Earth II (TV series pilot)

Earth II was a 1971 pilot, aired November 28, for a television series about a colony established in orbit around the Earth. It starred Gary Lockwood, Anthony Franciosa, Lew Ayres and Mariette Hartley.

tory outline

Initially, three men were launched from Cape Kennedy as what appeared to be a typical Apollo launch; a "Red Chinese" agent was killed in the water nearby before he could sabotage the rocket launch.

The president (Lew Ayres) of the United States announced that the three men and their ship would be the nucleus of a new nation, and asked Americans to turn their lights on that night to show if they supported the project. The astronauts took images as they crossed the nation on an orbit, and the information was computer processed to show whether the light level indicated major support. The project was supported by a majority.

The movie skips ahead several years to show a shuttle approaching the station, which is now a huge, rotating city known as Earth II, with technology at its disposal that makes it fairly easy to maneuver around the city and supply it. There is a family aboard the shuttle, the Kargers (Frank, Lisa and Matt), who are new immigrants to the colony of many national origins.

Shortly after arrival, Earth II's administrators, including David Seville ("Lockwood"), become aware of a warhead in orbit that comes close to Earth II, into its "national space", every few hours. The warhead was launched by the People's Republic of China, known in the movie as "Red China". They request through the UN (of which Earth II is a member nation) a meeting with PRC representatives, who refuse to remove the weapon and threaten to detonate it if it is tampered with.

Earth II has a direct democracy process known as a "D&D" - debate and decision. The newly arrived Frank Karger ("Franciosa") initiates a D&D to decide on dealing with the warhead directly. After some of the citizens, including Russian emigre Ilyana Kovalefskii (Inga Swenson) make their statements, the vote is to act. Two men, including her husband Anton (Edward Bell) go out in a tug to deactivate the warhead, but while Anton Kovalefskii is cutting the wires, he is electrocuted when the Chinese activate the weapon. It does not explode because he cut other wires. The tug operator rescues the technician, secures the bomb and brings both back to Earth II. Ilyana is told that Anton could live in a disabled manner, or surgery could be attempted. She decides on the surgery.

Meanwhile, Lisa Karger ("Hartley") doesn't want the bomb aboard, and is alarmed at Frank's intent to initiate a D&D on Earth II becoming a nuclear power. When someone tells her one way to dispose of the bomb is to fire it at the sun, she blows the hatch cover on the holding bay, waits for the sun to be in the view, and launches the bomb at it. The bomb falls toward the Earth and will detonate over the Great Lakes region.

The tug operator goes out and fetches it, chasing it as the shell of the warhead erodes away. The bomb is brought back and put into the same holding bay, and station rotation is slowed as much as possible while a crew works to permanently deactivate the bomb. The city is still rotating enough to bring the sun into view and the temperature is rising, threatening to melt safeties and detonate the bomb, so a tug goes out and puts its nose against one of the main struts of the city and fires its engines to stop rotation altogether.

The disarming is completed, the rotation of the city is restarted, Karger drops his idea, and the bomb is launched toward the sun.

Notes

We see in the movie that even toy guns are prohibited on the station, and that the communications port in an apartment is used for both the television set and the telephone - Frank has to mute the TV to answer the phone right next to the TV set. The operating room in the hospital has support staff standing on the ceiling to aid the doctors.

Very shortly after this American-produced movie was produced, and 34 days before it was broadcast, the United Nations, with a membership in which the majority of nations now recognized Communist China, voted October 25 to expel the representatives of the Taiwan-based Republic of China (an original member since 1945) and admit the Beijing-based representatives of the People's Republic of China (founded 1949) in its place. Thus, the movie was outdated when it was broadcast. Eight years later, the United States itself shifted recognition to Communist China while maintaining unofficial relations with Nationalist China.

In a 1998 interview with Sci-Fi Channel Magazine promoting the 30th Anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gary Lockwood stated that he hated working on the Earth II production, due to its complexity.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067039/ IMDB entry on Earth II]