Overview
Earth sends its first manned probe to Mars in 1999, and a jealous Martian murders the two astronauts when his wife has erotic dreams of meeting them. Members of a subsequent expedition are hypnotized into believing that they have landed in the childhood community of their leader and have been reunited with deceased family and friends, and they are poisoned by the Martians. Col. John Wilder leads a third expedition and learns that a chicken pox virus brought to Mars by the first two expeditions has almost eradicated the Martian population. A member of Wilder's team becomes obsessed with protecting Mars from Earthman and murders some of the others in Wilder's party, before Wilder kills him. Colonists arrive on Mars to settle, among them priests seeking God, and a lone Martian masquerades as the most desired persons of various settlers. Global war on Earth reduces man's natal planet to radioactive waste, and most of the settlers returned there prior to the holocaust. Wilder struggles to assemble the remaining humans on Mars, who cope with their loneliness in different ways and will not leave their piece of Mars, before Wilder meets a Martian of past or future who tells him the secret of simple Martian life and convinces him to abandon the Earth lifestyle.
| Original Air Dates: | — |
|---|---|
| Country: | US |
| Genre: | Drama, Sci-Fi, Mystery |
| Network: | NBC |
| Watched by: | 178 1 004 019 |
| Total running time: | 4 hours 54 minutes |
| Episode duration: | |
| Episodes: | 3 |
It's better to watch after reading it. Some moments were not included in the miniseries.
The special effects for 1980 are excellent. But this is not the main thing in the film adaptation. The semantic load of the novel is preserved.
Well, I have two opinions on this series.
1. The series is very cool. I couldn't take my eyes off what was happening.
The special effects (I didn't notice them at all, it seems), but I liked the landscape and the filming location, it's beautifully done, although it's clear that this is the Earth.
2. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the concepts of space and Mars were poorly understood at that time, and therefore it became strange for me:
a) A spaceship flew to Mars too quickly, literally within a few hours, although in real life there is much more time to spend there.
b) The absence of a spacesuit.
This seemed to me the stupidest problem, of course, I took into account that the series was from 1980, but still this element perfectly complemented everything that was happening.
At the beginning of part 1, I really enjoyed the conversation with the Martian about the absence of life on planet Earth, and hypotheses about why this is so.
In general, the series was shot well for those times, excellent acting, well—developed plot, specifics, rather sound - perfectly convey to the audience what is happening, complementing the picture.