The Terrornauts
Encyclopedia
Synopsis
Project Star Talk is based at a UK radio telescopeRadio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...
site, its mission is to listen for radio signals from other intelligences. Dr Joe Burke (Simon Oaks) is the head of the project assisted by his small team consisting of electronics expert Ben Keller (Stanley Meadows) and office manager Sandy Lund (Zena Marshall). Due to the lack of success reported by the Site Manager, Dr. Henry Shore (Max Adrian), Project Star Talk is given 90 days in order to report positive results. During this period an accountant Mr. Yellowlees (Charles Hawtrey) is sent to look over the project's accounts. As luck would have it, a repeating signal is received by the project, but the signal is only coming from a small asteroid with no atmosphere in the outer Solar System. Despite this, Dr Burke spends the balance of his grant to equip the telescope with a powerful transmitter to contact the source of the signals. The night of the transmission, Mr Yellowlees and Mrs. Jones (Patricia Hayes) who runs the tea trolley, stay to witness this historic event. While waiting for a response, Dr. Burke tells of his father's discovery at an archaeological dig in France of a cube that gave him strange dreams as a boy, inspiring him to become an astronomer . The signal is sent and reaches the asteroid. The asteroid has on it a huge installation that receives the radio signal and answers it with a spaceship sent riding down the radio beam to the point of transmission. When the spacecraft arrives at Project Star Talk, it picks up the transmitter shed and carries it, the project staff and the 2 witnesses to the alien installation. The telescope staff believe that the transmitter shed exploded, killing the Star Talk team.
Upon arrival at the asteroid, the team is greeted by a robot that takes them through a series of tests to prove intelligence, motivation and knowledge. After each test, they are provided with rewards such as food for the intelligence test, a weapon for the motivation test and a "Knowledge Cube" for the knowledge test. After a tour of a control room, they are then brought to a chamber with a small platform and a figure in a chair, who simply happens to be the long dead caretaker of the base. As they head back to the control room, Ben bumps Sandy onto the platform and she is "transposed" in a puff of smoke to a distant planet peopled by savages who try to kill her. Dr. Burke then follows Sandy to the planet armed with the gun and effects a rescue before she is killed discovering the secret of the Knowledge Cubes in the process. Dr Burke plugs in to the cube, and the horrible secret is revealed, the planet of savages is the home of the survivors of an interstellar war that is fast approaching Earth, and the Star Talk team are the only ones who can use the advanced weapons of the installation to stop an invading enemy fleet from destroying the Earth. The team searches frantically through the huge library of cubes for the instructions to use the weapons of the fort but are unsuccessful. as the enemy fleet comes into range, the robot delivers the cubes needed just in time. the battle is joined but the Star Talk team has a hard time hitting the aliens with missiles so with the cubes instruction, the fortress's engines are started and they rise off the asteroid to intercept the aliens, who nearing defeat, then crash into the fortress. Dr. Burke sets the "Transposer plates" for Earth and the Star Talk team, Mr. Yellowlees and Mrs Jones are transposed to the very archaeological dig in France where Dr. Burk's father found the cube so long ago. While they congratulate one another on their luck, a French Gendarme (André Maranne) arrives just in time to arrest them for trespassing.
Cast
- Simon OatesSimon OatesSimon Oates was an English actor best known for his roles on television.Born in Canning Town, east London, and subsequently moving to Finchley in his teens, Oates trained as a heating engineer for his father's firm, before becoming an actor...
... Dr. Joe Burke - Zena MarshallZena MarshallZena Moyra Marshall was a British actress of film and television.She attended St Mary's, Ascot and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art...
... Sandy Lund - Charles HawtreyCharles Hawtrey (film actor)George Frederick Joffre Hartree , known as Charles Hawtrey, was an English comedy actor and musician.Beginning at a young age as a boy soprano, he made several records before moving on to the radio...
... Joshua Yellowlees - Patricia HayesPatricia HayesPatricia Lawlor Hayes, OBE was an English comedy actress.Hayes was born in Streatham, London. As a child Hayes attended Sacred Heart School in Wandsworth....
... Mrs. Jones - Stanley MeadowsStanley Meadows-Selected filmography:* The Mummy * Payroll * A Prize of Arms * Panic * The Main Chance * The Masque of the Red Death * Clash by Night * The Ipcress File...
... Ben Keller - Max AdrianMax AdrianMax Adrian was a Northern Irish stage, film and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre....
... Dr. Henry Shore - Frank BarryFrank BarryFrank Barry was an Australian rules footballer who played with South Adelaide in the South Australian Football League from 1911 to 1915....
... Burke as a child - Richard Carpenter ... Danny
- Leonard CracknellLeonard CracknellLeonard Cracknell was a British actor Raised in Hornchurch, Essex, Cracknell was a successful television, radio, film and theatre actor, mainly during the 1960s and 1970s.-Life:...
... Nick - André MaranneAndré MaranneAndré Maranne is an Anglo-French actor who appeared chiefly in English-language roles from the mid 1950s.-Career:Born in Toulouse, France, Maranne's most prominent recurring role was Sergeant François Chevalier in six of The Pink Panther films, alongside Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom. Before the...
... Gendarme - Frank Forsyth ... Uncle
- Robert JewellRobert JewellRobert Jewell was an English actor who mostly worked as a Dalek or other robot operator on Doctor Who in the late sixties, also playing a cameo as Bing Crosby in the serial The Daleks' Master Plan. He later emigrated to Australia and played small recurring roles in Prisoner during the eighties....
... Robot Operator
Currently released only on VHS (Out of Production)
The film is based on "The Wailing Asteroid" by Murray Leinster
Murray Leinster
Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history...
, adapted for screen by John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
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External links
- http://www.planet-9.de/luke/screenshots/terrornauts
- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5555447857335408156&ei=_u_mSMHXL5jUqAOqg-GZCw&q=terrornauts&vt=lf