WI: Forbidden Planet TV Series

It's well known, at least to Nerdery, that a heavy deal of what went into Star Trek came from Forbidden Planet. "United Planets", "Hyperdrive", "Transporters", and colonizing and exploring space.

So what if Forbidden Planet itself simply had a TV spinoff in the 50s or 60s?
 
Star Trek was very deeply an artifact of the 1960's.

A Forbidden Planet spin off would have drawn heavily from some of the same source material - westerns, the notion of the frontier, american exceptionalism, boundless optimism.

But it would be very much set in the 1950's. So what would a 50's sensibility produce?

Let me think. A much more overt militarism. Perhaps a distrust of intellectualism. Given the sci fi of the era, I think you'd see a very strong overt comic relief character. And I think a civilian female role, a journalist or something equivalent.

I'm really surprised that no one is taking this up and running with it.
 
Well how about having a much more explicit cold war analogue. Yeah we had th Klingons in the show as it was but they hardly dominated the show. In a fifties version the main villians of the forbidden planet are a vaguely ideological empire that is attempting to infilterate the United Planets with spies. Some of the more progressive themes of star trek may also not appear.

Edit You must also remember that special effects will be even more basic.
 
We could probably extrapolate a lot of the series from the Sci Fi and Horror that was actually current at the time. I'm thinking:

* The Thing From Another World
* Invasion of the Body Snatchers
* Queen of Outer Space
* This Island Earth

What else?

Cultural crossovers, maybe.

* Tarzan?
* Westerns, of course.
* War movies.

What about Kaiju?

* Godzilla?
* King Kong?

Maybe a rotating series of episodes, the sort of thing that worked so well for the X-Files. There'd be Monster episodes, War episodes, Commy episodes, Comedy episodes.
 
Forbidden Planet TV show, if only...
Well I'd imagine the show will feature the continuing adventures of the Crew of the United Planets Cruiser C57-D (I looked that up) particularly: Cptn. Addams (Possibly still played by Leslie Neilson!) Altaria, and Robbie the Robot! (So awesome!), I'd Imagine if the show was made made in lets say 1957 one year after the movie, it would resemble the movie very little and look more like those space cadet shows that were popular earlier, and most likely be awful. 50's TV sci-fi,with few exceptions, was pretty lame. The shows were mostly lame and campy. If anyone is a fan of MST3k the episode with the film Crash of Moon's, that was a several episodes of a show of era combined into one.
 
Quite possibly. There were a number of television space shows from this period: Space Patrol, Space Command, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, even short lived Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

But still, its possible that a fairly upscale production like Forbidden Planet might have managed to retain its dignity. There was some amazing television being produced during that time, and real writers were working.

I wouldn't necessarily write off a Forbidden Planet TV series.
 
I read a *lot* of 50's science fiction. TV sci-fi tends to lag behind print such that the issues addressed in Star Trek were hit in print sf a decade before.

A 50's Trek would have less of the psychological angle so popular in 50's sf, I think (which was augmented by the hippie sensibilities of the latter 60's). The aliens would all be humanoid (they did a lot of that OTL anyway, to save money and to "explore the human condition," but even 50's print sf had trouble with real aliens and out-of-solar-system stories. Earlier stuff was even more geo-centric and humano-centric)

Women would be window-dressing. "Exotic" minorities would be maybe Polish or Swedish. Computers would be nonexistent. Everything would be mechanical.

OTL Trek was highly predictive, and it was able to be predictive because the 60's marked the beginning of the paradigms of the modern world. 50's Trek would have trouble doing the same since mid-century was really the end of old paradigms.

Honestly, I think the show would kind of suck. :)

Edit: No color TV either, so no bright uniform colors, but maybe more interesting patterning.
 
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A 50's Trek would have less of the psychological angle so popular in 50's sf, I think (which was augmented by the hippie sensibilities of the latter 60's). The aliens would all be humanoid (they did a lot of that OTL anyway, to save money and to "explore the human condition," but even 50's print sf had trouble with real aliens and out-of-solar-system stories. Earlier stuff was even more geo-centric and humano-centric)

I'm not quite sure. This is, after all, the era of the "man-in-rubber-suit" monster movies, so while most episodes would have humanoid or mostly humanoid aliens, I could imagine each season having a half dozen or so "monster of the week" episodes, similar to "Arena" or "Devil in the Dark" from Star Trek TOS.
 
I think that there'd actually be much more opportunity to reuse stock footage. Footage from the movie could certainly be recycled. I assume that the costumes and sets would be, especially if they re-used the actors.

Remember that this was an era before Beta, VHS, Youtube, Cable or the 500 channel universe. Movies were only shown in theatres, and after the first run, would tend to have fairly modest circulation. Television reruns were only beginning. So potentially, you could use stock footage from Lost World or contemporary or prior movies and get away with it. Hell, the 1930's Flash Gordon used stock footage stolen from Stroheim movies or wildlife documentaries.

And yes, it probably wouldn't be very good by our standards. But Forbidden World was an 'adult' sci fi movie at its time, and its entirely possible that a television series version of Forbidden World would still have gone for that adult demographic, as opposed to children's shows like Tom Corbett, Rocky Jones or Space Patrol.

Another problem with Tom Corbett and Rocky Jones, was low budgets, live performance and often the fact that these shows aired as serials, sometimes several times a week, so there was an immense amount of padding.

At the very least, I think we could expect stories roughly comparable to the sci fi movies and westerns of that time.
 
Which is pretty bleak. I read the movie reviews in my old Galaxy/Astounding/F&SF mags, and they just sound wretched.

Not necessarily. I have a soft spot for a lot of these movies. And several of them are still classics.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
This Island Earth?
The Thing From Another World?
Forbidden Planet of Course.
War of the Worlds
The Day the Earth Stood Still
When Worlds Collide
Destination Moon
It: Terror From Beyond Space
It Came From Outer Space
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Donovan's Brain
Godzilla
Them
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Four D Man

Things like Queen of Outer Space were a self parody from the start, as was Cat Women of the Moon. There was a lot of low budget nonsense, like Angry Red Planet. But there was some quite respectable stuff.

I mean, come on, we're the generation of Star Wars Episodes I through 3. We got no right to diss anyone.
 
I don't get it. This is such a fantastic idea for a timeline, all sorts of retro sci fi inspiration. I'm saddened that there's so little interest.

Norton, you should give this a go.
 
I don't get it. This is such a fantastic idea for a timeline, all sorts of retro sci fi inspiration. I'm saddened that there's so little interest.

Norton, you should give this a go.

Pop culture what-ifs don't get a lot of attention here, sadly. :(
 
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