The Post Star Wars Sci-Fi Invasion

 

In Issue 9 (October 1977) of Starlog there was an article about the invasion of Sci-fi films touched off by the release of Star Wars. The article mentions quite a few movies and TV shows, some made it, some didn’t. All release dates are for the US.

A sequel to Star Wars – Empire Strikes Back (May 1980)

When World Collide – As I discussed in this article a number of writers and directors were attached to this over the years but it never materialized.

H.G. Wells’ In the Days of the Comet – Never made

The Return of the Time Machine – Never made

Return From Witch Mountain – Released March 1978

The Cat From Outer Space – Released June 1978

Space Probe – Released December 1979 as The Black Hole

The Thing From Another World – Released in June 1982 as The Thing

Buck Rogers TV Series – Premiered September 1979

Comedy remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man – Although this didn’t get made, it might have become the 1981 comedy The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

The Predictor – Not made

Childhood’s End – A couple attempts were made to bring the Arthur C. Clarke classic to the screen, but it still hasn’t happened.

Magna I – I did find a mention of this, with the full title Magna I – Beyond the Barrier Reef, in the May 30th, 1974 issue of The Wilmington Star News but it appears this was never made.

Meteor – Released October 1979

Timescape – Not Made. You can read more about this one in my blog post about it.

Capricorn One – Released June 1978

The Late Great Plant Earth – Released January 1979

End of the World – Release August 1977. You can actually watch this one over at Archive.org.

Spawn Of the Slithis –  Released July 1978

Alien Encounter – Released October 1977 as Starship Invasions in the US.

Gift From a Red Planet – Released May 1978 as The Alpha Incident in the US.

The Incredible Adventure - Unknown

Rocket Ship X Flies Again - Unknown

Skywatch - Unknown

The Thing

In issue 14 (June 1978) of Starlog is this article about a remake of The Thing:

William F. Nolan, co-author of Logan's Run, award winning script writer of Burnt Offerings, has been signed by Universal to script a "remake" of the old Howard Hawkes horror-classic, The Thing. "This won't be just a rehash," Nolan said. "I'm going back to the original story, Who Goes There? by Campbell to utilize many values which were ignored the first time around." Nolan's thing won't be a walking talking carrot!

The Things remake eventually did happen, but not until 1982 under the direction of John Carpenter. The William F. Nolan screenplay was not used, instead it was written by Bill Lancaster, the son of actor Burt Lancaster. It interesting to note that his only other writing credits are for the Bad News Bears movies and TV show.

If you are interested in reading the Nolan screenplay it has been published in a book along with John W. Campell’s novella “Who Goes There?” which is the basis for both the original The Thing and the 1982 remake. According to this message board post from the publisher, the Nolan version of the screenplay emphasized the paranoia elements of the story and downplayed the creature/horror elements. I could definitely see a movie like this being very compelling, but I also think the bizarre and sometimes disturbing creature effects used in the remake really make it a great movie.

The Empire Strikes Back Rumors

 

In issue 31 of Starlog (Feb 1980) there was an article summarizing the various rumors that were floating around about The Empire Strikes Back. Lets take a look at how accurate they were.

What was right

• Obi-Wan will be in Empire.
• Obi-Wan will appear as an ephemeral shape that one can faintly see through.
• On the ice planet Hoth the Rebels are attacked by Stormtroopers.
• There will be a new character named Lando Calrissian who might be good or might be bad.
• Lando is an old friend of Han and actually sold him the Falcon. (He didn’t sell it, but close enough)
• New bad guy named Boba Fett who is a bounty hunter.
• Boba Fett will be played by one actor and voiced by another.
• The Emperor will make an appearance.
• The movie concludes with a fierce light saber duel between Luke and Vader.
• Vader is Luke’s father. (Spoiler!)
• We will see Vader without his mask. (Sort of, from behind)
• Stop motion animation will be used more extensively in Empire.

What was sort of right

• Chewie is taken prisoner on Hoth and Han must rescue him. Another variation of the rumors says Han is is taken prisoner. (The taken prisoner part was right, they just got the details wrong)
• Han has a light saber duel with Vader towards the end of the movie. (They just got the character wrong)
• Boba is a remnant of the old Imperial Shocktroopers. (This isn’t to far off, but we don’t learn this in Empire)
• Boba was not a Shocktrooper but merely adopted their uniform. (Also sort of true, but again we don’t learn this in Empire).
• Boba Fett works for which ever side pays him he most and he plays both sides when he can get away with it. (Definitely in character for Boba but this doesn’t happen in Empire)
• Ben killed Luke’s father. (True, from a certain point of view)
• “Princess Leia is captured by Stormtroopers and delivered to Darth Vader who, by use of the Force, seduces her into betraying Luke and Han.” (Leia is captured and used to lure Luke, so this isn’t completely wrong)

What was wrong

• Only Obi-Wan’s disembodied voice will be in Empire.
• Han Solo is killed.
• Mark Hamill doesn’t want to be in Star Wars 3 (Jedi) so Luke is killed.
• Obi-Wan will appear in flashbacks.
• The Emperor will be played by Orson Wells or Christopher Lee.
• Ben is Luke’s father.
• We learn in Empire why Vader wears a mask.
• “On a jungle planet, where Luke and Han are seeking allies against the Empire, the two enlist a race of winged aliens called the Quarrels.”
• “The Rebels visit three different planets in Empire, and there are different races of intelligent creatures on each one.” or “The Rebels visit three different planets, but none have indigenous sentient life.” (They did visit three planets, Hoth, Bespin and Dagobah but neither of these descriptions is accurate.)
• “Through the use of the Force, Luke persuades Darth Vader of the error of his ways and convinces him to enlist with the Rebels against the Empire.”

What was just plain out there

• “Luke and C-3PO are captured by a horrendous alien (stop-motion animated, the story goes) who dumps them into a tank-like prison filled with a breathable liquid. The only way the alien can be killed (shades of Dracula) is to drive a metal stake through his heart. The only metal around, unfortunately, is C-3PO; and Luke melts the 'droid down to fabricate the weapon.”
• “The Millennium Falcon falls into a black hole—with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie and Darth Vader aboard—and travels through time.”
• “The special-effects team at Industrial Light and Magic, near San Francisco, have been working on an experimental process that uses holography and makes it possible for an image of the Millennium Falcon to fly off the screen and up the projection beam.”
• “In their travels, Luke, Leia and Han en-counter a female villain, a sort of ‘Queen of Outer Space’ “
• “Relating vaguely to that black hole rumor, it is said that Han Solo and Chewie land on a desert planet where they meet time travelers from Earth's 13th century who are trying to fight off Stormtroopers with catapults and crossbows.” (Of course the “fight off Stormtroopers with catapults and crossbows” sort of came true in Jedi)

Timescape

 

From Issue 3 (January 1977) comes this piece of news:

NEXT FROM MGM: TIMESCAPE

Saul David— who brought us Logan's Run— is hard at work on a new film, Timescape, which is being scripted by David and Simon Wincelberg— to be filmed here and in England (if early plans pan out) in 1977. The story is "a contemporary adventure drama dealing with the dimensions of time as it relates to events of the past and future." Saul David said the movie will contain some of the elements of Logan's Run but will be "farther out, intellectually."

A quote from Shimon Wincelbreg (Shimon is his real name, but he did sometimes write under the name Simon) in this article by John Kenneth Muir confirmed that this project never went anywhere:

"Saul [David] and I were working on an MGM project that never got made, Timescape. He asked me to write for Logan's Run, so I came up with a story."

It’s a shame nothing ever came of this because Shimon was a fairly prolific TV writer, and wrote for quite a few sci-fi series including Lost in Space, the original Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the Logan’s Run TV series.

Film Fantasy Calendar December 1988

 

At some point in the 80’s Starlog added a monthly column called the “Film Fantasy Calendar” which gave the anticipated release date for upcoming sci-fi and fantasy movies. I am not sure why they called it the “Film Fantasy” calendar, maybe because a lot of the dates and some of the movies turned out to be a fantasy! Let’s see how they did with this one. The dates after the movie title are the actual release dates. The calendar only provided titles, so it can be a little difficult to figure out some of these.

November

Scrooged – 11/23/1988

Oliver & Company – 11/13/1988

Vengeance: The Demon – 1/13/1989 (as Pumpkinhead)

The Land Before Time – 11/18/1988

Watchers – 12/2/1988

Cocoon: The Return – 11/23/1988

Hellhound: Hellraiser II – 12/23/1988

December

My Stepmother is an Alien – 12/9/1988

Winter/Spring 1989

Second Sight – 11/3/1989

Millennium – 8/25/1989

The Fly II – 2/10/1989

The Punisher – 10/5/1989

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – 3/10/1989

SpiderMan – The only thing I can find related to Spiderman at that time is a fan film called Viva Spider-Man.

Warlock – 1/11/1991

Nightbreed – 2/16/1990

Witch Hunt – Not sure what this is. Maybe it was a working title for Warlock and they did realize it was the same movie.

Parents – 1/27/1989

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure – 2/17/1989

Summer 1989

Ghostbusters II – 6/16/1989

Back to the' Future II – 11/22/1989

Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade – 5/24/1989

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier – 6/9/1989

Batman – 6/23/1989

The Abyss – 8/9/1989

License Revoked – 7/14/1989 (as License to Kill)

Grounded  - This could be Tremors which was released in January of 1990. The title Grounded sort of fits that movie.

Leviathan – 3/17/1989

Sgt. Rock – Arnold Schwarzenegger had planned to play the title role in this film but it never materialized.

Winter 1989

The Little Mermaid – 11/17/1989

Strat – See my post about this movie.

Battleground: Earth

I have talked about a few movies that were mentioned in Starlog but never materialized, and I am sure I will cover quite a few more of these. There are also projects mentioned in Starlog that took a long time to become a reality. One of example of this comes from Issue 7 (August 1977). In the Star Trek Report column it talks about some of the other projects that Gene Roddenberry had in the works including this one:

Another possible Roddenberry project is a pilot for CBS television called Battleground: Earth. Set in Earth's immediate future, the series deals with subversive infiltration of this planet by a superior alien race. The pilot script is by Brian McKay (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), based on a story by Gene Roddenberry. We are presently awaiting word from Twentieth Century-Fox on a beginning production date.

This project became a reality 20 years later (and six years after Roddenbery’s death) under the guidance of Majel Barret-Roddenberry, in the form of the syndicated series Earth: Final Conflict. Gene Roddenberry was given the writing credit on the actual pilot episode of the series, but you can read Brian McKay’s original script here. Anyone familiar with the show will find a lot of familiar things in the original script including a lot of the names and the general setup for the story. One of the big differences in the original script (spoiler alert) is that the audience and Boone find out that the Taelons have a clearly nefarious purpose in coming to Earth. The series kept the Taelons intentions a mystery for quite some time and in the end they turn out to not actually be here to conquer the Earth.

Mars Exploration

Starlog’s primary focus was sci-fi and fantasy, but they also did articles on science fact, especially about the space program. Just like the fiction news, some times that fact news didn’t come about as expected either.

In issue 6 (June 1977) there was an article about what we would see from NASA as a follow up to the successful Mars Viking mission, he is an excerpt:

The mission that NASA is now working on is the one that many space scientists would have preferred as the initial investigation. It calls for landing a pair of Mars Rovers ("Vikings on Wheels") on that planet's surface in the early 1980's. The Rovers would gather scientific data from several wide-ranging areas and send it to their mother Orbiter for relay to Earth. It is projected that these mission-controlled vehicles could travel up to three  miles a day and help one another as needed.

NASA did have plans for a Mars rover mission in the late 70’s or early 80’s but they never made it off the drawing board. You can read more about them in these two articles from Wired:

Mars Multi-Rover Mission (1977)

A 1979 Mars Rover Mission (1970)

This timeline turned out to be far to optimistic. After Viking the next successful Mars mission wouldn’t come until 1988 with the Russian Phobos 2 mission,  a rover wouldn’t make it to Mars until the NASA Mars Pathfinder mission in 1996, and the plans for dual rovers on Mars would have to wait until the Mars Exploration Rover missions in 2003.