Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17065
Location: North Carolina
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 Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2022 8:52 am Post subject: FEATURED THREADS for 4-13-22 |
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Gentlemen, here's three great science fiction movies with threads that deserve replies! 
Loyal, intelligent members of All Sci-Fi will jump on these threads and add intelligent comments! 
However, disloyal, unintelligent members will sit on their fat asses and let somebody else add a reply. 
Thank God we don't have any dullards like that on this board! 
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Silent Running (1972)
| Pow wrote: | Always wondered if a sci~fi TV series could be shot using the same methods as this film? The production would redress the actual sections of the naval ship to become the ''sets'' for the show.
Given the vastness of such a real ship, they'd have numerous sections that could be used not only as the ''sets'', but as production offices, commissary, first-aid, dressing rooms and so forth. |
Pow, your interesting suggestion is even better than I first realized!
The first picture below is the Navy's Ticonderoga class cruiser, the USS Mobile Bay, and it's one of several ships being decommissioned in 2020. (The second image is another Ticonderoga class cruiser.)
I like your idea of using such a ship as a set for a spaceship, along with taking advantage of the living space it has for the film crew.
But I had another idea when I noticed my comment above about how the filmmakers who produced The Vikings in 1958 used a cruise ship to house the whole production crew, and they moved it up and down the scenic river in Norway where much of the movie was shot.
Suppose the premise of a science fiction series using a decommissioned vessel like the Mobile Bay involved a global pandemic. Millions of people died before a cure was found (which, fortunately, happened fairly quickly), but millions more will die if the uninfected population isn't kept away from the infected people, and if the cure isn’t rushed to the areas which need it most.
By a stroke of luck, thousands of ships around the world were spared the disease because they were at sea. (Yes, that’s similar to the series, The Last Ship).
This global emergency brings all the navies of the worlds together as they cooperate in delivering shipments of the cure to coastal regions, where medical teams rendezvous with them and conduct inoculations.
The problem is that each port these ships visit present unique problems. For example, there might be violent gangs who want to steal the drug shipments and sell them for extremely high prices to communities further inland which haven’t received help yet.
In many cases the medical teams might even need to be protected by Marines from the ship when (for example) certain unscrupulous groups in a coastal town want to be given the cure first, instead of cooperating with an orderly plan of inoculations.
In extreme cases, the ship’s fire power would even be used to neutralize a hostile force, using artillery or missiles!
The point here is that ships like the USS Mobile Bay would be ordered to go to various coastal areas (in their case, up and down the west coast of the Americas) to deliver cargos of the drug while providing a military presence which worked with the land-based teams who set up inoculation centers and attempt to bring order to the area.
The feel of the series would be similar to Star Trek TOS, in that the captain and crew would be forced to spend most of their time at sea, going ashore only to do the important jobs I described above.
In fact, I think I’ll come up with a valid reason to have the shore parties occasionally required to wear special gear which protects them from exposure to the disease (the way hazmat suits do), making the men seem like astronauts on an alien planet each time they left the ship and went on land! (Perhaps repeated exposure to the disease causes their immunity to wear off. That idea obliviously needs more thought.)
In fact, this whole concept needs a lot more work, and I’m sure some of you guys will come up with suggestions to flesh it out and improve what I’ve already suggested.
Give it a try, guys! Bear in mind that we’re trying to create an elite multinational group of seamen around the world who only feel safe when there far from land — and yet they have to risk going ashore whenever their mission requires it.]
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The War of the Worlds (1953)
| Pow wrote: | | Always thought that the manta ray shape of the Martian vessels was very cool looking. |
As beautiful as they are, I've always thought it was a shame that they weren't flying machines instead of sloooooow floating machines.
And even when they were used again as the alien ships in Robinson Crusoe on Mars they didn't actually "fly", they just zipped around in straight lines and stopped instantly. Not exactly the graceful beauty of true flight, eh?
In your original post you mention the flying sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It flew around and gave that Manta Ray design a chance to show how good the shape looks on an aircraft.
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This Island Earth (1955)
| Pow wrote: | Interesting film & considered by many as a more intelligent sf movie from the 50s.
And yet Mystery Theater 3000 had fun with it. |
So true, Pow. And yet MST3K makes good use of an interesting psychological phenomenon. Here's how.
Making funny comments about a serious, well-done movie is, in a way, funnier than doing the same thing with a poorly done film that doesn't deserve much respect.
It's somewhat similar to the well-known phenomenon of spontaneously laughing in church, simply because (a) everyone is being somber and respectful, and (b) you know that if you laugh when it's so inappropriate, it will be embarrassing.
Here's a true story: Years ago my father-in-law and I were singing along with the congregation, and the hymn was the one with the line that includes the phrase, " . . . The consecrated cross I'll bear".
Suddenly we both remembered the joke about the little girl who came home from Sunday school and told her mother she'd learned a song about a bear.
"A bear, Darling? What kind of bear?"
"A constipated cross-eyed bear!" 
My father-in-law and I struggled to hold in our laughter all the way through the song, knowing that laughing at that moment would be disastrous. That, of course, made it even harder NOT to laugh!
So, when the MST3K guys riffed This Island Earth they knew just what joke to add when Exeter eases himself slowly past the wounded Mutant and thinks he's safe . . . until the Mutant suddenly grabs his side with that big claw!
Imitating Jeff Morrow's voice, they said, "Well, that seemed to go rather well. I don't see what could possibly go wrong—Aaaaaah!"
The most tragic moment in the movie, and suddenly we're crack up when we should be thinking, "Oh my God, poor Exeter!"
(The constipated cross-eyed bear strikes again . . .) 
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (9/10) Movie CLIP - Metaluna Mutant (1996) HD
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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