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Post by Falconer on Mar 4, 2015 22:46:56 GMT -6
I watched the movie Forbidden Planet (1956), the other night. I had always heard it was an inspiration for Star Trek, but, wow! The captain/XO/doctor trinity is there, along with a miracle-working Chief Engineer and a full complement aboard a navy-style space cruiser (from the United Planets, no less). They have communicators and hand-lasers on their belts; they pass through sliding doors; they set up a force-field shield. They land on a planet and find survivors from a previous Earth mission. They encounter technology from a superior alien civilization—alluring, but the captain must fight a moral battle against all odds to stay human. Oh yeah, he also effects the sexual awakening of a young girl.
It’s, like, more “The Cage” than “The Cage,” if you know what I mean, but as far as I’m concerned it could be considered canon Trek.
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Post by talysman on Mar 5, 2015 0:04:39 GMT -6
I love Forbidden Planet.
And yeah, when I saw "The Cage", I immediately thought "This is very Forbidden-Planet-ish." Much more so than later Trek episodes.
I thought it was pretty funny that they kept talking about "instrumentalities".
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Post by geoffrey on Mar 5, 2015 11:22:38 GMT -6
That is a great movie, one of the all-time sci-fi greats. I agree that it is the REAL first episode of Star Trek.
The attack on the ship by the id monster is downright scary.
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Post by coffee on Mar 6, 2015 9:21:39 GMT -6
I saw it on a snowy TV screen (remember those? When everything was analog?) when I was in my teens. Really left an impression on me, particularly the attack of the id monster.
I've seen it since then and have been able to appreciate more of the humor and also the great debt that Star Trek owed to it (which Gene Roddenberry acknowledged) that was part of the reason I went out and bought a copy.
Good stuff.
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Post by derv on Mar 6, 2015 16:30:28 GMT -6
Okay, you guys convinced me to check this out through our public libraries interlending service. Should be here in about a week.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Mar 6, 2015 18:31:24 GMT -6
It's an amazing movie, imagine what it must have been like seeing it at the time it was released. Ground-breaking doesn't begin to describe it.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 6, 2015 20:59:58 GMT -6
I own a copy, tried to watch it, and fell asleep during it. I guess I need to give it a second try...
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Post by Malcadon on Mar 7, 2015 5:37:16 GMT -6
When I first seen Forbidden Planet, I was really struck by the movie. I really liked the look of the tech and uniforms (more so, the United Plants emblem), that WWII US Navy vibe with the crew, and that sense of frontierism in space. I cannot remember if I seen Forbidden Planet first, or the Star Trek pilot first, but I also struck by the episode for the same feel of FP. And the funny thing is that I never know that Commander Adams was a young Leslie Nielsen until about a decade after seeing it. When I see the ship and props used in episodes of The Twilight Zone (namely "Death Ship" and "On Thursday We Leave for Home"), I would imagine that they would be canon to FP. Someone online made a really appropriate motivational for what we think of all this: The Robinson family wished they had a robot this awesome!
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