ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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The Wikipedia articles' Critical response section is too complex to summarize, so I suggest you read it for yourself at the link above.

It's a bit hard to follow, so don't feel guilty for being confused. :oll:
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

I still want that clock that's in the lab.

David.

[Eadie]

I must be blind. WHAT clock?
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Gord Green]

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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.

[Eadie]

That's a clock? You'd think the art director(s) could create something more futuristic in line with the lab!
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Bud Brewster]

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It's more futuristic than you might think, Eadie!

The clock in the lab has three features which make it futuristic (in my opinion, although Maurice might disagree ). It's made of clear Plexiglas, it glows, and the lack of numbers gives it a clean "minimalist" design.

Compare it to the very latest fashion in expensive men's wristwatches.


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Notice that it has an even more minimalist design, and the background is black to offset the yellow second hand — the next best thing to being illuminated.

As for the "clock" in Red Planet Mars it's actually not a clock!

It's a "countdown timer" for the scientist when they're waiting to receive a Martian reply to a transmission. Watch the scene in the movie at the 1:19:15 mark, which is the moment shown in the screen shot above.

The hands move counterclockwise, and the long hand goes around once every ten seconds, while the short hand backs up one mark with each full turn of the long hand.

___________________ Red Planet Mars 1952


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

[Krel]

I never noticed that Bud, I assumed that it was a clock, not a timer. The being said. I want a clock like that!

David.

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

They used to make, and may still for all I know, a watch that ran counter-clockwise. The numbers were reversed also.

I still have my Lava Lamp, it's over 50 years old now. I got it for Christmas the second year they were in the stores, I think. I got it because every time we went into the stores that had them, I made my parents take me to them, so I could watch them for as long as they would let me. It is the Century model, I don't think that make them that large anymore. It no longer makes blobs, but rather small globules. I still love it.

I think that it was an expensive gift, but it did cut-down on on the time my parents had to spend in the stores that sold them.

David.

[Gord Green]

Such little things hold such mystery and magic to us , even after so many years.

There is a lot to be said, and remembered, about these articles of our youth. They hold a magic upon just viewing them once again.
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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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I got my largest lava lamp, an 18" Hot Rock Model 46500, from eBay several years ago. It's the only one I've every seen which has red translucent lava which actually refracts the light as the blobs rise up and change shape, causing bright red glints of light to appear for a few seconds!

In other words, the red blobs briefly twinkle!

I've never been able to get a picture of it that does it justice (and none of the pictures online do either), so I've modified a jpeg I found to simulate the effect —


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— but trust me, this does NOT do it justice either! The sparkling red blobs are like shape-shifting rubies! The refracted glints actually cause the light inside the niche it occupies in my entertainment center to slowly change. It gets a bit brighter for a few seconds, and the brightness travels upward as the glowing blobs rise.

I couldn't resist the urge to paste my modified jpeg above into the photo of my living room shown below, replacing the old lava lamp in the spot where the Hot Rock 46500 now resides.

~ Click on the image below to see a larger version.



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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 several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ This movie foresaw the flat panel TV at least 40 years before they were commercially available. The scientist husband and wife main characters had what looked like a 40-inch equivalent over their fireplace and were seen watching the news on it in several scenes. Images on the television set were very accurate matte inserts.

Note from me: Also, they used a remote control which was attached to the surface of the end table next to the sofa.

The fireplace in my living room has a mantle above it which is meant to have a TV on it.

But the mantle is well above eye level when I'm sitting on the couch, and I didn't want my TV to be that high! And since I had no desire to use my fireplace because North Carolina is rarely very cold, I placed my TV stand and the television directly in front of it!

The mantel is filled with cool stuff like lava lamps, robot toys (Gort and Robby), spinning desktop decorations, and hanging models of the ships from Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.

This older photo below of the living room doesn't show all the stuff that's on the mantel now, but the the second photo of the mantel itself does — except that the plant has dropped down so many hanging vines now that the area behind all the decorations looks like a miniature jungle!





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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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It occurred to me this morning that there’s a better way to handle the idea about God and the Martians working closely to defeat Calder, the evil Nazi.

The concept below assumes, for the sake of the premise, that God exists and He's doing things which are vital to this story.

First of all, I still think God put the ideas into Calder's mind (just as I described earlier), but now I believe He didn’t make ANY of the transmissions that Peter and Andrea received. All the transmissions they received were actually from Mars, even though Calder thought they were receiving his transmissions.

Remember, God planted ideas in Calder’s head, making him think he was creating a mammoth hoax. Unbeknownst to Calder, there really was a Martian civilization. But his transmissions were actually weak, and they weren’t the one’s Peter and Andrea received.

This seems reasonable in view of the elaborate set up that Peter and Andrea had —




— compared to the less advanced one we see Calder using.



The deluded Nazi even tells the Russians at one point that the America's must have improved his original design after acquiring his plans at the end of WWII, while Calder spent seven years in prison before the Russians helped him escape.

We should also bear in mind that the messages were being sent in a complex mathematical code, and the translations by the people in Washington sometimes differed between the translators themselves. Because of this, Calder would have no way of knowing if the Americans received exactly what he sent . . . or just something similar which actually came from Mars!

As I stated before, Calder erroneously believed he'd made up the whole story about a Martian civilization, and he was planning to eventually expose the hoax and plunge the world into turmoil when people learned it was all a lie.

However, knowing what he planned to do, God and his faithful Martian flock devised a defense to make his treacherous scheme backfire and actually benefit mankind.

So, God started out by giving Calder the idea to create a hoax about an advanced Martian civilization, and Calder starting sending messages he thought the Americans were receiving.

What really happened, however, was that the Martians began conversing with Peter and Andrea, sending the same messages (more or less) that Calder sent on his weaker transmitter — the messages which God "inspired" him to think of, but which weren't really his at all!

There’s another aspect of Calder’s character which is important to the idea that he tried to use the religious elements of the Martian messages to his advantage. I watched this movie yesterday after making my post above, and I paid close attention to Calder’s powerful statement about why he was so determined to crush mankind.

Here’s a somewhat abbreviate transcript of the scene in which Calder tells Peter and Andrea what he wants his plan to accomplish.
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“You thought you’d created a new Earth . . . and I’ll destroy it. A new heaven . . . and that I shall destroy as well . . . once my story is told.”

Andrea is shown studying Calder’s copy of the messages he sent, and she suddnely says, “Chris, he did NOT send the religious messages!”



Calder shrugs and says, “Of course I didn’t. You know that.”

Calder’s notes show that he sent versions of the first few messages they received, but when Peter had asked the Martians how they managed to keep from destroying themselves with the incredible power they’d harnessed, Calder’s answer was —

“One tribe must hold the power.” (A very Nazi-like statement).

However, the reply the Martians actually sent was interpreted this way by the Washington decoders.

“You have been given knowledge and have used it for destruction. Seven lifetimes ago you were told to love goodness and hate evil. Why have you denied the truth?”

This, according to the President in an earlier scene, is a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. And a news commentator reminds us that seven “lifetimes” for the 300-year-old Martians would be 2,100 years . . . about the time Jesus lived.

Andrea tells Chris that this proves the message were sent from a God-governed Mars. “Chris, [Calder’s answer] had nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount. It WAS the prophet talking to us!”

Calder scoffs and says, “The Prophet? Clever of you to create him. You played right into my hands. I smashed your economic system with a power panic. But I had to smash Moscow too. I never thought of using [Christianity] against them.” In a snide voice he concludes with, “Thank you for that idea.”

At this point Peter Graves becomes disillusioned as he considers the possibility that the people in Washington concocted the religious replies from Mars. Calder laughs and says it doesn’t even matter who fabricated the religious messages.



Smiling in triumphant Calder says, “But when I saw the effects on Moscow, I knew you had created my weapon for me. That’s why I let you raise the world up with all that MUCK . . . right up to the sky! So I could dash it down to hell . . . when I tell my story!”

Chris pleads with him. “You can’t do it, Calder.”

Chuckling, Calder replies. “Who’s to stop me? God? He had his chance nine days ago. If I hadn’t dug myself out [after the avalanche], you’d have gotten away with your fraud.”

Calder is convinced the religious messages were fakes, and since no messages have been received in the nine days since his equipment was smashed, that proves there are no Martians.

“If those first messages were fake, then the last ones were too! The world will believe ME . . . just as your husband [now] believes me. You’ll all be at each others throats again, just like you were before. And I’ll have done it. Better to rule in hell than to reign in heaven. My favorite poem, Mrs. Cronyn. The unconquerable will, and a study of revenge. Immortal hate . . . and the courage never to submit or yield."

“That’s my god, Mrs. Cronyn. Satan! Lucifer is my hero. God beat him . . . but I’ll have beaten God.”

Moments later, the commuication device begins receiving a new signal . . . and since it's the only device of kind on Earth, it proves Calder wrong so definitively that he flies into a rage, fires his gun as the screen, and ignites the hydrogen gas in the tank nearby!

What we learn in this dramatic scene is that the villain is a self-professed Satan worshiper. Knowing this important fact makes it easier to believe that God (and the Martians) were determined to prevent him from destroying both our civilization and our spiritual beliefs.

This movie presents a powerful story about a conflict which spans two worlds and involves two sentient races, not to mention a supernatural being that carefully plans the destruction of an enemy who literally acts in the name of the Satan himself!

Wow . . . all these years . . . I’ve never truly understood this movie. It’s far better than I ever imagined.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)