Planet of the Apes (1968 original) question

[ManOnTheWave]

^^ Could be. Or it could just be set earlier in the timeline.

Possible.

I place Battle in the post Escape timeline as well. I mention Escape because that is where the timelines seem to diverge.

I agree.

However, sometimes, and I may be misremembering it, it strikes me that Taylor was wrong when he thought he was off course and off timeline in the first movie. So then there would be no actual need for home base to send another craft on a "rescue mission" (other than the fact that movie makers needed to replace Heston for much of the movie). Not really a timeline divergence so much as a retcon, but, whatever. They were fun movies.

 

[Christopher]

So would the TV series fall into the post Escape timeline or the pre Planet timeline? I'm thinking post Escape.

It's vanishingly rare to find a TV-series adaptation of a movie that actually fits in the same unaltered continuity as the movie. The only clear example I can think of is the animated Godzilla: The Series, continuing from the Devlin/Emmerich film. Standard practice is make whatever changes are necessary to allow the series to work, and at most just pretend to be basically in continuity with the movie. I don't think the PotA series was even trying to do that much, though. I saw it more as a loose retelling (or "reboot" in modern parlance) of the original PotA, but reworked to fit the needs of a weekly TV series with a limited budget: have two astronaut leads instead of one so they could talk to each other, have the humans speak so the plots could be built mostly around human guest stars and the makeup costs wouldn't be as high, change the names of the regular characters so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to the films' writers, etc. It was never intended to fit neatly into the films' continuity, insofar as they can be said to have one. It was meant to be a different take on the same general idea, a version better suited to weekly television. Maybe it can be shoehorned into some interpretation of the films' continuity if you gloss over a few things, but it wasn't created with that intent.

 

[Gothowitz]

So would the TV series fall into the post Escape timeline or the pre Planet timeline? I'm thinking post Escape.

It's vanishingly rare to find a TV-series adaptation of a movie that actually fits in the same unaltered continuity as the movie.

And then there is the animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes with its own version of Brent... if you consider such things.

I vote parallel universe theory at work for all of them.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

I say the TV series is post Battle because the humans depicted speak, wear clothes, and perform the function of a slave class. The humans in Planet are just animals serving no function in ape society other that as lab rats, sport animals, and pests. Also, while Dr. Zaius (or a verison of him) is present, the series takes place on the west coast, while the film was obviously set in New York. Galen is mentioned in the film, but not seen; Yet, a version of Galen is the Roddy McDowell character in the TV series with no mention being made of Cornelius and Zira. I think its own timeline the TV series supplants the events of the first two films.

Actually, Dr. Galen is seen in the first film, he is played by actor Wright King (here is the cast lising on imdb.com). He repairs Taylor's throat injury while complaining to Zira about the working conditions.

About the tv series timeline, it may be March 21, 3085 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(TV_series) website, which is 893 years (3978 - 3085 = 893) before Taylor's ship crashes.

The series begins with the crash of an Earth spaceship that encountered a time warp while approaching Alpha Centauri on August 19, 1980. The date on the ship's chronometer is given as March 21, 3085 but we are told that it could have simply stopped at that point whilst the ship was still travelling. It could therefore be many thousands of years into the future.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[ManOnTheWave]

I must have completely forgotten the actor. All Chimpanzees look alike to me.

 

[Brikar99]

All Chimpanzees look alike to me.

I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpanzee.

 

[Stevil2001]

Rich Handley's Timeline of the Planet of the Apes is very nice for trying to sort some of this out: http://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Planet-Apes-Definitive-Chronology/dp/061525392X/

It even includes the "Apeslayer" comics where Marvel UK rewrote some of the dialogue of Killraven!

 

[Worf2DS9]

All Chimpanzees look alike to me.

I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpanzee.

Ha-ha, classic Simpsons. Oh, Phil Hartman, how we miss you so.

 

[Trekker4747]

I must have completely forgotten the actor. All Chimpanzees look alike to me.

You anti-simian bastard!

 

[RJDiogenes]

About the tv series timeline, it may be March 21, 3085 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(TV_series) website, which is 893 years (3978 - 3085 = 893) before Taylor's ship crashes.

I looked at the first episode yesterday. If the series fits into the movie continuity, it would have to take place in Taylor's original timeline. They find a book with a picture of a futuristic New York in 2585 that is still controlled by Humans. The apes do talk about other "astronauts" that appeared ten years ago and were killed, but there's nothing to indicate that they are talking about Taylor and the others.

The year that the astronauts come from is 1980-- I forget how that compares to the original movie, and I haven't had time to check, but the technology they use is far more advanced than Taylor's. The ship design is similar, but the vehicle is much smaller, with room only for the three occupants and no hibernation technology. Also, from the dialogue, two of the guys had wives and kids and the third clearly expected to return to his harem-- so they clearly had FTL. They gave no indication of why they were heading to Alpha Centauri, but it was not a one-way trip.

So I don't see why it couldn't fit into the chronology as a prequel to the original movie, before the timeline changes wrought by Cornelius and Zira.

 

[MANT!]

Folks..it's all in the following..

http://www.goingfaster.com/icarus/fieldmanual.html

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If the series fits into the movie continuity, it would have to take place in Taylor's original timeline. They find a book with a picture of a futuristic New York in 2585 that is still controlled by Humans.

2585? I always got the impression that the ape/human holocaust was supposed to happen soon after the Icarus left.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Folks..it's all in the following..

http://www.goingfaster.com/icarus/fieldmanual.html

If the series fits into the movie continuity, it would have to take place in Taylor's original timeline. They find a book with a picture of a futuristic New York in 2585 that is still controlled by Humans.

2585? I always got the impression that the ape/human holocaust was supposed to happen soon after the Icarus left.

I didn't think so, but I can't find anything authoritative on that. All the posted timelines seem to be of the events following Cornelius and Zira's arrival in the past. Maybe somebody else knows something more.

 

[Stevil2001]

Folks..it's all in the following..

http://www.goingfaster.com/icarus/fieldmanual.html

Nice!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

2585? I always got the impression that the ape/human holocaust was supposed to happen soon after the Icarus left.

I didn't think so, but I can't find anything authoritative on that. All the posted timelines seem to be of the events following Cornelius and Zira's arrival in the past. Maybe somebody else knows something more.

It's just that I can't see a future society of 2585 wiping itself out like that. Weapons technology would likely advance to the point where it would be much more precise and not given to doomsday scenarios.

Also: If human civilization lasted that long and the apes were still that pissed off at it, why didn't they simply leave Earth and colonize their own planet? I'm sure spaceflight and colonization technology must have existed that far into the future. Indeed, perhaps there *are* colonies - of humans, maybe - in that timeline? Humans who saw what was about to happen and left Earth to save their lives?

 

[RJDiogenes]

It's very possible that there are extraterrestrial colonies of both apes and humans, separately and together. If the nuclear holocaust didn't happen for five hundred years, then there could be a whole unaccounted era where apes and humans lived in relative peace-- it would also give plenty of time for apes to be bred for brains without Caesar's genes to help them. As for the specifics of a nuclear war after 2585, it would be pretty easy to come up with a scenario.

 

[xortex]

It was a one way trip. As Heston said 'You knew that when you signed aboard'. They were going to return to the future. Or they were going to be stranded in the Andromeda galaxy which is where they thought they were. But their trip was circular into a revolving door of time.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

It was a one way trip. As Heston said 'You knew that when you signed aboard'. They were going to return to the future. Or they were going to be stranded in the Andromeda galaxy which is where they thought they were. But their trip was circular into a revolving door of time.

Taylor believed they were about 320 light years away from Earth some where in the Constellation Orion, so they were still well within our Milky Way Galaxy, not in the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is approximately 2.5 million light years from Earth.
Here is a wiki link about the Andromeda Galaxy.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[xortex]

Didn't one of them refer to the sun by another name - sirix, I believe. An astrophysics student from HS told me that was a sun in Andromeda.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Perhaps it was a sun the Andromeda constellation rather than the Galaxy.