The Martian Chronicles (TV miniseries)
Encyclopedia
The Martian Chronicles is a television miniseries based on Ray Bradbury
's The Martian Chronicles
and dealing with the exploration of Mars
and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson
, Darren McGavin
, Bernadette Peters
, Roddy McDowall
, Barry Morse
, and Maria Schell
. It was aired on NBC
in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours (nearly five hours on the DVD version).
Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".
The script (by Richard Matheson
) differs significantly from Bradbury's original novel
from the 1940s, see episode summary below.
in January 1999 when the first "Zeus I" manned spacecraft to Mars is carried into orbit by a Saturn V
rocket. The Zeus project represents the beginning of a major effort by NASA
and NATO to explore and eventually colonize the outer planets.
On Mars, Ylla (a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage) dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny the reality of the dreams, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts. He kills the two-man expedition, astronauts Nathaniel York and Bert Conover, as soon as they arrive. Mission control on Earth does not know the fate of the crew, and one of the senior astronauts Jeff Spender urges the project director Col.John Wilder to abandon the Zeus project because of concerns that Mars may already harbor life. Wilder (who has shepherded the project for ten years) refuses, among other things because he believes mankind might escape environmental pollution and war on Earth by colonizing Mars instead.
A second mission is launched and the "Zeus II" crew lands on Mars in April 2000. To their amazement the crew (astronauts Arthur Black, Sam Hinkston and David Lustig) discover that they have landed in a town that looks exactly like Green Bluff, Illinois. circa 1979. They are warmly greeted by close relatives and loved ones who all died years ago. In fact, the Martians use the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their old homes, where they are killed in the middle of the night by the Martians.
The third "Zeus III" mission lands on Mars in June 2001. It is commanded by Col. Wilder himself with five other astronauts (Spender, Parkhill, Briggs, Cook, McClure) as subordinates. The crew discovers five ancient cities in the vicinity of the spacecraft, one of which apparently was inhabited only a few weeks ago. The scientists find that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox
accidentally brought from Earth by the first two Zeus crews. The men, except for the archaeologist Spender and Colonel Wilder, become more boisterous. Spender loses his temper when Briggs starts dropping empty wine bottles into a clear blue canal. He knocks him into the canal. He leaves the rest of the landing party to explore Martian ruins. Spender (who always has had deep misgivings about the mission) then goes on a killing spree to avenge the destroyed Martian civilization and manages to shoot all astronauts except Parkhill and Wilder, who shoots Spender in the chest before he has the opportunity to kill them as well.
. In six months, a dozen communities are laid down. They are named after the missing first astronauts ("York Plain", "Blackville", "Wilder Mountain", "Spender Hill", "Briggs Canal" and "Lustig Creek"). The colonies grow rapidly over the next two years but not always successfully as the colonists bring the vices of Earth (graft, corruption, bureaucracy) with them.
In September 2006 the Martian colonists start to encounter strange phenomena. David Lustig, presumed dead six years ago, returns to his parents in Lustig Creek but for some reason he does not want to see other people in First Town (the main colony on Mars). A group of missionaries (Father Peregrine and Father Stone) are rescued from a landslide by a group of mysterious lights who claim to be the "Old Ones"; immortal non-corporeal Martians from over 250 million years ago who now live in the hills. Father Peregrine later sees a vision of Jesus Christ in his church in First Town, but the vision requests him to go away with words "I am not what I seem! I am not that vision!". He concludes that the vision in fact is a Martian who involuntarily looks like anybody other people have in mind: David Lustig, Jesus or anybody else. The Martian is trapped by the colonists and dies shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, nuclear war is imminent on Earth. Congress cuts the entire budget for space exploration, all flights to Mars are canceled and the colony is closed down.
In the final scene we again meet Parkhill, the only survivor (apart from Wilder) of the third Zeus mission. He has opened a hamburger bar on Mars with his wife, when a lone Martian walks in. He panics and kills him. Suddenly, numerous Martians appear in sand ships. Parkhill takes his wife to his very own sand ship and flees. The Martians catch up and give Parkhill a message: he now owns half of Mars. Unfortunately, the fleet of 10,000 rockets filled with 100,000 "hungry customers" won't be coming to patronize his restaurant, as the nuclear war has begun on Earth.
has occurred on Earth, and Mars was evacuated shortly before. Wilder travels back to Earth in November 2006 in a vain effort to rescue his brother and his family. He visits the abandoned Zeus project mission control facility, where he discovers a video recording showing the death of his brother and all personnel as the enemy missiles detonate outside.
Only a few scattered humans remain on Mars. One of them is Benjamin Driscoll, who lives alone in First Town. One day, he hears a telephone ringing in someone's home, and suddenly realizes that he should answer it to find companionship. Missing the call, and several others, he sits down with a phone book of Mars and starts dialing at A. After days of calling without answers, he starts calling hotels, and then (after guessing where he thinks a woman would most likely spend her time) calls the biggest beauty salon on Mars (in New Texas City) and a woman answers. Tremendously excited and overcome with romantic dreams, he flies 1,500 miles to New Texas City to meet Genevieve Selsor. She turns out to be thoroughly narcissistic and entirely obsessed with her own good looks. Driscoll asks her out on a date, and she reveals that she decided to stay behind simply because "they wouldn't let me take all my clothes with me back to Earth." She enjoys having access to all the clothes, makeup, footwear etc. in New Texas City without having to pay for anything but also laments the fact that she has to do all the cooking and technical maintenance herself. Disappointed, Driscoll runs away when she rejects his advances but still expects him to make a nice breakfast the next day while repairing her sauna.
Meanwhile, Peter Hathaway is living retired on Mars with his wife Alice and daughter Margarite, even though everyone else has departed. Hathaway is a mechanical tinkerer, who has wired an abandoned town below their house to sound alive at night with noise and phone calls. One night, he sees a rocket in orbit, and puts on a laser light show to signal the rocket. It turns out to be Father Stone and Wilder, who have just returned from Earth. They land and have a reunion with Hathaway, who is troubled by his heart. Undeterred, Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast. Wilder remarks that Hathaway's wife looks exactly as she did many years ago when they got married, as he knows her real age and was present at their wedding. Wilder goes off to check some headstones that he saw earlier. He returns, pale, and says that the adults now before them died in July 2000.
The Hathaways give Wilder and Father Stone a toast, but Peter Hathaway's heart fails and he dies, begging Wilder not to call his family because they "would not understand." Wilder then confirms that Alice and Margarite were made by Peter Hathaway. The android family continues on with its meaningless daily life, alone. Ben Driscoll lands shortly after the rocket has departed. The Hathaways are relieved when Driscoll asks if he can stay with them.
In March 2007, Wilder visits Sam Parkhill again to inform him that the Earth now is done with and Mars is all they have. Parkhill tells him about the "land grant" that he received from the Martians. Wilder suspects that the Martians were aware of the coming war, and therefore wanted to give the other half of their own desolate planet away to the survivors of the Earth colony.
In the final scene, Wilder, now alone, meets a Martian ghost from thousands of years before (whether the Martians are ghosts or shadows of the past is not made clear). Each can see the Mars he is accustomed to, but the other person is transparent to him and has the appearance of a phantom. Wilder sees ruins where the Martian sees a thriving city. Neither knows if he precedes the other in time, the point being that any one civilization is ultimately fleeting. Wilder then takes his family into the ruins of a Martian city, saying they will live there and learn the Martian way. He then points into a pool of water at the family's reflection and states, "Those are the Martians", indicating that the humans will be the new citizens of Mars. Finally, he pushes a button on his remote control to blow up the last remaining Earth return rocketship.
. Apart from the obvious science fiction aspects of living Martians, the series was filmed in deserts on Malta
and Lanzarote
and therefore has very noticeable blue sky with white clouds. Mars is also said to have a "thin atmosphere" which humans can breathe and there are canal
s of water and desert type vegetation.
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
's The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists...
and dealing with the exploration of Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...
, Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
, Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings...
, Roddy McDowall
Roddy McDowall
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...
, Barry Morse
Barry Morse
Herbert "Barry" Morse was an Anglo-Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and the British sci-fi drama Space: 1999...
, and Maria Schell
Maria Schell
Maria Margarethe Anna Schell was an Austrian/Swiss actress, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956 for Gervaise....
. It was aired on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours (nearly five hours on the DVD version).
Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".
The script (by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
) differs significantly from Bradbury's original novel
The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists...
from the 1940s, see episode summary below.
Episode 1 Summary : "The Expeditions"
The first episode starts at the Kennedy Space CenterKennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA installation that has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968. Although such flights are currently on hiatus, KSC continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program...
in January 1999 when the first "Zeus I" manned spacecraft to Mars is carried into orbit by a Saturn V
Saturn V
The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A multistage liquid-fueled launch vehicle, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida with no loss of crew or payload...
rocket. The Zeus project represents the beginning of a major effort by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
and NATO to explore and eventually colonize the outer planets.
On Mars, Ylla (a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage) dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny the reality of the dreams, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts. He kills the two-man expedition, astronauts Nathaniel York and Bert Conover, as soon as they arrive. Mission control on Earth does not know the fate of the crew, and one of the senior astronauts Jeff Spender urges the project director Col.John Wilder to abandon the Zeus project because of concerns that Mars may already harbor life. Wilder (who has shepherded the project for ten years) refuses, among other things because he believes mankind might escape environmental pollution and war on Earth by colonizing Mars instead.
A second mission is launched and the "Zeus II" crew lands on Mars in April 2000. To their amazement the crew (astronauts Arthur Black, Sam Hinkston and David Lustig) discover that they have landed in a town that looks exactly like Green Bluff, Illinois. circa 1979. They are warmly greeted by close relatives and loved ones who all died years ago. In fact, the Martians use the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their old homes, where they are killed in the middle of the night by the Martians.
The third "Zeus III" mission lands on Mars in June 2001. It is commanded by Col. Wilder himself with five other astronauts (Spender, Parkhill, Briggs, Cook, McClure) as subordinates. The crew discovers five ancient cities in the vicinity of the spacecraft, one of which apparently was inhabited only a few weeks ago. The scientists find that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox
Chickenpox
Chickenpox or chicken pox is a highly contagious illness caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus . It usually starts with vesicular skin rash mainly on the body and head rather than at the periphery and becomes itchy, raw pockmarks, which mostly heal without scarring...
accidentally brought from Earth by the first two Zeus crews. The men, except for the archaeologist Spender and Colonel Wilder, become more boisterous. Spender loses his temper when Briggs starts dropping empty wine bottles into a clear blue canal. He knocks him into the canal. He leaves the rest of the landing party to explore Martian ruins. Spender (who always has had deep misgivings about the mission) then goes on a killing spree to avenge the destroyed Martian civilization and manages to shoot all astronauts except Parkhill and Wilder, who shoots Spender in the chest before he has the opportunity to kill them as well.
Episode 2 Summary : "The Settlers"
Wilder returns to the Red Planet in February 2004 with an entire fleet of spaceships, having been appointed director of the American colonization of Mars. By this time, all the Martians have been killed off by a strain of chickenpoxChickenpox
Chickenpox or chicken pox is a highly contagious illness caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus . It usually starts with vesicular skin rash mainly on the body and head rather than at the periphery and becomes itchy, raw pockmarks, which mostly heal without scarring...
. In six months, a dozen communities are laid down. They are named after the missing first astronauts ("York Plain", "Blackville", "Wilder Mountain", "Spender Hill", "Briggs Canal" and "Lustig Creek"). The colonies grow rapidly over the next two years but not always successfully as the colonists bring the vices of Earth (graft, corruption, bureaucracy) with them.
In September 2006 the Martian colonists start to encounter strange phenomena. David Lustig, presumed dead six years ago, returns to his parents in Lustig Creek but for some reason he does not want to see other people in First Town (the main colony on Mars). A group of missionaries (Father Peregrine and Father Stone) are rescued from a landslide by a group of mysterious lights who claim to be the "Old Ones"; immortal non-corporeal Martians from over 250 million years ago who now live in the hills. Father Peregrine later sees a vision of Jesus Christ in his church in First Town, but the vision requests him to go away with words "I am not what I seem! I am not that vision!". He concludes that the vision in fact is a Martian who involuntarily looks like anybody other people have in mind: David Lustig, Jesus or anybody else. The Martian is trapped by the colonists and dies shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, nuclear war is imminent on Earth. Congress cuts the entire budget for space exploration, all flights to Mars are canceled and the colony is closed down.
In the final scene we again meet Parkhill, the only survivor (apart from Wilder) of the third Zeus mission. He has opened a hamburger bar on Mars with his wife, when a lone Martian walks in. He panics and kills him. Suddenly, numerous Martians appear in sand ships. Parkhill takes his wife to his very own sand ship and flees. The Martians catch up and give Parkhill a message: he now owns half of Mars. Unfortunately, the fleet of 10,000 rockets filled with 100,000 "hungry customers" won't be coming to patronize his restaurant, as the nuclear war has begun on Earth.
Episode 3 Summary : "The Martians"
World War IIIWorld War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
has occurred on Earth, and Mars was evacuated shortly before. Wilder travels back to Earth in November 2006 in a vain effort to rescue his brother and his family. He visits the abandoned Zeus project mission control facility, where he discovers a video recording showing the death of his brother and all personnel as the enemy missiles detonate outside.
Only a few scattered humans remain on Mars. One of them is Benjamin Driscoll, who lives alone in First Town. One day, he hears a telephone ringing in someone's home, and suddenly realizes that he should answer it to find companionship. Missing the call, and several others, he sits down with a phone book of Mars and starts dialing at A. After days of calling without answers, he starts calling hotels, and then (after guessing where he thinks a woman would most likely spend her time) calls the biggest beauty salon on Mars (in New Texas City) and a woman answers. Tremendously excited and overcome with romantic dreams, he flies 1,500 miles to New Texas City to meet Genevieve Selsor. She turns out to be thoroughly narcissistic and entirely obsessed with her own good looks. Driscoll asks her out on a date, and she reveals that she decided to stay behind simply because "they wouldn't let me take all my clothes with me back to Earth." She enjoys having access to all the clothes, makeup, footwear etc. in New Texas City without having to pay for anything but also laments the fact that she has to do all the cooking and technical maintenance herself. Disappointed, Driscoll runs away when she rejects his advances but still expects him to make a nice breakfast the next day while repairing her sauna.
Meanwhile, Peter Hathaway is living retired on Mars with his wife Alice and daughter Margarite, even though everyone else has departed. Hathaway is a mechanical tinkerer, who has wired an abandoned town below their house to sound alive at night with noise and phone calls. One night, he sees a rocket in orbit, and puts on a laser light show to signal the rocket. It turns out to be Father Stone and Wilder, who have just returned from Earth. They land and have a reunion with Hathaway, who is troubled by his heart. Undeterred, Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast. Wilder remarks that Hathaway's wife looks exactly as she did many years ago when they got married, as he knows her real age and was present at their wedding. Wilder goes off to check some headstones that he saw earlier. He returns, pale, and says that the adults now before them died in July 2000.
The Hathaways give Wilder and Father Stone a toast, but Peter Hathaway's heart fails and he dies, begging Wilder not to call his family because they "would not understand." Wilder then confirms that Alice and Margarite were made by Peter Hathaway. The android family continues on with its meaningless daily life, alone. Ben Driscoll lands shortly after the rocket has departed. The Hathaways are relieved when Driscoll asks if he can stay with them.
In March 2007, Wilder visits Sam Parkhill again to inform him that the Earth now is done with and Mars is all they have. Parkhill tells him about the "land grant" that he received from the Martians. Wilder suspects that the Martians were aware of the coming war, and therefore wanted to give the other half of their own desolate planet away to the survivors of the Earth colony.
In the final scene, Wilder, now alone, meets a Martian ghost from thousands of years before (whether the Martians are ghosts or shadows of the past is not made clear). Each can see the Mars he is accustomed to, but the other person is transparent to him and has the appearance of a phantom. Wilder sees ruins where the Martian sees a thriving city. Neither knows if he precedes the other in time, the point being that any one civilization is ultimately fleeting. Wilder then takes his family into the ruins of a Martian city, saying they will live there and learn the Martian way. He then points into a pool of water at the family's reflection and states, "Those are the Martians", indicating that the humans will be the new citizens of Mars. Finally, he pushes a button on his remote control to blow up the last remaining Earth return rocketship.
Production notes
Like Bradbury's original novel from the 1940s, the television series employs the concept of suspension of disbeliefSuspension of disbelief
Suspension of disbelief or "willing suspension of disbelief" is a formula for justifying the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literary works of fiction...
. Apart from the obvious science fiction aspects of living Martians, the series was filmed in deserts on Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
and Lanzarote
Lanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
and therefore has very noticeable blue sky with white clouds. Mars is also said to have a "thin atmosphere" which humans can breathe and there are canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...
s of water and desert type vegetation.
Cast
- Rock HudsonRock HudsonRoy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...
as Colonel John Wilder - Gayle HunnicuttGayle HunnicuttGayle, Lady Jenkins , known by her birth name Gayle Hunnicutt, is an American actress.-Personal life:Hunnicutt was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the daughter of Colonel Sam Lloyd Hunnicutt and Virginia Hunnicutt, and attended the University of California, Los Angeles. She worked as a fashion model...
as Ruth Wilder - Bernie CaseyBernie CaseyBernard Terry "Bernie" Casey is a professional actor who initially had a career as an interscholastic, intercollegiate and professional football player. Casey was also a record-breaking track and field athlete for Bowling Green State University...
as Major Jeff Spender - Christopher Connelly as Ben Driscoll
- Nicholas HammondNicholas HammondNicholas Hammond is an American actor best known for his roles as Friedrich von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music, and as Peter Parker/Spider-Man on the CBS television series The Amazing Spider-Man...
as Captain Arthur Black - Roddy McDowallRoddy McDowallRoderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...
as Father Stone - Darren McGavinDarren McGavinDarren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
as Sam Parkhill - Bernadette PetersBernadette PetersBernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings...
as Genevieve Selsor - Maria SchellMaria SchellMaria Margarethe Anna Schell was an Austrian/Swiss actress, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956 for Gervaise....
as Anna Lustig - Joyce Van PattenJoyce Van PattenJoyce Benignia Van Patten is an American stage, film and television actress.-Personal life:Van Patten was born in New York City, the daughter of Josephine Rose , an Italian American magazine advertising executive, and Richard Byron Van Patten, a Dutch American interior decorator.She is the younger...
as Elma Parkhill - Fritz WeaverFritz WeaverFritz William Weaver is an American actor and voice actor.-Life and career:Weaver was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Elsa W. and John Carson Weaver. His mother was of Italian descent and his father was a social worker from Pittsburgh. Weaver attended Peabody High School...
as Father Peregrine - Laurie HoldenLaurie HoldenHeather Laurie Holden is an American-Canadian actress and human rights activist. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Marita Covarrubias in The X-Files, Adele Stanton on The Majestic, Cybil Bennett in Silent Hill, Amanda Dumfries in The Mist, Olivia Murray in The Shield, and Andrea in The...
as Marie Wilder - Burnell Tucker as Bill Wilder
- Richard Oldfield as Captain Nathaniel York
- Maggie Wright as Ylla
- Robert BeattyRobert BeattyRobert Beatty was a Canadian actor who worked in film, television and radio for most of his career and was especially known in the UK.-Career:Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Beatty began his acting career in Britain in 1939....
as General Halstead - Estelle BrodyEstelle BrodyEstelle Brody was an American actress who became one of the biggest female stars of British silent film in the latter half of the 1920s...
as Mrs Black - Phil Brown as Mr Black
- Anthony Pullen Shaw as Edward Black
- Michael Anderson Jr. as David Lustig
- Wolfgang Reichmann as Leif Lustig
- Alison ElliottAlison ElliottAlison A. Elliott is an American actress.Elliott was born in San Francisco, CA, the daughter of Barbara, a teacher of nursing, and Bob Elliott, a computer executive. She moved with her family to Tokyo, Japan when she was 4 years old, and then moved back to San Francisco when she was 8, where she...
as Lavinnia Spalding - Jon FinchJon FinchJon Finch is an English actor noted for many Shakespearean roles. Perhaps his most notable role was the title role in Roman Polanski's 1971 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. His other famous role was as a down-and-out ex-RAF pilot wrongly accused of murder in Alfred Hitchcock's...
as Jesus Christ - Barry MorseBarry MorseHerbert "Barry" Morse was an Anglo-Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and the British sci-fi drama Space: 1999...
as Peter Hathaway - Nyree Dawn Porter as Alice Hathaway
- Madeleine Todd, aka Madalyn Aslan as Margarite Hathaway
- Linda Lou Allen as Marilyn
- John Cassady as Briggs
- James FaulknerJames FaulknerJames Sebastian Faulkner is a British actor, known for his many various appearance on television and in movies, usually in supporting roles.Faulkner made his big screen debut as Josef Strauss in The Great Waltz in 1972...
as Mr K - Vadim GlownaVadim GlownaVadim Glowna is a German actor and film director. He has appeared in over 150 films and television shows since 1964.He directed the 1983 film Dies rigorose Leben, which won an Honourable Mention at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989, he was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin...
as Sam Hinkston - Richard HefferRichard HefferRichard Heffer is a British actor, best known for his roles on television in the 1970s and 1980s, when he became a very familiar face....
as Conover - Derek Lamden as Martian on sand ship
- Terence LongdonTerence LongdonTerence Longdon was an English actor. Longdon, born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire was best known for his lead role in the 1950s-1960s British TV series Garry Halliday where he played a Biggles-like pilot who flew into various adventure situations. In film he was Drusus, Messala's personal...
as Martian - Peter MarinkerPeter MarinkerPeter Marinker is a Canadian actor well known for his role as Kiichi Goto in the Patlabor series and his many audio book recordings. He currently resides in the UK.-Filmography:*A Wind Named Amnesia as Simpson*Angel Cop as Dr...
as McClure