ALL SCI-FI

[Krel]

[Pow]

Excellent point, David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Gentlemen, you're both absolutely right!

The very idea that nobody took any photographs of Klaatu is ridiculous.

We all know, of course, that the scene in the boarding house which showed the residents watching Drew Pearson on the tiny television was designed specifically to sneak in a quick line of dialog to brush aside the puzzling and complete lack of photo's showing Klaatu.

Robert Wise deliberately downplayed the brief moment when Drew Pearson showed the picture. Just before we see Drew holding up the photograph, we get a closeup of the TV while Drew urges people to remain calm.





Then the scene cuts to the one shown below. The television is on the far side of the room, Drew Pearson's voice is not very loud, and he makes this one-sentence statement about the picture he holds up . . . which shows Klaatu wearing his helmet!

"Unfortunately for identification purposes the only photographs we have are similar to this one, and do not show the man's face."





We can't even make a case for the idea that the government DID have pictures of Klaatu without the helmet, because all the policemen and government agents are running around Washington looking for him based solely on the general description of his height and build!

Neither Professor Barnhardt nor the man who brought Klaatu to him knew who he was until he told Barnardt himself.


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In addition to the ludicrous idea that nobody bothered to take a single photograph of the first alien to land on Earth, the doctors at Walter Reed Hospital should have photographed every inch of his body, as well as taking tissue samples, blood samples, and hair samples!

Hell bells, they DID take X-rays of him, and we see two doctors examining them while they discuss what they could deduce about his alien physiology.







We also can't suggest that Klaatu might have requested that no pictures be taken — unless he was so naive he didn't realize how frightened mankind would be if an alien landed and then the public assumed the government had to hide his hideous appearance!

Ironically, Bobby has a line of dialog that illustrates this point.

"Hey mister? Can I help you look fort he spaceman? I know just what he looks like. He's got a big square head and three great big eyes!"





No, gentlemen, there is no suitable explanation for the way Robert Wise allowed Klaatu to stroll around Washington without a single person realizing he was the "space alien" everybody was desperately searching for!

If I were asked to fix this little problem when the script was being written, I'd add a few lines of dialog between the Army captain and the MP after Klaatu escaped.

"Captain, the man from the spaceship got away!"





"What? Get every available man! But how did he unlock the door to his room?"





"We don't know, sir! The keyhole was sealed on the inside to prevent him from picking it — and yet they discovered it was unlocked! And apparently he walked right out of the hospital without anybody recognizing him."

"Quick, alert the police. And send out those photos the doctors took of his face."

"We can't, Captain! They're all gone!"

"Gone?! How?"

(Man shrugs.) "You got me, sir. Hell, how did he get that door unlocked? How did he walk right out dressed in a hospital gown?"

Of course, the big mystery in this movie that we'll never solve is how Gort walked from the ship to the police station and back without anybody spotting him — even after disintegrating the wall and carrying Klaatu away!

This is especially puzzling when you watch the scene below and hear the Army officer say this to his "crack troops".

"Bring in a squad of men, Lieutenant, and place a guard around that cell. Captain, don't let anyone in or out of the building."





So, we have a captain, a lieutenant, and a full squad of men with strict orders to guard the cell and secure building. And yet the very next scene is this!









Oops . . .

I figure the poor MPs at the hospital who let Klaatu slip through their fingers felt a lot better when they heard about THIS colossal military blunder!

"Okay, so we goofed and let him sneak out of his hospital room. But you guys let him escape from a guarded jail cell . . . even though he was DEAD!"
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I like your script doctoring, Bud, of having Klaatu swipe any & all photos of himself on his escape from the hospital.

The only nit would be why were the photos kept at the hospital? Wouldn't they be kept under lock & key at the Pentagon, or one of the intelligence agencies?

As to the issue of the locked door...sometimes it's perfectly okay for the writer to leave a plot point as an unanswered mystery for the audience. And this can be one such puzzle.

Now sometimes this works while other times it fails miserably.

Example: "The City On The Edge Of Forever" episode by Harlan Ellison on ST:TOS.

I loved that the Guardian of Forever was never neatly & scientifically explained. Not to Kirk, Spock, or his crew, and not to the audience.

Such lines by the Guardian as "I am my own beginning and my own ending." And its reply as to was it machine or being, "I am both and neither." These created a sense of awe, wonder, and majesty about it. It was all most mysterious.

Other times I can find the lack of explanations to be a cop out by a writer. They got themselves stuck.

In Star Trek: The Voyage Home, we have a mysterious alien craft arrive at Earth. It attempts to communicate with whales. Since they are extinct there can be no reply to this communication; so the alien probe proceeds to destroy Earth!

By the end of the movie we have absolutely not one explanation to any of this. Who the aliens are, why they came to Earth in the first place, why they want to talk to whales, and why they go on a rampage against Earth?

That to me is copping out. As if the writer had an intriguing premise but wrote their self into a corner because even they could not create a proper explanation.

So they simply say that it's all mysterious, time to move along. They then give us a happy ending with the whales, George & Gracie, being safely transported to the future. The Enterprise crew exonerated and all placed back on duty, and the alien probe going to wherever its going next.

Nope. Not satisfying at all. See, sometimes keeping it mysterious is marvelous; other times it's just frustrating.

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

So since Klaatu possessed a salve that completely healed his bullet wound---and his space saucer had a contraption that was able to revive the dead---just why did he allow himself to be transported to the US hospital?

He had machines that were light years beyond anything a 20th century hospital would have. Any hospital on earth would have been horrifyingly primitive by his standards and could do next to nothing for him.

Was this his way of allowing himself to be brought into society and studying its people, customs, norms?

[Krel]

He was gathering information. He might also have figured it would be easier to slip away from a hospital, than from a saucer completely surrounded by soldiers, tanks and artillery.

David.

[Gord Green]

OR....He may have had the ability to alter his appearance to a degree (All us Earthlings look the same anyway! At least to an alien!)!



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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Remake!
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~ A Question for the Members: Why did Klaatu say he'd traveled 250 million miles when he MUST have traveled many light years to reach Earth from the "other planets" he says have devised a way to completely eliminate aggression"?

~ Here's what I came up with.: I proposed an idea in the War of the Worlds thread that I'm rather proud of. The blue text below is copied from that post, followed by the black text which describes something I came up with yesterday that I think you guys are going to really enjoy.
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In this marvelous age of digital communications, computer generated images, binary data storage, and security cameras, we've come to rely on electronic eyes to do our seeing for us.

For example, when you really think about it, the only ACTUAL pictures we have of the planet Mars that are made through a ground-based telescope — rather than being transmitted from space — are the ones like this!





But just for fun, suppose Mars really looks like THIS. (Click on the image to get the bigger version so you can zoom in and see all the circular swimming pools the rich Martian folks have!)





And suppose there are fabulous Martian cities which look like THIS.





Now, hold on guys, I know what you're thinking!

"Bud, how can Mars look like THAT from space and have futuristic cities on the surface when we've seen pictures that clearly show it does NOT!?"

Yes, we HAVE seen pictures. They were pictures sent to us by radio transmissions from space. But were these transmissions really sent from sources like the Hubble telescope or the space probes which flew past the planet or the Martian rovers on the surface?

Or . . . were they actually fake images, sent to us by the Martians?

If there actually are Martians who live on a beautiful terraformed planet and they have a highly advanced technology, they would be aware that their nearest neighbor in space is dangerously hostile — even to each other on Earth!

So, wouldn't these advanced aliens hide there existence from us?

Hell's bells, of course they would!

And how would they do that?

It's simple!

They'd just block all the legitimate signals we think we're getting from space telescopes, spacecraft, and planetary rovers, and they'd replace them with clever CGI images of a dead world that could never pose a threat to Earth!

What I'm suggesting is that the only images of Mars we have that are real are the blurry ones from ground-based telescopes. All the rest are created by the Martians to make us think we're the only intelligent species in the solar system!

Think how easy it would be to simply destroy the approaching probes and start sending back bogus data that mimics what we expect to be getting. If a probe is supposed to take pictures of Mars from space, they just hijack the transmissions and substitute images of a dead world!





The same thing could be done with a Mars rover that's supposed to land and drive around on the surface. The Martian's simply create a computer program that acts like a video game in which the NASA controller on Earth drives a non-existent rover around on a non-existent dead world and takes pictures of the bogus desert landscape!





Compare this to the way our own video games give their users the same ability today and you'll see how easy it would be for these Martian geniuses to trick us into think we have rovers on Mars!

Admit it folks, this is all totally possible for an advanced race who wants to fool the silly humans into thinking Mars is desolate and dull so we won't be terrified that Martians might invade us!

Still think this is impossible? Well then, consider this.

Out of the 47 spacecraft that have been sent to Mars by the U.S. and other nations, 28 of them have failed! Only 19 have "succeeded" — or so we THOUGHT!

What if some of these were just destroyed by the Martians to simplify the hoax they were committing by making us think ANY of them had succeeded?

As for space telescopes like the Hubble, an advanced race who has terraform Mars and built fantastic cities would have no trouble placing a few devices in Earth orbit (hidden amidst all our satellites and space junk) to monitor any real incoming data about Mars and replace it with the bogus stuff that keeps us ignorant about the super-race living right next door.





Therefore, I respectfully suggest that we've been duped. The real Mars bears no resemblance to anything we've seen in those bogus photos they've tricked us with.

Lastly, there's this to consider.

In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu said he'd traveled 250 million miles to reach Earth. We've always thought that was a goof up, because it would mean Klaatu came from some planet inside the Solar System. Oops . . .

But wait! What if Klaatu came from that high-tech planet that's been hiding from us since the 1950s — Mars! (He took the long way around, leaving Mars when it was on the other side of the sun — you know, the scenic route).

Klaatu's race is worried about us developing atomic weapons and rockets because we're not that far away from them. After all, rockets and nukes wouldn't be a threat to a race in another star system. Right?

But they WOULD be a threat to a planet located right next door!



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Yesterday I suddenly realized that if a terraformed Mars which is inhabited by an advanced civilization has been hiding right under our noses for decades, what if they weren't the only advanced civilization on our solar system who wants to keep mankind ignorant of their existence!

With that in mind, I went to work "rethinking" the entire solar system and what might be out there cleverly disguising itself with hijacked data streams from our space telescopes and space probes.

Bear in mind, guys, that if an advanced civilization has replaced all the data we think we're getting from our own devices in space, then we've been cleverly fooled into believing a completely false version of everything we thought we knew about every planet in the solar system!

This is being done by the aliens because Earth is populated by a dangerous species who is rapidly developing more powerful weapons and more advanced spacecraft.

That's EXACTLY what Klaatu said "the other planets" were worried about!

And yet, all these years we've wondered why an interstellar society of advanced aliens was so concerned with Earth and our puny little missiles and atom bombs.

Guys, we completely missed the point!

If Klaatu only traveled 250 million miles to reach Earth, all the "other planets" he's talking about are right here in the solar system!

Gentlemen, if you're thinking — "Bud, that's just plain silly!" — I think you'll enjoy the following introduction to the REAL solar system . . . the one in which several advanced civilizations have conspired to hide their existence from us.
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VENUS

Venus’ cloud cover is completely artificial, a blanket of light-reflecting vapor which shields the surface of the planet from the rays of the sun and provides the Venusians with a pleasant “cloudy day” environment.




~ Venus, with-and-without its Protective Vapor Layer.

It was first generated thousands of years ago by the Venusians, and it's been carefully maintained to protect the planet's surface. The reason it was needed is because a giant asteroid collided with the moon which Venus once had, sending the fragments spiraling into the sun.

This also caused the planet's rotation to slow dramatically.

A day on Venus is now 243 Earth days. That means there are only 0.92 Venusian days in a Venusian year. Since a Venusian year is only 225 Earth days, this means a Venusian DAY is longer than a Venusian YEAR by 18 Earth days!

(I didn't make that part up. Those are actual facts about the length of Venus's "day" and "year". But I came up the stuff about the moon it used to have. )

Without the cloud cover, the side of Venus which faced the sun would fry.

Naturally the Russian probe that allegedly landed on Venus and sent back pictures was destroyed by the Venusians, and fake images were sent to us.
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MERCURY

Surprise! Mercury isn’t really a planet!

It’s actually a spherical solar energy collector, created by the Venusians to transmit the energy to Venus. The solar panels on the "day side" collect the energy, while the power transmitters on the night side beam the energy to Venus.

Earth-based telescope can only observer the phases of Mercury, but not any details. I found this on Space.com

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft was the first probe ever to orbit the planet Mercury. It arrived in orbit around the innermost planet in our solar system in 2011 and ended its mission in 2015 with a crash into the planet's surface. The probe snapped more than 200,000 photos of Mercury.

(Yep, those photos are all bogus, courtesy of the Venusians.)

Imagine what would have happened if we'd gotten images of Mercury . . . and it looked more like the Deathstar than a planet!




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MARS




~ Mars before being terraformed.

As I mentioned earlier, Mars was terraformed thousands of years ago, when the Martians realized that the planet was in danger of loosing its atmosphere. Its magnetic field was also failing as the core rotation slowed down, which meant the planet would be vulnerable to cosmic rays.

The Martians solved all these problems using their advanced technology.
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EUROPA – a moon of Jupiter





In the ocean below the frozen surface of Europa, a civilization was created by the aquatic life forms which evolved there. These life forms developed a high level of intelligence and an advanced technology.

Eventually they penetrated Europa’s icy shell and ventured out in spaceships which explored the solar system. They were delighted when they discovered other intelligent beings on both Mars and Venus!

Because their cities are aquatic and hidden by the frozen surface, images from space probes which fly paused Europa do not have to be replaced with fake pictures.
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TITAN – the largest moon of Saturn





Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system. Only Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger, by just 2 percent. Titan is bigger than Earth's moon, and even larger than the planet Mercury!

This mammoth moon is the only one in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid — including rivers, lakes, and seas on its surface.

Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is primarily nitrogen, plus a small amount of methane. It is the only other place in the solar system known to have an earth-like cycle of liquids which rain down from its clouds. These liquids flow across the surface, fill the lakes and seas, and evaporate back into the sky — all of which is akin to Earth’s water cycle!

Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water!

Bingo!

For this reason, the intelligent beings who evolved in the subterranean ocean of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, decided to establish a colony on Titan. The Europans genetically engineered a version of their own species, adapting them to the conditions in Titan’s subsurface ocean of water.

With help from the “home planet” (in this case, a “home moon”), the inhabitants of the colony on Titan survived and flourished — eventually establishing their own advanced civilization which ventured out into the Solar System and interacted peacefully with the civilizations on Mars, Venus, and their own parent world, Europa!

Like Europa, Titan's aquatic civilization is not visible from space, although several large well-hidden doorways open up to the spaceports below when their spacecraft travel to-and-from the the other three inhabited worlds.
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Meanwhile, the new comer to the solar system — the evolved ape-like creatures on the third planet — were watched closely by the alien beings on Venus, Mars, Europa, and Titan as the savage creatures on Earth slowly developed their own civilization and technology.





The alarming way the Earth creatures waged war with each other over the centuries caused a growing concern among the peaceful and cooperative species of the solar system.

Collectively they were concerned that this new species on the third planet might become a danger to the peaceful and cooperative races on Venus, Mars, Europa, and Titan.

To gather new data about this potential threat, these intelligent beings sent thousands of unmanned drones to the third planet to collect data about this troubling species.

All the UFOs’ which have puzzled mankind for decades were just autonomous drones which these various inhabited planets and moons sent here to monitor mankind’s progress and determine just how much of a threat we posed to the peace and security of the other civilizations in our solar system!

The great variety of UFOs spotted over the last seventy years is due in part to the fact that all four of the alien species were contributing their own drones to the tasks.





Finally, a meeting was held by the leaders of the four alien civilizations, and they decided to send an ambassador to the third planet.

The ambassador was a genetically engineered being created by the aliens on Europe who had developed skills in that area when they created the version of their own race which become the colonists on Titan.

The ambassador to Earth was engineered to resemble a human, and he would be accompanied by a robotic “body guard” which would protect the ambassador if he was endangered in any way.

The robot body guard was created by the engineers on Mars, who excelled in this area.

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The ambassador’s mission was to deliver a warning to the leaders of Earth. The message stated that if they threatened the peace and security of the other civilizations in the solar system, Earth would be dealt with very severely.
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Gentlemen, I’ve just described a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still which explains the “other planets” Klaatu said he represented, as well as why these planets were worried about the threat which mankind’s newly developed rockets and atomic bombs posed to the solar system's interplanetary civilizations!

Please note that these alien civilizations are not spread out across several star systems, many light years from Earth. They're all right here in our own solar system.

That’s why Klaatu said he’d only traveled “250 million miles” to reach Earth!

I propose that this concept would make a truly intelligent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (unlike the witless 2008 version).

It addresses all the concepts which the movie proposed, and it even explains the mystery of UFOs in a manner which doesn't violate the laws of physic, because it eliminates any need for spaceships which travel faster than light.

Please note that I've deliberately omitted the idea that Gort was a member of the aliens' "police force" which patrolled the planets and "acted automatically at the first sign of aggression."

In this version, the aliens do not foolishly abdicate their right to govern their own behavior! I've never liked that aspect of The Day the Earth Stood Still, so in this version I put Gort in his proper place — a robot that follows orders!

Guys, I'm really hoping you'll add your comments about this concept, including any dissenting opinions, alternate versions, or correction in what I hope is some reasonably accurate science!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Bruce, your disguised planets idea is a terrific one. I don't believe that I've ever seen a film or TV show employ this concept at all.

On the ST:TOS episode/pilot "Assignment: Earth" we see agent Gary Seven inform the Enterprise crew that he comes from a planet that will remain unknown to them even in their time.

Scotty: "It's impossible to hide a whole planet."

Seven: "Impossible for you, not for them."

On ST:TNG we had the episode "When the Bough Breaks" which had Captain Picard & his crew encounter the hidden planet of Aldea.

These instances were about futuristic technology capable of cloaking an entire world, whereas your's is about hiding the true surface of a planet with a false one. Cool!

I was thinking that any civilization that possessed such astonishing technology wouldn't even have to destroy any probes sent to it from planet Earth. I would think that they could figure out the landing locations for such probes and arrange for it to "appear" to land there just as planned by the human scientists. The probe is now enveloped inside a hologram of what the residents of the planet want humans to see as opposed to the reality of their culture.

Do your inhabitants of these other planets within our solar system look anything like us? Are we all somehow related in some manner? Were these planets ever at war with one another which resulted in their peace treaty and the "race of policemen" that patrol all these worlds?

In any event, Bruce, I love this premise!

[Bud Brewster]

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Since the post below has been waiting since November 25th, 2021 for a reply, I decided to re-post it just find out if our members could add a few new thoughts.
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[Bud Brewster]

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This is the "Making of . . ." feature from the DVD and BD.

We're featuring this movie in ASF’S Saturday Night at the Movies. (<— link) tonight, October 8th.

_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 1


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_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 2


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_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 3


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_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 4


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_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 5


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_____ Making "The Earth Stand Still" (1995) part 6


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has a butt-load of interesting trivia items for this production. Here's the ones I liked the best.
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~ Lock Martin, the doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theater, was cast because of his nearly seven-foot height. However, he was not a physically strong man and could not actually carry Patricia Neal, and so had to be aided by wires (in shots from the back where he's carrying her, it's actually a lightweight dummy in his arms). He also had difficulty with the heavy Gort suit and could only stay in it for about a half hour at a time.

Note from me: Hell's bells, it would have been tough even for Arnold Schwarzenegger to wear that heavy suit AND carry a human being!

The next two items are related, so I placed them together.

~ To give the appearance of seamlessness to the space ship, the crack around the door was filled with putty, then painted over. When the door opened the putty was torn apart, making the door seem to simply appear.

~ To depict the seamless closing of the ship and its ramp, they just reversed the film of the shot of the ship's ramp and door appearing.

Note from me: Clever idea.

~ The Army refused to cooperate after reading the script. The studio then approached the National Guard, which had no qualms about seeing the Army depicted in a less-than-flattering light, and gladly offered their cooperation.

Note from me: Wouldn't the National Guard have been called anyway, rather than the Army?

~ Patricia Neal has admitted in interviews that she was completely unaware during the filming that the film would turn out so well and it would become one of the great science-fiction classics of all time.

She assumed it would be just another one of the then-current and rather trashy flying saucer films, and she found it difficult to keep a straight face while saying her lines.

Note from me: Gee, Patricia, the only other "flying saucer movie" prior to this one was The Thing from Another World, and it was released just a few months earlier.

~ The equations seen on Professor Barnhardt's blackboard are authentic physics, and describe a particular form of the famous "three-body problem" in Newtonian gravitation, a problem which has no general closed-form solution. Such many-body problems are central to navigation in interstellar space. The manner of writing and organization of the terms show that a real physicist had produced the work.

Note from me: Ah, but there's flaw in part of the equation on second rows. The guy who wrote it forgot to carry the one . . .

~ To increase the sense of reality, some of the most famous broadcast journalists of the time were hired to do cameos as themselves. These included Gabriel Heatter, H.V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson, and Elmer Davis

Note from me: If they'd done something like this in that dreadful 2008 version, they wouldn't have included any of those knuckleheads on FOX Fake News!

~ Doubles were used for Klaatu and Bobby in long shots of them walking around Washington, DC. In reality, none of the principal cast ever went to Washington, and the scenes with Klaatu and Bobby at the Lincoln Memorial and at Arlington Cemetery were shot in front of background screens using footage shot by the second unit crew in Washington, DC.

Note from me: I sort of wish I hadn't found this out. Ever since learning about the doubles, I always think about it when I see those shots. It "stakes me out of the movie" for a moment.

~ Harry Bates was paid a mere $500 by 20th Century-Fox for the rights to his short story "Farewell to the Master"

Note from me: I've read the short story. Not overly impressive. It certainly "inspired" a much better story for the film.

~ Because the stationary Gort statue was several inches taller than Lock Martin and could not stand on the angled ramp, Martin had to wear the Gort suit in the background during the final sequence. Martin, who was frail, had to wear the suit for so long that he began having spasms in his arms. During Klaatu's final speech, Gort's arms can be seen moving slightly.

Note from me: This is clearly bogus! The jpeg on the left is the "stationary Gort", and he's standing in about the same spot as poor Lock Martin stood in the final scene!

Clearly there was a wedged "spacer" of come kind under the feet that solved the "angled ramp" problem.

And look at the majestic proportions of the "stationary Gort" compared to the "walking Gort", with its shorter height and "nerdy" high waist line! Imagine how much more impressive the "stationary Gort" would have looked in this climatic scene!





~ This was Michael Rennie's third film for 20th Century-Fox; though he was under contract to the studio for seven years and had important supporting roles in all of them, Klaatu was the only lead role he was ever given.

Note from me: The first two movies with Fox were The Black Rose (1950) and 13th Letter (1951).

~ The crowds were made up of local government employees, including some from the FBI offices, who were asked to participate in the film. No releases were required of employees.

Note from me: Ah-ha! So THAT'S why the panicked crowd's running scene had to be sped up on film! They were government employees who never did anything in a hurry!

~ There were three different versions of Lock Martin's foam Gort suit: one with lacings up the front for shots from behind the robot: one that laced up on the right for shots taken of the left; and one laced on the left for shots taken of the right. The seam and laces on the front of his suit may be seen in the shot where he first starts to carry Helen to the ship.

Note from me: I assume the version which had the zipper in the crotch was the one with front laces. Or maybe it just had a big hole in the crotch of the "pants", since the front was not shown anyway!

Then again, maybe there were small holes in the soles of the boots, and Lock left wet footprints after he peed!

~ In the opening title montage of astro-photographs representing Klaatu's trip to Earth, the last object seen before Earth and Moon come into view is the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16 in the constellation Serpens, and is centered on "The Pillars of Creation", an object that was later captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in an iconic image that became synonymous with the resolving power of this telescope.

Note from me: The first image below is a screen shot from the credits, just before the text appears, which shows the star field described above.





This next image is the famous Hubble shot.





And this last image is one of the illustrations I created for my novel, Sail the Sea of Stars[b]





~ In addition to the two Gort costumes worn by Lock Martin, a fiberglass statue of the robot, several inches taller than Lock Martin in his foam suit, was also made for shots in which the robot was to be stationary. A large bust of just the robot's head with a remote controlled visor was used for close-ups of Gort firing his death ray.

[b]Note from me: Oddly enough, I never thought about the "weaponized head" being different from the "standing Gort". Shame one me. It should have been obvious.

~ In the original story, "Farewell to the Master", the robot's name was Gnut, not Gort.

Note from me: Geez, what the hell was Harry Bates thinking?

~ Klaatu says he's from a planet 250 million miles away, but doesn't name it. Scientists in the movie mention Venus and Mars as the only candidates within our solar system that could sustain life. The Earth and Mars are farthest apart at 401 million kilometers when they are in opposition and both are at aphelion, i.e., farthest from the sun. That distance is 249 million miles, making Mars the most likely candidate.

Note from me: Ah-HA! So, my theory about the way the planets of the solar system really look like is correct.

Mars, for example, is not a bit like what we see it in any of our images transmitted from space from space, like the ones by the Hubble telescope, space probes, rovers, etc. The advanced Martians have tricked us into thinking their planet looks like this —





— when in fact it looks like this!



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

[scotpens]