If you asked people what their favorite space travel movie is, you’d probably get a lot of “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” answers, though some might even say “E.T.”
For me, someone as old as the galaxy, my favorite space flick will forever be “Forbidden Planet.” The movie is not only heavy with psychedelics courtesy of Sigmund Freud — with his “monsters from the ID” — but also predates humanoid robots by half a century with Robby the Robot. The film’s central villain (who’s not really that much of a fiend) is Dr. Morbius, played memorably by Walter Pidgeon.
The 1956 movie when it debuted seemed light-years away from actual space travel, but in truth, it was only another dozen years before the U.S. would send men to the moon. Now, 24 years since the first human set foot on the moon, the Artemis mission is sending a crew into space to circle the moon in advance of establishing a base there.
Ridiculous how we could develop moon-journey capability in just a dozen years, and it’s now taken us half a century to return to that captivating planet looming above Earth night after night.
This time, however, photography is way advanced from those days of the Vietnamese war. With digital technology, the Artemis capsule is equiped with 17 exterior cameras to take stunning photographs, one of which is featured at the top — along with the tagline from the TV series “Star Trek” (later turned into several feature-length movies).
Amazing how on land, there is now only turmoil, but up there in space is peace, beauty and eternal serenity.
If we establish a moon base, will the Chinese or Russians be far behind? Will there eventually be war on the moon? Let’s not bring our strife and pettiness to another sphere, please.
VIEW TRAILER FOR ‘FORBIDDEN PLANET’
POSTSCRIPT: You can watch “Forbidden Planet” on YouTube, but a fee applies, I believe.
