.

*Entertaining rubbish though, with aliens and explosions and CGI warships

Thanks for the warning. Have noted the date/time/channel combo as one to avoid at all costs.

The 50s classics are much better. This one, with its' quasi-military/ exploration crew, must have been an influence on Star Trek;





Leslie Nielsen in the days before Airplane and The Naked Gun.

The Orion test flight has been postponed for 24 hours;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30333120[/i][/b]

Strange to think this is now 13, almost 14, years behind us now;

And possibly the oldest science fiction film in existence - "Le Voyage dans la Lune" by George Méliès, here in a 2010 restored version of one print that Méliès himself had hand-coloured in 1902. The restoration, performed on a badly damaged reel found in Barcelona in 1993, cost around 400,000 euros.

There is a distinct similarity between Melies' Moon Creatures and HG Wells' Selenites from The First Men in the Moon published around the same time.(1901 as it transpires)

Trailer for the 1964 film, Wells, for once, did not go with the giant gun for launching a vehicle into space, instead he came up with the magical substance Cavorite;




By 1936, Wells was back with the giant gun, from Things to Come;

Rod Taylor, star of The Time Machine and The Birds, (could that be classed as SF?) has died aged 84;

nordmann wrote:

And possibly the oldest science fiction film in existence - "Le Voyage dans la Lune" by George Méliès

Voyage dans la Lune is commonly known in English as From the Earth to the Moon which is a direct translation of Jules Verne’s 1865 novel De la Terre à la Lune. Otherwise, it’s simply known as A Trip to the Moon. Both of those translations, however, ignore the word ‘dans’ i.e. in. A more faithful translation would, perhaps, be 'A Journey in the Moon’. Yet neither in Verne’s novel De la Terre à la Lune, nor in its sequel Autour de la Lune, do the protagonists actually land on the moon let alone go inside it. In George Méliès' film they do land on the Moon and indeed explore it underground. This is consistent with Méliès' other influence which was HG Wells’ 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon. Verne was disdainful of Wells’ work for having a weak scientific basis. It’s not recorded if Verne ever viewed Méliès' film (he was certainly still alive at the time) but it’s likely that he would have been of a similar view.
 
The idea of exploring underground and the depths of the seas, however, was something which Jules Verne was also interested in. He wrote Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth) even before De la Terre à la Lune. He also wrote Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas) a few years later. This too inspired Méliès to make the film Deux Cents Milles sous les mers (Two Hundred Miles Under the Seas) in 1907:



(spoiler alert: - it’s subtitled ‘ou le Cauchemar du pêcheur’, ‘or the Fisherman’s Nightmare’)

The genres of science fiction about underwater and subterranean travel are much more problematic even than travel in outer space. Until 2019, for instance, more people had been on the surface of the Moon than had been to the world’s deepest point, Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Marianas Trench. Over the last couple of years, however, this statistic has changed with the deep submergence vehicle Limiting Factor having made several dives to that location. And with nonagenarians now also going into space, what was previously considered science fiction is rapidly becoming tourism fact.

Going underground, however, remains difficult - very difficult. Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth was unquestionably science fiction because, unlike with outer space and even with the ocean depths, our understanding of what lies beneath our feet is very limited and indeed primitive. There are plausible scientific theories about the Earth’s crust, mantle and core - about how thick they are, what they’re made of and what temperature they are at etc – but these remain just theories. When it comes to understanding the Earth’s interior, human science has literally barely scratched the surface. The deepest known caves, for instance, go down just 2.2 kilometres. That’s less distance than from London’s Charing Cross to the Tower of London and only about a fifth of the height of Mount Everest. There are, however, gold mines in South Africa which are twice as deep as the caves which is an indication of just how much humans value that shiny metal. The aforementioned Challenger Deep is more than two and half times deeper than those mines and Mount Everest would easily fit into that oceanic trench with 2 kilometres of sea still above the summit. Humans have drilled down deeper even than that, however, with the Kola borehole in Russian Lapland reaching over 12.2 kilometres in depth. But that is it. That’s the deepest that human technology had been able to physically reach – about the distance between Notre Dame de Paris and Versailles. With the radius of the Earth being about 6,371 kms, then 12.2 kms is just 0.19% of it. When one considers that l’Union géodésique et géophysique internationale (the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) gives a 0.3% margin of error for the 6,371 kms estimate, then 12.2 kms doesn’t even cover that.

The genre of subterranean science fiction films has just as long a heritage as those involving outer space only perhaps not so numerous. Verne’s novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth has been made into several films. And then there are others films such as Crack in the World (1964) in which an international body called Project Inner Space seeks to drill down to the Earth’s magma core in order to tap into that potentially endless source of heat, energy and minerals. They decide to use thermonuclear devices to blast their way down but this has unforeseen (or rather ignored) consequences whereby, as the magma rushes up, a fissure begins opening along the world’s tectonic plates threatening to permanently rupture the planet’s crust. They then try to stop or divert the fissure by means of a further nuclear explosion and the film ends ambiguously as to whether or not this has succeeded.

More than 50 years on from that film, however, our technology can only reach 12.2 kms down. And even then the rock at that depth is so plasticised or liquified or gaseous that a drilled cavity immediately fills back in on itself once the drill bit is extracted. At least that was the experience of those drilling down into the Kola borehole in the 1980s. It could be a different story at other locations on the globe but the fact remains we simply don’t know.

Vizzer wrote:

The deepest known caves, for instance, go down just 2.2 kilometres.

Indeed, and because of how they are formed nearly all deep caves are in high mountains and so their deepest points are still usually above sea level. The world's deepest cave, the Veryovkina system in the Caucus mountains of Georgia, currently descends to a depth of 2,212 metres below its entrance, but that entrance is at an altitude of 2,285 meters above sea level. If it is to be extended much 'deeper' it is likely to be by linking the existing cave to a higher entrance. Some caves do descend below sea-level and are consequently flooded in their lowest sections, but they were originally formed when sea levels were lower and so they barely scratch much deeper into the Earth's crust. The Veryovkina Cave is of course only currently the world's deepest cave; the record having been held by a whole succession of caves over the years as known caves have been explored deeper and new remote areas of the world have been opened up for investigation and new cave entrances discovered. That is in contrast to the world's highest mountain, Everest/Chomolungma (with a snow height elevation of 8,848.86 metres above mean sea level, as of February 2021), which had been identified, mapped, photographed and accurately measured decades before Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary finally stepped onto the summit in 1953.

Of course for fiction and film the very inaccessabilty of the deep underground permits all sorts of wild speculation and bizarre imaginings. Much of this borrows heavily from the old Hollow Earth theory which, based on quasi-religious ideas and ancient mythology, has that the centre of the Earth is occupied by a vast spherical void illuminated by some sort of internal sun. The theory gained some serious support during Enlightenment times - the eminent astronomer Edmund Halley was a proponent - and even today it still has some supporters amongst various fringe 'conspiracy' sects. From a fiction author's or film-maker's point of view it also allows one to create an alternative world that is readily accessible from our own if only one can break through the ground beneath our feet; a hidden world that can then be populated by whatever old trope one chooses, from dinosaurs and aliens, to enlightened spiritual societies or Hitler and his escaped Nazi cronies. For example this load of embarrassingly over-acted nonsense from 1976, adapted from the story At the Earth's Core written in 1914 by Edgar Rice Burroughs as the first of his hollow Earth-themed Pellucidar novels which were in much the same vein as his popular Barsoom series of novels set on the planet Mars. 
 

Good point that Meles about deep caves being generally elevated in nature. I hadn’t appreciated that aspect. I remember you once mentioning your experience in potholing so I suppose your understanding of these matters stems from that. The film At the Earth's Core does indeed look like over-acted nonsense. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before but with Kent’s finest, Peter Cushing in it and The Simpsons' favourite movie icon Doug McClure, it looks great fun too:

“We’ve been on top of the Earth long enough, it’s about time we found out what’s underneath!” 

Significantly, the narrator refers to ‘a barrier of molten lava’. The Earth's volcanic network has always been seen as being key to the mapping of the underworld since ancient times. The current eruption on La Palma in the Canary Islands is a case in point. It may just be a coincidence, but the Cumbre Vieja ridge is the same location as featured in a controversial research paper published 20 years ago. In Potential collapse and tsunami (2001) geophysicist Steven Ward of the University of California and geologist Simon Day of University College, London suggested that ‘during a future eruption … the island of La Palma may experience a catastrophic failure of its west flank, dropping 150 to 500 cubic kilometres of rock into the sea’. Since then, however, other scientists have questioned and challenged the calculations of Ward and Day and one can only hope that their model is indeed incorrect.

Verne also wrote a story about a comet colliding with Earth, scooping up some people as it did so, then, rather conveniently, returns to Earth two years later allowing them to escape.



Since the fictional comet Gallia was about 200 times the size of the asteroid which ended the Cretaceous, Verne's idea of the outcome was optimistic to say the least.

The threat of an extra terrestrial strike is real. It has happened in the past and will happen again, and has provided a source for cosmic drama:



Meteor Crater in Arizona, formed about 50,000 years ago, is 1.2 km in diameter and 170 metres deep:

Trike, I noticed the clip you linked from Forbidden Planet. Besides a similarity to Star Trek the shape of the robot reminded me of the daleks in Dr Who.  That was a general likeness rather than an exact one (Robbie and the Daleks).

I saw this on TV though I can't remember when but found it rather disturbing (based on The Midwich Cuckoos) b

Edgar Rice Burroughs even attempted a crossover by sending Tarzan to Pellucidar. I'd hate to think  what some movie directors could cobble up out of that ....

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Trike, I noticed the clip you linked from Forbidden Planet. Besides a similarity to Star Trek the shape of the robot reminded me of the daleks in Dr Who.  That was a general likeness rather than an exact one (Robbie and the Daleks).

I saw this on TV though I can't remember when but found it rather disturbing (based on The Midwich Cuckoos) 

John Wyndham books were popular reading back in my schooldays. I don't think The Kraken Wakes has ever been filmed, but Day of the Triffids has had a couple of appearances on big and small screen.

1962 film:

Green George wrote:

Edgar Rice Burroughs even attempted a crossover by sending Tarzan to Pellucidar. I'd hate to think  what some movie directors could cobble up out of that ....

Disney tried an adaption of Barsoom. It was not great.

I know "Chocky" has been on small screen at least once. Think "Trouble with lichen" has, too. Maybe "Chrysalids"? I have a mental picture of the 6-toed footprint.

Yet to see this one. It received advice from NASA, to help make it as accurate as possible. Manned missions to Mars are planned for the 2030/40s, not too far away:

wiki:
 British physicist Brian Cox said, "The Martian is the best advert for a career in engineering I've ever seen."

Triceratops wrote:

By 1936, Wells was back with the giant gun, from Things to Come

That same year the Russian film Космический рейс (Cosmic Voyage) was released. This envisioned a moon landing only 10 years in the future, not using a gun but rather a rocket ship complete with jettisoned booster. And unlike Things to Come with its rather sombre tone, Cosmic Voyage is much more light-hearted and indeed joyful. It also features things which one might not readily associate with the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1930s such as convertible sports cars etc. It certainly lives up to its subtitle of Фантастическая новелла (Fantastic Novella). At just over an hour in length it’s eminently watchable and included creditable special effects for the time:

Cosmic Voyage

(spoiler alert – the cat steals the show, one for the Moggie thread perhaps)

I watched this last night, Vizzer and enjoyed it. Seems it didn't have a very long run in 1936 as, according to wiki, the scenes of the astronauts leaping around the Moon did not accord with "socialist realism"

Perhaps Gerry Anderson got his idea for the launch ramp in Fireball XL5 from this film.

A Classic 1950s Sci-Fi:



Not usually a big fan of remakes, but this one was very good:

The previously mentioned 2001:






Chinese moon probe has found this:

A new black comedy sci-fi film. Available on Netflix:

Talking Pictures TV (Freeview 81) are showing The Outer Limits at 8pm on Fridays:

The Galaxy Being, Episode 1, Series 1, was the episode shown:

Closing narration:

"The planet Earth is a speck of dust, remote and alone in the void. There are powers in the universe inscrutable and profound. Fear cannot save us. Rage cannot help us. We must see the stranger in a new light - the light of understanding. And to achieve this, we must begin to understand ourselves, and each other."

Triceratops wrote:

Chinese moon probe has found this:

It's just a rock;

Thought to post this on the "On this day thread", however, it hasn't happened yet.

5th April 2063, First Contact Day, from Star Trek: First Contact

May the Fourth. Just had to watch this yesterday. The very first film in what would become a massively successful franchise, which 45 years later shows no signs of abating.



The film was produced for a budget of $11M, slightly less than the $13.5M for that years Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me. No doubt the 20th Century Fox executives were hoping that Star Wars would manage to break even, possibly make a small profit. In its' 1977 run, Star Wars grossed $550M ( TSWLM managed $185M ), so the suits were well pleased.

One man who was confident of the film's success, was Sir Alec Guinness, who negotiated a deal for a percentage of the gross, sources say either 1/40th or 1/50th, either way Sir A became very well off indeed.

Queue outside cinema in Leicester Square in 1977:

Triceratops wrote:

May the Fourth. Just had to watch this yesterday. The very first film in what would become a massively successful franchise, which 45 years later shows no signs of abating.

In the words of the BBC R4 program, "I've never seen Star Wars" nor any "Star Trek" movies. Just do not appeal at all.

I have seen one or two Star Trek and Star Wars films I'm not much of a fan. However I do like the TV series' Star Trek Next Generation and Star Trek Voyager, probably because they're just an hour long.

I like the original Star Wars ( ie Episodes IV -VI )trilogy the best. Episodes I - III, I can take them or leave them, Episodes VII - IX not overly keen on them.

The Star Trek films seem to alternate from good to indifferent, Wrath of Khan being a personal favourite.

Interstellar, mentioned in the OP is one of the films which deal with time dilation, whereby time on a spaceship travelling at or greater than the speed of light passes at a slower rate than on Earth.
The best known example of this is probably Planet of the Apes where the astronauts find themselves 2,000 years in the future after a voyage, which to them, was one year;



Unlike Star Trek or Star Wars, where faster than light travel takes place without any discernable time difference between those moving at FTL and those who aren't.

Galaxy Quest was good.