Questor Tapes and other old pilots

[Noname Given]

I was absolutely dazzled by the 1971 television movie Earth II - which was originally produced as the pilot for a series entitled The Olympians - when I first saw it as a little kid circa 1977. The titular space station was actually based on a real-world proposal by the late, great astronautical engineer Krafft Ehricke, who along with Buckminster Fuller also served as the film's technical advisor.

TGT

Yep - I loved Earth II when I saw it back in the day; and they were trying very hard to be technically accurate with regard to life on a near Earth orbit space station. Hell, their shuttle model was based of the original lifting body design for what would become the shuttle too. It would have made a good series (IMO).

 

[RAMA]

I kind of liked The Bakery:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136605/

I also would love to see the Questor Tapes updated.

 

[AJBryant]

I think I read the novelization first, because I remember liking it better than the actual TV movie. It had some potential, sure, but that potential was borrowed from Sherlock Holmes, '70s horror like The Exorcist, and (for the sexual undertones) possibly Frank Lauria's Dr Owen Orient novels. It would have taken a better writer than Gene Roddenberry to make it more than the sum of its parts.

Not a problem. It wasn't Roddenberry alone who made Trek great. Gene Coon, Bob Justman, DC Fontana, and lots of other people created things and elements that are all universally credited to the Rod these days -- but without them, it would have been another "meh" show.

Who knows what others might have contributed to a Spectre series? It might have developed an entire mythos à la "Buffy" -- with an underground group of clerics and laymen fighting the forces of darkness.


T.