Movie Clip: Has he spoken? Disjointedly. It's impossible to make out the meaning. Arrange for anything he says to be recorded. Lesson number one. Never distrust a computer. Matthew: Hello and welcome once again to the IMMP, the Intermillennium Media Project podcast. My name is Matthew Porter. Ian: And I'm Ian Porter. Matthew: I'm his dad. He's my son. Jim: Don't forget about me. I'm his brother and he's my nephew. Matthew: Wait a minute. Who's this? Ian: Hey. Jim: Hello there. Matthew: Hey, Jim. We have a special guest on, this week's podcast. My brother, Jim. Ian: Hi, Uncle Jim. Jim: Hi. Great to be here. Long time listener. First time caller. Ian: Haha. Matthew: It is great to have you on the podcast, Jim, because you have been mentioned so many times. Because you were so influential in my media diet when I was a kid. Jim: Ian, I'm sorry. Ian: Thank you. But also, it's wonderful. There's so many things where Dad would bring it up, and it always started with, So, your Uncle Jim showed me this thing, and then I dived into it, and so, you were always , the origin point, and kind of the man on the inside that had the intel on all these cool, wild things my Dad would show me. Jim: I was kind of like the little spark, but he was the high explosive that just, you know, turned that into something huge. Ian: Ah, yes. Matthew: Yeah. Before I was discovering things on my own, most of what I saw and much of what I've shown you is stuff that I discovered either because Jim thought it was cool or your Uncle Paul or Tom or Aunt Mary. And, that's what got me interested in so many movies and books and TV shows. When I was that young. And this one in particular, the movie we're going to be talking about today. My memory of this is watching it with Jim on the million dollar movie on W O R in New York on Saturday nights. Oh goodness. Jim: Wonderful show. . Matthew: So many great movies. I think that's the first time I saw Colossus, The Forbin Project which we've talked about before. Jim: Yes. We saw that one together I think. Matthew: And I remember you trying to explain to me what was going on in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun and me not getting it because I was so young Jim: The 13-year-old trying to explain it to an 8-year-old. Yeah. . Matthew: Right. But I kept coming back to this movie and we're gonna be talking well. Well, what movie we're talking about is actually a little bit different, depending on where you are listening to this podcast. Because in most of the world, this was released as Doppelganger. But in the United States, it was released as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Ian: Yeah. Oh, goodness, the American name is so much better. Matthew: Is it? You think so? Ian: Yeah, the international name gives so much away. Usually it's the other way around, like the second name, the international one, they know what they've got. They can be a little more clever with it. But this one, ah, goodness. Yeah, it ruins it. Matthew: And that's not always the case. I mean, for we talked about the road warrior and most of the world that was Mad Max 2, which is a very functional title, but not very evocative compared to the road warrior. Ian: Yeah, but I mean, that would be like saying Mad Max 3's title internationally is a plane can move faster than a train. It gives away a lot of the science. Stuff that happens on later instead of being about what it's actually like getting you hyped for the seeing the story itself. Matthew: That's a good point. There is a evoking too much in a title. Yeah. Jim: And we give away the surprise, you know? Matthew: And the other important point about this movie is that this is by Jerry and Sylvia Anderson. Ian: I was so hyped when I saw that show up. Jim: This is Anderson written all over it. Ian: Written all over it, but it's finely detailed on the entire thing, and you know it's full of small explosives. Because it's the Andersons. Of course. That's what they do. I love it. Matthew: It's like they hate models. They have to blow them up. And we've talked about the Andersons before in their, of course, they're one of their most famous things is Thunderbirds, but also UFO and space 1999. So, they are a fixture here on the IMMP. So I'm glad we finally got to this movie. Ian: Oh my goodness, the metaphor between an Anderson project and a Tibetan sand mandala as a thing that takes so much time and a labor of love but is intentionally destroyed at the end as part of the point of it is actually vivid. Matthew: Action sci fi as a spiritual practice. I like it. Jim: The ephemeral nature of sci fi or something Ian: like that. Oh, absolutely. Matthew: Now I'm thinking they should ceremonially destroy Disneyland's Tomorrowland every 10 years, which would make it easier to keep pace. Ian: Oh, absolutely. That would actually fix a lot of stuff. But, but it's interesting to see the Andersons do a much more, a much more live action, dramatic space program story. It's like, this is, this is pre UFO, isn't it? Or is this post? This is pre UFO. Okay. Jim: It was one or two years pre UFO, and apparently, uh, they used a lot of the sets and props. Ian: Thought I recognized some of those. Jim: Along with some of the actors. Ian: Ah, yeah. Matthew: And also the composer, the music by Barry Gray. He's their, their longtime collaborator, and there's so many music cues in this movie that seem like they're right out of Space 1999 and UFO, because Gray has such a distinctive way of heightening tension or drama. Ian: Mm. Ah, that. The music is excellent. Jim: Definitely very 60s music, but it was excellent music. Ian: Very 60s! And I would, I would almost want to call this more sci fi thriller than sci fi action in some ways. Because I will say this one felt a lot more, just cinematography wise, it felt more like something out of the Twilight Zone. It felt more like it was leaning on that, that bold drama element. It reminded me in the weirdest ways at times of The Shining. The Shining. Matthew: Of The Shining. Tell me more about that. Ian: With some of its like, cuts and the way it would frame its shots. Matthew: Huh. Ian: It was always ratcheting up the tension. So the camera work and the audio work were like, layering on top of each other just to make sure scenes were always tense. Matthew: Yeah, I see what you mean. I, I had not made that connection, but I can see that. Well, this is definitely a movie where, you mentioned the Twilight Zone. The amount of story in this movie probably would have made a Twilight Zone episode. I don't know that there was enough story for a full feature film, but Anderson throws in so many other things. that we get a feature length movie out of it. Ian: All the things. Jim: True. Ian: We got to kind of start with where this starts, which is the, the dramatic, also very Colossus the Forbidden Project y, political and negotiation nature of trying to do large scale. Science projects. Matthew: Yes, and it starts at the very beginning with this really interesting sci fi spy scene. Ian: Yes! Matthew: Someone's stealing secret plans, and that's one of the things I remember so well. And I was wondering, I remember this scene, how does it fit into the movie? Well, the answer is barely. It fits into the movie, but it is still such a cool scene. Ian: You ever seen a movie switch channels after it's opening credits? Matthew: I kind of have the impression that the Andersons had all these ideas and this was their chance to put them into a feature film which maybe make more films later, but they threw everything they possibly could into this movie, including this really clever way of stealing secret plans, involving a camera hidden in a false eye. So, it wouldn't be scanned and detected by all of the body scanners that this person had to go through to get into the special chamber with the secret plans he wanted to steal. Jim: I always was wondering, did they, whatever agency this was he worked for, did they find a spy who was missing an eyeball or did they get somebody to volunteer and I replaced with a camera? That is dedication to duty, if you ask me. Ian: Yeah, Matthew: the demeanor of the spy we saw like this, I always assumed it was the latter, that, you know, hey, this is going to help me get the job done, I'll do it. Jim: Yeah. He's that kind of guy. Ian: Yeah. When they told me this, this, uh, job included dental and vision, I didn't expect this. Ha ha ha Matthew: ha ha ha. Ian: Ugh. Matthew: And of course, this is 1969, so it's not like he's got a, a memory card and a, uh, sensor in there. He's got a roll of microfilm. Inside the eye. And then we have this long sequence where he's using his specialized development and projection equipment to actually see what it was he recorded. Jim: He's got a darkroom for his eyeball, Ian: yeah. And he plugs the eyeball into a slide projector. Which is just the, the most sci fi, but also it's the late 60s, early 70s thing ever to be put to film. Yes. I will say it's very, very beneficial that he also captured the entire opening credits for all of the actors. Yes, that's right. Because that's when they start showing it. It's like, ah, All of my, all of my data is covered up with, with the names of, Roy Thinnes and Ian Hendry and Patrick Weimark and everything. Matthew: Yeah. Is that being super imposed by the lens in his eye? That's exactly Jim: like a weird head up display kind of thing. Ian: Yeah. Oh goodness. That's the other thing. It's like, it's a fake eyeball. So he's got a pivot and it's where he's looking, but I mean, you've got a spy with no depth perception. Matthew: Yeah, because it's not like he could see out of that, given the fact that it was just photographic film. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: And it's interesting to see what was predicted in film or television and what wasn't, because this is supposed to take place, I think it's 2069. It was a hundred years ago. Jim: Yeah, They mentioned that. Okay, 2069. Matthew: Yeah, I think there was some piece of, uh, News or something in the background that indicated that or else I read it elsewhere, so there's all this futurism and yet they're still taking pictures with film when they need to miniaturize something. Jim: You know, that's something I noticed. You look at all the high tech stuff. Everything you see is 1960s technology. Yes. Except for the heart monitor wristwatches. Matthew: Right. Isn't that fascinating? Jim: That's the only thing that I'd say didn't exist in the 1960s. You had the cool cars and, the other decorative elements and you had the automatically opening doors, which I think I've seen on TV someplace in the past. But, uh, but other than that, it's all, you know, 1960s computers and punch cards and paper tape. And, uh, Matthew: yeah. And thanks to, Apple Watches, we finally caught up with the heart monitors. Yeah. But, There's something about Jerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson's futurism that it's as if they had a vision of the 70s and 80s and 90s and the 21st century in which what happened in the real world between 1963 and 1970 didn't happen. Because it seems to me as if it's a future where just the Kennedy era and the Rat Pack era and that late 50s early 60s Aesthetic and point of view and values just got more so and more futuristic Jim: Hmm, Ian: It's almost more of a social sci fi in that sense the technology stays the same but the the people using it are Advanced in their scope of intent and their thoughts and that is for both the good and the bad It means that All of the altruistic and scientific advancement elements and even the, the social inclusion elements are a little higher when they're shown. And all of the, the fear and the scare and the us versus them aspects are also heightened. Everything of the social element is advanced, but the technology is the same, just utilized. To its extreme. Matthew: It feels like if, if Austin Powers were to wake up in Jerry Anderson's future, he would just look around and say, this is cool, baby, where's the party? He would be very much at home. Ian: Hmm. Jim: Good point. Yeah. Matthew: So we've got this, this spy stealing secret plans or secret data. And then we learn what the data was about in this big meeting of the European Space Exploration Committee. Which is based in Portugal, because it has some really, photogenic scenes they could use. But it's this giant video conference with representatives of all the Eurosec nations discussing the results of the latest space probe and what they need to do about it. Ian: And The interesting thing about the fact that, you know, they're sending out these probes, but the giant fight is whether or not the information they've got requires them to now send a crew mission or not. Because There's division internally as to how much they should share and how much they need to check first. Matthew: And what they have discovered is a new planet in our solar system. And it's been unknown until this time because it is on the exact opposite side of the Sun from Earth. In an identical orbit. And it was a, probe that was doing solar research and getting close to the Sun and, Orbiting it at close range that finally spotted this planet that was unknown and now they think we need to send people there because if we don't, somebody else will and they're never clear about who the bad guys geopolitically are. They don't mention the Soviet Union or the like, do they? No, but there Ian: is, there's an other of someone. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: I will admit the point where cultural osmosis meant I kind of knew what was going to be coming for the rest of the film from this point forward. Yeah. But I don't know how well that was well known, and how well that was established in the cultural zeitgeist before this movie, and I can't think of who referenced this movie or its ideas or anything else in things I watched later as a kid. That led to me knowing it. Huh. But the concept of what that other, thing on the opposite side of the sun meant was just immediate to me, and I'm very confused as to why. Matthew: Ah. Is it because you knew what the international title was? Ian: I don't think so. Ah. Matthew: So we know that there is urgency to send this manned mission, because if they don't, the other side will first, They knew that there was a leak somewhere, that there was a spy in their midst, but that's like the only thing that this whole spy situation they set up at the very beginning, the only thing that it does is provide urgency for sending a man to mission. to this other planet. It doesn't really affect the plot otherwise. Jim: Right. And it convinces the Americans to contribute. Right. That was, that was really the, uh, the thing that got NASA to kick in the money. Music: Mm Matthew: hmm. Because now it's not just a, well, let's see what's out there. It's we better find out before someone else does. Ian: Yeah. It's like, hey, you want to join up? Because if we don't, they will get to it first, and who knows what that will give them. Jim: What they will do. Ian: Exactly. Matthew: And I don't know, did they think there was some special strategic significance of this planet on the other side of the sun? Jim: Trying to figure out what a military advantage or, yeah, who knows? Yeah. I mean, Ian: if they just think it's a large enough rock they could mine it. Matthew: Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Could be a lot of resources there, But they do have the impetus to mount this mission. They get a, a billion dollars in change from NASA and then the other Eurosec countries kick in money, but it's going to be a joint U. S. Eurosec mission. So it's going to be led by an American astronaut, Glenn ross. Ian: Glenn Ross. So it's Glenn Ross and the Eurosec astrophysicist John Cain. Matthew: And John Cain, Dr. Cain is not really keen on this because he likes to study space, but going there was not in his plans. Ian: So yeah, so we've got a kind of a hot headed, captain. And a scientist of one form who is not very keen on this being in space and the dangers therein they don't really have any logical, cool headed man to balance them out, but the two of them are gonna just go for it. Jim: Why not? Ian: Why not? Yeah. Matthew: I guess they sort of average okay, but there's no one to represent that average in between them. Ian: Exactly. Jim: I always wondered, the director of, Eurosec is saying we need a scientist on this. Why would you choose an astrophysicist to go explore a planet? Matthew: I, yeah, I wonder about that. You'd think a, a geophysicist. Mm-Hmm. or a biologist or, there's a lot of other disciplines between Ian: xeno, botanist, I don't know. . Matthew: Yeah, that's a good point. It's like, oh, yep, there's a planet. It's where we thought it was That's where my expertise leaves . Ian: I mean, I guess they could, they, they might be thinking, you'll get a better idea as to why we haven't noticed it until now. If you're standing on it and looking up and doing your surveys from there, you can see what's affecting it from that side, like, I guess, but it's like, Matthew: Hmm, I see there's the sun in the way. Ian: Exactly. Matthew: The same from this, the sun looks the same from here as it did from Earth. Yeah, it's the far side of the sun. It's true. Yeah. Ian: It just gets to the other side and looks back at the sun. It's like, Oh my goodness. They didn't render this side of it. It's just a missing texture. Oh my goodness. Jim: I didn't expect anybody to see it. Matthew: Why am I imagining, an interplanetary version of the jungle cruise? The backside of the sun. But one of the benefits of sending Dr. Cain, one of the benefits for the Andersons and for the director, Robert Parrish, is we get to have long, long sequences about space flight training. Yes. Where we see them in the centrifuges and the rocket sleds and the medical tests and, uh, all the things that Cain has to go through to get him from his desk into a space capsule. That's incredible. Yay! Which means more Gerry Anderson miniature work, which is cool. Ian: And they do a wonderful job setting up the miniature, showing it spinning around, then cutting to really close, shots of our, protagonist astronauts or protagonists, who are getting all of the, environment around them, lens blurred and looking very distressed, but holding on. They do a great job just with that quick cutting, keeping that momentum of, mm-Hmm. The visuals. And making it look. Rough and difficult and this is where I'm like they're constantly keeping that tension even with the training sequence this keeps that tension on point Matthew: and you're right about the editing and also the effects work the Composites where they're mixing Miniatures and live action and putting these together and some painting that is I think it's better in this movie Then I have seen it in any other Jerry Anderson stuff, maybe because they had the time, maybe because they had the budget, but some of it is spectacular, it stands up to some of the best CGI you would see today while having that more tactile, kind of feel to it. Then then CGI sometimes does. I love the visuals in this movie. Ian: Oh, yes. I will say they do a lot of um, like the concept of making something look futuristic making something in 1969 look like 2069 is add a smooth shell to it on some of its design stuff. It's like, Oh yeah, we just added a plastic shell. But that works. It Matthew: does. When we talk about alien, we were talking about the idea of the the the the The Dirty Baseball Cap School of Science Fiction. And this is very much the opposite of that. This is much more the, uh, 2001 A Space Odyssey, smooth, clean lines and bright colors. Ian: It also has an element though of a, like, A lot of stuff is, is shiny, but then they show wear and tear on it. There's that, here's the shiny new centrifuge, but they've done a little bit of brushing, they've done a little bit of scraping to make some of that, That sheen fall off it, they keep things looking a little used, and I'm going to say they, they balance it out. Matthew: True, they give you the impression that the, that Eurosec is a space agency that has been busy for a long time, and they even mention missions to Mars that Colonel Ross had been on before, from NASA, so yeah, space flight is not new, and this equipment has been used, it's just never been this big or this far a flight before. Jim: That's true, even in . The launch facility, some of the, like, the gantry, they see grease and rust on them, like, these things have been used. We've been launching spaceships for a while. Yeah. Ian: Yeah. So there's that interesting, like, they don't target 20, 69 as when these things are made. They target like 2040 and then give them 19 years of hard use. Matthew: Right. Jim: Yeah. Ian: And that. It balances out a lot better. Matthew: So that's one of the bits of human drama that we get, is the fact that Dr. Kane has to prepare to go to space and become an astronaut. But the other thing we get is Colonel Ross and his domestic life. And I'm wondering, Jim, is this all stuff that was cut out of the Saturday Night Channel 9 version that I remember? Or did it all just go completely over my head? Jim: I know the business with the I guess a domestic violence that was in there. Matthew: It was Jim: to make your head. I don't remember the argument about, why they're not having children. But again, that might have gone over my head if I was, you know, 10 or 12 years old when I saw it. Matthew: Right? Jim: Yeah. Ian: Yes, Matthew: this ongoing argument and tension between, colonel Ross and his wife Sharon about the fact that he apparently has not been able to perform since he's been going to space so much and she's saying that's the reason why they can't have children. Then he finds out that she's been taking birth control medication and not telling him and yeah, I didn't remember any of that and and then they get into a fight and he actually slaps her, which is awful to see. But, um. But it's interesting that that actually was in the TV version, and I just don't remember it Ian: neither they both come out of that entire The scene not looking, not proving themselves to not be good people in that sense, they are both focused on their own things and they are moving in opposite directions in many ways. Matthew: And it's interesting if you've made a movie today and a character did that, that would be the marker. This is a bad guy. Do not root for him. Do not trust him. If this is a just movie, things will not work out well for him. Here it's just a character trait. And that's kind of, kind of weird seeing it from, uh, the perspective of, of 2023. Jim: Yeah, he's still our hero. He just, he just happens to slap his wife around a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Matthew: It's like Jim: different. It's not something people today would, tolerate. Yep. Matthew: It's interesting how that, that idea of what movies depicted casually, in the past comes up so much on this podcast as we watch old movies. But this was one that was like, whoa, that was kind of a shock to see that. Ian: That was very, very shocking. They, they set that up though because it's, it's, it's used a lot later. But it did feel detached at first, after all the spy and the drama stuff. Matthew: Yeah, and there are times when, especially I think in the 60s and early 70s, when they've got an adventuring character, especially someone who's going off into space, and, you know, the absolute unknown, disconnecting from the world, like they have to set up ways in which this is a person who is alone and is free to go forward and not leave things behind. And him not having a good relationship with his wife maybe is, is a step towards that, but you could have just made him not married if that's, if that was the point of the character. Jim: Yeah, Dr. Kane didn't seem to be married. There's no talk of him leaving a wife behind or anything. Matthew: Right. And you see that in 2001, David Bowman is unlike Poole. David Bowman is the character who we never really hear about his family in. 2001. Jim: Hmm. Ian: If they are, if they really needed him to have connections back on earth, there were definitely other ways to do it. Right. But the thing they chose was to have this, this bad home situation. And yeah, there's just wondering why. Matthew: And they also build it as sort of a triangle where he gets closer to, Elisa Hartman played by Lonnie von Redel, who is a. Eurosec scientist, Jim: yeah, speaking of her, I don't know if I'm changing subjects here, but don't they, they introduce her when we went to the head of security. Matthew: Oh, she was the head of security. She was not one of their, their space scientists. Jim: Right. When, Colonel Ross is welcomed, they're introducing everybody. She's head of security, but I didn't see her do anything security related, even with the spy, story going on. It was the other fellow who took care of the spy. Matthew: Oh, that's right. Because we don't leave the spy behind just as the, the impetus for the fast mission. There's actually this little spy hunter subplot that we get again, not really connected to anything else, but they eventually track down eyeball guy. And yeah, she's head of security. She's involved in that. I forgot. Jim: But but why does a space agency happen to have spy hunter assassins on staff? Have they been through this before? Matthew: Yeah. Ah, Ian: what was it this time, Greg? Ah, another fake eyeball. Ah, that's the seventh this month. Matthew: He's got a little trophy case of them Ian: on the wall. Jim: And skipping ahead a little bit, I mean, later on you see the interrogation room. Like, why does a space agency have a purpose built interrogation room? Ian: Oh, goodness, that, that room. Jim: And Ross knew what it was, so he's been there before? Matthew: Yeah, this is the interrogation room. Of course you have an interrogation room. Jim: Why not? Matthew: That's a great point. And in some ways it, reinforces the idea that we're seeing a space agency run with the geopolitical ideas of, say, the 1950s, where it's all about East versus West. Everything that we might possibly be developing in terms of technology or science is a potential security risk. So it doesn't matter what your field of research is. It is political and it involves the Cold War. Jim: And we have to be ready to take on whatever threats are there. Matthew: Right. But still, I mean, do they have to interrogate people under duress so frequently they can't just borrow someone else's interrogation room? Jim: We have to build a room with the lights and the spinning chairs and, you know, gotta do these things right, you know? Matthew: Some of that was very, very much the prisoner sort of vibe. Oh, Jim: yeah. Oh, Ian: the prisoner. I Jim: expected somebody to say, we want information. Ian: Oh, it, it, it has all of that, like, how do you get information if someone confused them enough that they tell you the truth? Matthew: Yeah. Ian: Oh, yeah. But, uh, yeah, we've, we've gone through our training, we're catching the spy, and he's got this, romantic entanglement. But, the mission has to go, and it's being moved up faster, because they're in this race with an unknown other group. Information is being leaked to the press, which puts pressure on people in every direction. It's really kind of like, Showing that they didn't have as much time as they hoped, but they're ready to go. Matthew: So they get prepared, and they launch, and it's a, a trip of three weeks to get from Earth to the planet over on the other side of the sun. And they're going to spend most of that in some kind of hibernation, so they've got these like implants in their arms that allow them to be connected to a, I think they call it a heart lung kidney machine to keep them alive during the journey. Ian: And they're in their spacecraft called the Phoenix. I'm sorry, why did you name your spacecraft after an animal that is known to burst into flame? That feels bad. Right. Just saying. Jim: Let's not jinx anything here, yeah. Ian: Exactly. Matthew: At least when they called the ship in Planet of the Apes the Icarus, that apparently was a nickname, not the official designation. Jim: Yeah. Stop me if I'm going, skipping ahead, but do we want to get into the, the technical engineering rabbit hole yet? Matthew: Oh, any, any time, please do. Okay. Jim: So, first of all, it's a three week mission to the far side of the sun. Yeah. I'm sorry for your listeners. I'm an engineer. I've worked in space programs for and I played way too much Kerbal Space Program There's no way you're getting to the far side of the Sun in three weeks unless you've got an Orion type nuclear pulse Fusion rocket you're not getting there. Matthew: Yeah, I mean by definition at the Earth's orbital speed it takes six months Jim: Yeah, so I admit I dug through a few things if you got yourself a heavy duty nuclear engines, by the way the Phoenix does have Rolls Royce nuclear engines. Matthew: Oh, time. I love that detail. Rolls Royce making aircraft engines and things. It makes so much sense. Oh, goodness. Jim: Yeah. At the time Rolls Royce made the reactors for British nuclear submarines as well. Matthew: Oh, I didn't know that. Cool. It Jim: makes some sense. So that was product placement for Rolls Royce. Figured it was a little added goody there. But even if you had the best kind of nuclear engine that we can think of right now, you're talking nine to ten months minimum to get a ship out there. Ian: Oh, wow. Jim: I don't know, I expect to do it in three weeks. Matthew: Yeah, that's pretty tough. Jim: And look at the size of the ship. You can see the Phoenix look pretty beefy and chunky on those four engines, but most of the internal volume is taken up by the landing craft. Where's the fuel? Matthew: I was wondering about that because even if you've got nuclear power, you need reactor mass. Jim: You need propellant. Matthew: Yeah. Jim: And the fact that, When they come back, the, uh, what's the name? Webb, the director says, why did you turn around? I mean, a spaceship can't do a bootlegger turn. Just Matthew: grab that e brake, do a little drifting, Jim: handbrake, spin the wheel to the left. And Ian: You just see the sun come up. Once it passes one of your mirrors, you Deja vu, I've just been in this space before. We're just. You slide your way around the entire of the, uh, the solar body. Jim: Well, we did see that in Spaceballs. They did, they did a bootleg turn in that one. That's true. Ian: That's space, come Jim: on. Ian: Oh, that's how they got there in three weeks. They were going plaid. Ah, yes. Jim: So just the idea of a three week mission to the far side of the sun. And you'd think that we'd be tracking on using radar or something that we could tell where they are and where they're going. And, you know, if they turned around, we would have known about it before they got home. Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. You would think so. It's not like an ocean voyage where you just watch them set sail. And when they're, once they get to the horizon, they're on their own. Jim: They're on their own. Yeah. Ian: Yeah. Jim: But I guess the other thing I was wondering about for a three week mission, is it really worth putting people in hibernation for three weeks? Matthew: I guess. I wonder about that Jim: if food is that tight. I don't know, but it made for good. Ian: They need the space. They need the space for the fuel instead of, Jim: I guess. Matthew: No, we can't have that many ham sandwiches in here. Yeah. Tang takes up space guys. Ian: Flavor space. And their rocket has a second section. So the Phoenix opens up and it has the dove craft inside it. Matthew: Right. And that's most of the volume. Ian: Yeah, Matthew: yeah, and we we get the longest once they they get where they're going and they go through their sleep and they wake up They we have the longest scene of them moving through zero gravity to get to the hatch to get into the landing craft Ian: Oh my goodness Matthew: They were really really proud of their their special effects in their their zero gravity effects Jim: Were Matthew: they truing to evoke, Jim: 2001 Space Odyssey kind of, you know, slow motion floating through space Matthew: I guess, and they did a pretty good job of it. We just didn't need to watch quite so much of it. Ian: Yeah, it did, remind me somewhat of the Apollo 13 film with its cramped view sometimes and showing you everything. Yeah, they're kind of all pulling from the same visual language of, Of moving around in space for the point of something else I will say the heart lung kidney things and showing them attaching and detaching from this is weirdly like cyberpunk in some ways with it's almost slight bit of body horror with these plugs set into their arms that they're plugging into the machine and then shutting off and then kind of falling asleep. Jim: That's right. You see the blood flowing through the tubes. Yeah, Ian: arms. Jim: Yeah. Ian: Yeah. Hyper dialysis going on. Matthew: There's a certain cyborg creepiness there. That's a good one. Ian: And between that and the replacement eyeball We've gotten this little bit of like the tech being integrated to the people a bit more. Matthew: Mm hmm. Jim: Yeah Matthew: David Cronenberg would have gotten behind a lot of the, the ideas in this movie. Ian: Yes, but they try to scan the planet and the signs for life are inconclusive. Matthew: Yeah, it's got oxygen atmosphere, it's a survivable habitat, but they don't really find any conclusive life signs. That's right. Ian: Which is interesting. So they go down with the dove, but it's damaged on its way, and they crash into a mountain range. Very dramatically, very Andersonian. Jim: And this is after they said, Oh, we found a good landing site. Matthew: What did the other landing sites look like? Jim: What's the rest of the planet? Matthew: This one has lots of jagged mountains and a thunderstorm. Ian: You could kind of do a funny thing with a re edit of this movie of, we found a good landing site and then just remove all of the worrisome we're crashing and just jump cut to the hit the mountain. Matthew: Yes. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: We spent so much research time on the heart, lung, kidney thing, we didn't really work on the landing gear quite as much as we should have. Ian: Ah, yeah. Honestly, this leads to one of what I thought was one of the best scenes in the entire film. Yeah. Which was, they are crawling out of their crashed ship, they are scared, and they see a figure coming over the hill at them, with this wild helmet and suit, and yells something at them, Glenn is scared, he's dragged Kane from the wreck of the dove, and this, this, Entity grabs Ross, brings him into this pod and then tells them I'm the rescuer here in Mongolia. And this moment where it just all goes from unknown, creepy scariness, we're on an alien planet into it's a guy in a suit. Saving your life. Jim: Speaking English. It looked like he was flying, but he was just on the cable winch from the helicopter or whatever. Matthew: Oh, and, and Colonel Ross's first instinct when he crashes and something approaches him is to pull out his gun. Ah, okay. You do. I mean, was this the plan? Oh, there's a whole planet of people we can kill. Let's go there first. Ian: Yeah. Jim: And everybody needs a gun strapped to their spacesuit. That's right. Ian: Absolutely no problems with an object that can throw a projectile at high velocity. When, when your entire mission involves putting yourself. Into the vacuum of space with only a thin, penetratable barrier between you and it. Matthew: Right. Ian: Yes. This isn't a danger. Yeah. Matthew: But fortunately for Ross and Kane, their, their rescuer just smacks the gun away and proceeds to rescue them anyway. Ian: Uh, yeah. Yeah, they're in danger. Mongolia? Matthew: Yeah. Hmm. And next thing we see, they are back at Eurosec. Yeah. Having no idea how they got there. Jim: And everybody's confused. Matthew: Yes. And Cain is unconscious. He was severely injured. But Ross is, is confused and everybody is treating him with grave suspicion. They Ian: are very mad because it looks like he turned back. Matthew: Right. Ian: How Matthew: else would Ian: he Matthew: be back at Eurosec? I don't know. But then we start to get weird little hints. Some of them Our visual cues that are in the background that they leave for us to notice, if we will. And then we start to have the characters notice them more and more. And how long it takes the characters to twig to this is, uh, seems a little unusual, but they've been through a lot, so maybe they weren't noticing the details. But it's mostly they notice it because things like writing and text are reversed. Mm Music: hmm. Matthew: And people in people in Portugal are driving on the wrong side of the road and, people's, suit jackets, they look the same as the suit jackets that we've seen, but the pockets are on the other side. Jim: Yes. Subtle little things, Ian: subtle little things. Let's just say it outright. We're dealing with a mirror earth. Matthew: Yes. Ian: Yes. The counter earth is a mirror. Exactly mirrored every way, and it's exactly mirrored so closely. Matthew: Right, it's not different. I mean, we've still got the same organizations. Eurosec is still Eurosec. People who didn't have beards don't suddenly have beards or vice versa. It's the same people doing the same things. It's just that, like, their writing is backwards, and the people who were left handed are right handed. Very odd. Ian: It does take way too long for some of our characters to figure this out, though. Because they do a medical examination of the two crashed pilots. And it tells them that all his organs are on the opposite side. Matthew: Well, they do explain later that, they had these results from these medical tests and assumed that they were wrong, that there was something wrong with the equipment, until they actually did a physical autopsy of Dr. Kane after he passed away from his injuries, and then it was conclusive it was being kept super secret, but clearly something weird was going on. Oh, and a lot of this is coming from, Jason Webb, who's the head of Eurosec played by Patrick Weimark, who is a great, he's not evil, but he is such a, an overbearing and focused high level bureaucrat. He's an interesting character. Ian: He's got that, definitely that like bureaucratic kind of attitude to it all in an on point way. I'm just amazed that they didn't catch on faster Both of the pilots at a plug set for the heart lung kidney machine in one of their arms. If you send a guy with a thing on his right arm and he shows back up with it on his left, that should be a fast to notice thing Jim: or just put a stethoscope on his chest and listen to his heart. Ian: Yeah, exactly. Right. That's all. Yeah. They're so reliant on the computers that they can brush all of this off as a technical glitch and not look. Jim: And he goes beyond that. The scene where, Ross's wife is driving him home, and he suddenly panics because people are driving on the wrong side of the road. Didn't he notice the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car? Matthew: Exactly! Yeah, there's more things he could have noticed. It sh There's so Ian: much that should have been quicker to see! Ha ha ha! Takes them so long! Matthew: And your point about the connections for the heart lung kidney machine. That's one of the few continuity errors that crept in here because the way they did the reversed text and the backwards costuming and all of that is they didn't make all of that. They just flopped the film. Ian: Mm hmm. Jim: Oh. Matthew: So they didn't have to take the expense of building. Two versions of the guy's office so that they were mirror images of each other or creating new wardrobe. They just flopped the film, but that meant that they didn't redo the connectors on the actors for the heart lung thing. Probably they shot them all in the same day. And it was, we see it on one hand, we see it on Ross's, uh, one hand, uh, on Earth, and we see it on the opposite hand in Counter Earth. Ian: Uh, Matthew: but I thought that was clever. When I first saw this, I thought, wow, they made all these suits with the pockets on the wrong side and all this. That must have taken a lot. Nope, Ian: no, just flip the film. That is brilliant way to do it. Just using the technical abilities to create this unreal environment in such a distinct way. And they did a lot with the tension and a lot of those other scenes, especially like. All of that training stuff, it showed us a lot of the place, it showed us all these offices and such. And that meant that when we saw it the opposite way, it had impact for us. The wrongness was established by giving us that baseline. Matthew: Oh, that's a good point. You've got to see enough of it to know that it has changed later. Ian: I'm not always a fan of what they put into those segments, but they put it in to be able to build up a familiarity that then they can break. Matthew: And this also gives Sharon Ross more to do as a character because she drives Glenn home eventually after he's made it through all of the interrogation and things. And he has kind of a A breakdown at home when he realizes he's looking in a mirror and he can read the labels on the bottles behind him and he starts running around the house and recognizing that everything is reversed. Everything's backwards and it seems to Sharon like he's going crazy. So she makes a call to Eurosec and they send some security and medical people out. Ian: I love that they just send him home that apparently a three week space mission an interrogation and a vehicle crash are all just an outpatient procedure for this group. Jim: Just go home. We'll see you in the morning. Yeah, exactly. Matthew: We'll do it all again tomorrow. Ian: We'll do it all again tomorrow. Yeah, they send the techs to. Come check on him and by check on him, we mean knock him out and bring him back. That was the most Thunderbirds moment of this Anderson project, was the weirdly slick cars coming up and the fist fight to take the guy back. Jim: And then when they do knock him out, they just, two or three of them just, carry him out like a sack of potatoes. They don't have a gurney or anything. They just. Matthew: Yeah, they carry him outside to put him on a stretcher that's sitting next to the car. Hello. Ian: Jen watched this movie with me, this time, and she actually voiced up. It's like, oh, the future doesn't have stretchers. Oh, there's one. Why didn't you bring it over? I'm like, thank you. Yes, Matthew: but it's backwards world. So the stretcher goes on top of the patient. Music: Yeah, Matthew: it's only it's only mirrored. I guess gravity is gravity. It's only mirrored in one across one axis, right? I guess Ian: there's actually another problem with that. I'm going to have to point out at the end. Oh, Jim: okay. Ian: It's a question I've got to kind of pose to the two of you about that, but yeah, we've proven that the world is reversed. And now that Ross is there, he's presenting that to the rest of Eurosec or, uh, Kessero you? I can't say it backwards. Matthew: Yeah, he kind of lays out his theory to Webb and Webb gets it because Webb has been puzzling over these secret medical results ever since the initial test and the autopsy of Kane. And yeah, he, he understands what Ross is explaining to him must be the case with the backwards world. And I didn't, I didn't turn around. I am, I've never met you before because I'm from a different earth. Ian: The little handshake moment after that is wonderful. Jim: Yes. Matthew: Yeah, that suddenly humanizes Webb. When we see that connection. Yeah. Music: And Matthew: now they're in it together. Music: And Ian: it's this perfect moment of they're like, yep, I've never met you. That makes sense. Hi. Yeah. And then they reach with the wrong hand for each other on the handshake in this little, like, we're still off sync. Yeah. Perfect moment. I will say, Roy Thinnes playing Colonel Glenn Ross doesn't have too much to do from the rest of this play in the movie other than be panicked, right? Yeah, his composure is nothing but declining across this movie Matthew: because they they realize there's and this is maybe one of you can explain this to me more because they decide that there's data on board Phoenix, which is still in orbit that they need to get. But what data are they looking to get and, and what do they need it for? Jim: That would be the proof that it's a, mirror world. That they can get to Phoenix and show that the writing is the right way and the electrical polarity is different and whatever else they were talking about. Matthew: Oh, I see. To show that, that phoenix, the phoenix up there in orbit came from a different planet. It's not Jim: the phoenix you sent, it's our phoenix, yes. Matthew: Okay. Ian: Because, because that's why they thought they'd turn around. Everything is mirrored. The other group sent another phoenix. They sent their own going around. So, there's this implication that everything that's happening here is happening is happening. On the opposite earth as well. Matthew: Yes. Right. A mirror of the same events and the same conversations. And they have this interesting bit of, cinematography where while Ross is explaining all of this in this theory to Webb, they mirror the image. So it's two Ross's facing each other, explaining things to two webs to show, yeah, this is happening in both places. Jim: And they did a lot with mirrors in the cinematography, if you noticed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ian: So much with mirrors. Jim: That, that scene just before the handshake and hello, haven't met you before when Ross comes into Webb's office and he, he walks in and I looked at him and said, wait a minute, his insignia is on the correct side for our world. What happened? And then you realize the scene is shot through a mirror. Matthew: Oh, right. Jim: So then, oh no, he's still on the, the other world. But very interestingly, a couple of scenes like that where things were shot through mirrors to kind of make you wonder which world we on. Matthew: That is interesting. I didn't notice some of those. Jim: And in fact, at the, at the very end of the last scene, I actually went back and rewatched a couple of times to try to figure out which world are we looking at? Ian: Yeah, they keep doing that. Jim: There was no, you didn't see any, any writing. There are no clocks or nothing on the walls. So it made you wonder, that last scene with, with Webb. Which web are we looking at? Matthew: Oh, it could have been either. It was probably the same thing happening in both. Ian: Exactly. Matthew: Oh, wow. Ian: And they, that's part of what I was pointing out where it's like a lot of the, the technology is just upgraded with this shiny or this casing, but it's all a little worn. They use a lot of that futuristic casing and everything else to kind of environmentally explain why there's a mirror or a mirrored surface in some of these scenes. Jim: Yeah, Ian: where it's like the medical facility has these giant, spinning tape computers to process the medical information, but the shiny mirrored case. Gives them something sometimes and they've got, they've got some instances there where they integrated in and they were doing more set up early on of giving themselves that reason to use those cinematography effects later. Matthew: So they have to go up to get this data from Phoenix, I guess, before they go public or before they decide what to do next, they'll have proof, at least for the scientific community about what happened. But then there's like a question. A question about, is electrical polarity the same? And I'm interested in an engineer's point of view on this, Jim. Is there any reason why it would be, given what we've seen, about what is or isn't mirrored? I mean, presumably, proteins and sugars are the same way around, or Ross would have started starving to death. Jim: I was wondering about that myself, which, you know, protein folding on backwards. But in the, I'm trying to think, they assumed to be reversed, but at the end, what did Ross say? He said, you know, polarity is the same. Yes, electrons are still electrons. You know, if electricity is still a flow of electrons, it would be a flow of what we call negative charge. Yeah, that's true. But I would think that the, the connectors would be backwards. Matthew: Right, I guess that's the question. It's not, electricity itself has changed, but they're right, right to the Jim: left. Is the positive on the right or the left, or the red or the black, or whatever. So it seems like they got it wrong on the, uh, the reworked, what'd they call it, the doppelganger, they called the ship that he went up in. Matthew: Yeah. Oh, that's a nice little bit. We see the doppelganger roll out. And we can read Doppelganger on the side of it. And what's I'm wondering what's going on until somebody asks Ross, why did you have them reverse the text on the side of your screen? Jim: It's an inside joke or something like that, right? Yeah. Ian: Exactly. That's a, that's a, that's a wonderful moment. But yeah, they, they designed a new dove the Doppelganger because they've got the plans for theirs. That's Matthew: true. Ian: Just, just flip it Jim: around. And this reverse all the controls and everything. Matthew: Yes, make it so that Ross could pilot it. Jim: And apparently they shouldn't have reversed the polarity. Matthew: Now, is that what went wrong? I wasn't sure about why things went badly because it goes up and tries to dock with Phoenix and something goes terribly wrong. Jim: Right, some kind of electrical connector in the docking module. You see a bunch of sparks. Yeah. And apparently polarity is wrong. Ian: And I'm like, is the polarity wrong? I'm wondering if it's like, they're using plastics and such. Are we just dealing with like, resin chirality or something? What's going on here? It's like, oh yeah, like all our plastic. Like, I don't, I guess it's the electrical? I think it's electrical. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Matthew: Sparks fly. Jim: Yeah. Yeah. Somehow the retro rockets fire. I don't know why. Matthew: Yeah. I wasn't sure about that. Ian: That's some bad design. Jim: You think, Matthew: you know, if it's just a question of, well, electricity is the same, but the connectors might be backwards. They could have put a. Rotatable connector or something or some kind of a failsafe. Jim: Yeah. A couple of diodes would have done the job. I'm sorry. Matthew: Yeah. But instead we get Phoenix deorbiting and burning up in the atmosphere. Ian: And they've got a radio Beam system that is supposed to like help guide him in if he's coming in, but then they disconnect that so he can level off and they can't hear him because the radio shorted, but apparently the receiver for that is fine, and it just guides him to hurdle straight at them instead of anywhere else. Matthew: Yes, so Phoenix is destroyed. And the Doppelganger, the new Dove, with Ross on board, crashes into essentially all of Eurosec. And this is something Mrs. Darlingwife pointed out, this might be why you don't want to put your landing facility and your launch facility and all of your offices and records all in the same place. Jim: Yeah! It even goes beyond that. First of all, they've got another fully complete, obviously fully fueled Phoenix launch vehicle sitting on the pad. Matthew: Yeah, I was wondering about that. Jim: What was that for? Yeah. And your control room is ridiculously close to your launch pad containing your fully fueled rocket. Yes. So, you'd think you'd be a mile or two away, like, you know, Cape Canaveral has it set up? Matthew: Yeah? Maybe by 2069, when all the Mars missions and everything else, they had just gotten complacent about space travel. Was always run of the mill, you know, we've had, how many hundreds of launches have we had? I hate, I don't want to, I don't like the commute to the, to the pad. The long walk. I want my office next door. Ian: And we even see that they've got like some safety effects where it like starts to lower into the ground or something. Jim: Right. That wasn't the control room, but that was something, you know, Yeah, Ian: it's, I mean, they've got the whole, like, the city in Neon Genesis Evangelion with it, like, on rails sinks into the ground so that you've got a big flat place to launch a rocket, and fight with your Eva or something else. Jim: Bring your Kaiju. Ian: Exactly. They don't complete the descent, I guess. Well, everything's still above ground to explode. Yeah, Jim: and a piece of rocket land right in the middle of your control facility. You know, not a good day, Ian: right? Not a good day. Matthew: So pretty much everything is gone. Ross is gone. Everybody who knew anything about this was gone. All the records and all the medical files and everything else are destroyed. And How does Webb survive though? Because was he in the one building that disappeared underground? So there were a few I guess? So it was him and a bunch of other like flight control people who didn't know the Mirror Earth thing. Jim: Or didn't have the proof of it. Right, didn't have the proof of it. Matthew: I guess that's why Webb survived. That's why they show us that building going underground. I guess that's the benefit of being the head of Eurosec is I'm going to make sure that my offices can be protected from this. Ian: Yeah, but everything is lost and we can only assume that everything is lost on both Earths. Matthew: Yeah, I guess so. Everything seems to happen, in a corresponding way. Ian: Which implies that every bit of, like, that piece of debris that goes flying into the records building, that must be the exact same on both. Like, physics is that mirrored. Jim: Yeah. Ian: There's no variation. Matthew: It kind of suggests that everything is deterministic. There are no chaotic changes. Ian: It really does. Jim: And it's no such thing as free will, because everything I do, my doppel is doing on the other world. Matthew: Oh, that's interesting. Jim: You can get pretty deep into that. Matthew: Yeah, if two sentient beings are making the same exact choice at the same time, does that mean that either of them doesn't have free will? Or do they just happen to be making the same choice at the same time? Jim: But you're talking about billions of beings. Matthew: Yeah. Jim: On both worlds. Yeah, that's true. And make the same choices. Matthew: Yeah, if they all are correlating exactly over that big a scale, you start to wonder, yeah, maybe this is deterministic. Ian: The sort of big, deep conversations we like to get into here on the PMMI. I mean the IMMP. Jim: Well, then, you know, going back to some of the stuff that's in the, uh, The press lately, are we living in a simulation? And it's just, are they running a mirror simulation at the same time? Ian: Hmm. Yep. It's gotta be heck on your, graphics card. My goodness. Matthew: I keep wondering about that simulation theory type thing. You know, are we living in a simulation? Does it matter? I mean, we're living in a universe with a certain structure and certain rules. Does the fact that that is, Operating within the context of something that's bigger and presumably has its own rules. I don't know. It's an interesting thing to know about because then if, if, if we are within something bigger, there's a chance of finding out what that is. Doesn't change where we are though. Jim: What's the phrase? A difference that makes no difference is no difference? Yeah. And if there's no way to test your hypothesis. Right. Hmm. Music: Hmm. So that's what always got me Jim: about the, the world of, of quote, doppelganger is, you know, if people in one world are doing something, everybody in the other world has to do exactly the same thing. Matthew: Yeah. Jim: What, where did it start? Where does it end? Matthew: Yeah, who's the mirror of whom Jim: right exactly Ian: and I have one other really big problem that all of this brings up for the story of Journey of the Far Side of the Sun slash doppelganger Yeah It proves that if everything is a mirror that everything that goes right in one were like to the right in one world goes to The left and the other then none of the rest of this movie should have happened Because one and a half weeks into it Not seeing anything because both of the people were asleep using the heart lung kidney and were apparently not being observed properly. Yeah. The phoenix should have collided head on into the other phoenix using the exact parallel opposite trajectory. And they should have just exploded! At like, Equidistant point between the two of them, since they would have used exactly mirrored trajectories. Matthew: That's right, they wouldn't have just been going the same, you know, counter orbit or orbital direction. Huh. Jim: No, they would have both gone counter clockwise, as seen from above. Let's put it that way. Oh, because the Ian: rotation of the Jim: earth, the rotation. Oh, right, Ian: right. The rotation of, I guess so it, Jim: we gotta be, you know, both plants have the orbiting in the, the same true rotational direction. Matthew: Right. Jim: So, oh, that, but that's another point. Yeah. Phoenix. Phoenix a would've gone off to the east side of the sun. Matthew: Yeah. Jim: And Phoenix B would have come back from the west side of the sun. Matthew: Right. Jim: So they, they would have come back from the other direction. Again, didn't anybody see them though? They have radar. Ian: Yeah. Yes. They weren't looking, you know? Wait, does that mean, does that mean rotationally one of them has a shorter trip than the other? Jim: Huh? Matthew: Yeah. Because one of Jim: the No, because the two planets are, are in lockstep. They're staying 180 degrees apart. Matthew: Oh, true. Yeah. Okay. They're both, they're both moving in that same direction. They would both would have had the same boost. But Jim: I always wondered, does, does Plan B, rotate, you know, to sunrise in the west and set in the east. Matthew: Yeah, you would think so because that's, that influences things like how our clocks, why our clocks work in the direction they do and things like that. Music: Hmm. Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it does make sense that if somehow all of this influenced the prevalence of right handedness or left handedness, that would influence the way different writing systems developed to be right or left facing. Jim: True. Matthew: Yeah. I guess once something sends the things in that direction, a lot of other things would follow. Ian: Yeah. But, the only thing we know has to be different is the trajectories they launched their phoenixes at in that sense. Yeah. Yeah, that's the point where they stopped mirroring each other on that which could imply that maybe things didn't happen the same But they kind of imply that it still did Yeah It took three weeks regardless of which earth you started and which earth you went to Matthew: make sense Mm hmm Ian: That everything else went the same. It's just That one moment of trajectory calculation is the difference. Jim: I still like your idea of a head on collision. Ian: What the heck was that? Everyone's asleep, no one does it. Thwack. Oh, it's a week and a half in and we lost signal. Oh, Music: hmm. Ian: Hmm. But yeah, Webb does survive somehow. Matthew: Yep. Yes. He's the only survivor who knows anything about what happened. And we see him kind of rambling about it in a retirement home decades later. Ian: confined to his wheelchair. Jim: Was it a retirement home, or was it a sanitarium? Matthew: Oh, that might have been. That's true. Jim: Yeah. Did he just, uh, go off the deep end, or maybe he was spouting gibberish about a mirror world, and figured he was crazy. Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Jason Webb, the, uh, the villain mirror man, has finally been put to Arkham. Yeah. But, uh, the, the, the ending is so dramatic. Yes. Yes. As he's left alone for a moment in a hallway and sees his reflection in a mirror, And, and he's so obsessed with the mirror world concept now that he's gotten that hint to it. Matthew: He charges towards it in his wheelchair and, him breaking the mirror is the last bit of the movie. Jim: Yeah. But Matthew: I love your point, Jim, about we don't know which world that's on. They keep us free of any clues. Jim: We never learn we do I did go back a number of times to watch that again Oh, we do get a clue. This is this is a spoiler or shy. Yeah. Matthew: I'll go ahead Jim: Yeah, Matthew: please do Jim: the the pocket on his bathrobe was on his right chest. Matthew: Oh, it is Okay, Jim: I subtle had to go to the collector three times to see it. So he so this is The web we've seen for the second half of the film, but it was very subtle. I really had to go looking for it. Matthew: And presumably the identical thing was happening on the other one. Jim: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking about, Jason Webb is an interesting hit me right away and wondering why the Anderson's might have done this, but the choice of names for the characters. Yeah. James Webb was the administrator of NASA up until 1968. Matthew: Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. Jim: All through the 60s. That's when they named the telescope after. So, a year later, they have Jason Webb as the head of Eurosec. I wonder if the Andersons were, were saying something, you know, an homage to James Webb or just a good name. Yeah. I wonder why they make choices like that. Matthew: It sure sounds like an homage when you think about the timing. It Ian: definitely sounds like an homage. Jim: I like that. Yeah. Ian: Yeah. Jim: That Ian: fits really well, but it's interesting to put him Webb as the member of the European group Yeah, pushing to get Americans on this. Yeah, Jim: but apparently James Webb was a consummate politician He knew how to get funding when he needed it. He knew how to play the pole political game in DC Oh, and that's what we see why he was so successful. Music: Hmm, Jim: and that's why he he left NASA in 68 after the election He knew and you know new administration coming in let them choose their own people. Yeah But, uh, but, you know, using that name to, to show this again, Jason Webb of Eurosec was again, a consummate politician. He knew how to play the game, get the funding. And speaking of funding. Yeah. Yeah. They talk about the, the project didn't cost 3 billion pounds. Yes. Matthew: Wow. Jim: Which at the time would have been about. between seven and eight million, uh, 70 billion. Now the Apollo program costs 25 billion over its duration. This is kind of, this is kind of cheap to go to a whole new planet. Matthew: Yeah. Now granted they did have some of the technology already developed. Jim: They already built the launch pads. All the infrastructure was there. But still, that's true. Matthew: Especially if you assume any amount of inflation between 1969 and 2069. 2069. That's a bargain. Yeah. Dang. Yeah. Jim: Cheaper twice the price. Yep. With these, you know, that's something I didn't really pay attention to when I was 13 years old watching this film, but now you notice these kind of things. Right. Music: Mm Jim: hmm. Matthew: Well, I think it might be time. Ian: I think so. Matthew: We might be headed in the direction of our final questions. Jim: Mm hmm. Matthew: So stay tuned, listeners, for those final questions. But in the meantime, if you are enjoying the Intermillennium Media Project and you want to help support this, first, please, Tell your friends. Let people know about it. Go and give us five star ratings wherever you get your podcast. That just helps more people find it. But if you want more of the IMMP, you can go to IMMproject. com where you will find all of our back episodes and you will find a link to our Patreon, which is another way to support the podcast. And if you join us on Patreon, you get lots of bonus content. And also if you join us at the movie club level, we'll You will periodically get a mystery DVD in the mail. And you'll also find on immproject. com, a link to our discord. We'd love to hear from you there, a link to our contact page where you can email us or send us honest to goodness, US mail at our post office box, and you will find a link to our shop if you like things like. Coffee mugs, t shirts, and other, fun stuff from the IMMP. And, Ian, where can people find you online? Ian: I can be found most places as itemcrafting, be that itemcrafting. com or itemcraftinglive on Twitch. Come see me play games like the Myst and Riven series and, you know, talk media in general. Matthew: And Jim, where can people find you? Jim: Well, I'm, uh, I'm a boomer. I have almost no online presence, so you're not going to find me anywhere. Matthew: You'll just be there in the depths of private Minecraft servers, right? Jim: That's it. I got a whitelist of people who want to play Minecraft with me, but otherwise you're out of luck. Matthew: Well, that's everybody else's loss. And you can find me at ByMatthewPorter. com where you'll find links to whatever I'm doing online, including my YouTube page, which features the Draft House Diary movie and movie theater reviews. But now, I think it is time for final questions. And Jim, you're our guest, we're gonna start with you. And it's a movie, so our first question is, Screen or no screen? What do you recommend? Jim: Unless you're really a Gerry Anderson fan, or really a fan of cheesy science fiction of the 60s, I'd have to say No Screen. It's not the kind of thing an audience today would really enjoy, I believe. Mmm. Ian: Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with you. This was fun to watch, but that's because I was excited to see the models, and it was interesting to see this earlier version of this concept that I still don't know where I knew it from, but it's definitely something that I've Seen and it's been in the zeitgeist elsewhere, and I feel like this didn't add much to it. There wasn't anything missing from those other versions wherever they are. Jim: I was surprised to hear you say that you knew about it. I didn't think this was that, uh, well known a film. It's kind of an obscure thing. Ian: That's the thing, like, the concept it's based on, like, the idea of that counter Earth is something I've heard from elsewhere, but not, not this specific movie. Like, this isn't referenced back to, but the concept it's presenting is. Okay. Jim: Personally for me, you know, I really enjoyed watching it again. Again, it was a formative movie when I was a kid kind of thing. Like Matthew said, you know, watching it on the million dollar movie. I've seen a couple of times a year. This thing would come on TV and anytime I came across, I'd have to sit and watch it. But it's been almost 50 years since then. So it didn't age well, let's put it that way. Matthew: Yeah, it, it pains me to say it, but I think I agree with you. I'm going to have to say no screen, at least as it appears currently. So much of it I liked. Not just as a Jerry Anderson fan, but I really do think some of the effects, some of the model work and composite work is really, really good and holds up. And even some of the, um, some of the philosophical ideas behind it are at least interesting. It's one of those movies where I wish I could edit it down to like a one hour episode of television. Because you could get all that's really powerful and interesting about this movie down to that as opposed to the very padded. Two hour runtime with lots of things we could really do without, like, Ross fighting with his wife. And, and still have an interesting story. But I can't recommend the movie itself as a screen. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: And, that brings us to our second question, which is, Revive, Reboot, or Rest in Peace? And in our terms, revive means something else in the same continuity. A prequel, a sequel, something else where The original was canon, or reboot is let's take the idea and do it brand new and rest in peace means let's let it go, let it be what it is. So what do you think, Jim? Revive, reboot or rest in peace for this? Jim: Well, I was thinking about this before we started recording, and my first thought was Maybe a revival and let's see what happens to the other Ross and the other world, but it's going to be exactly the same thing because everything that happens in one world happens there. So the revival would just be a rerun. I'd be interested in seeing a reboot. I mean, like, the concept of a mirror world has been used in so many different ways so many different times. It could be interesting to see what somebody could do with it these days. Matthew: Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you on that. I would say, Yeah. I would say reboot, and whether it is literally the far side of the sun, or we start to get into some kind of interdimensional physics to make it weirder, but therefore more plausible, I would be interested to see this idea, or a new take on this same idea, with modern science and modern filmmaking. Ian: I'm with both of you as well. I would love to see a new version of this thrown more at it. I'm honestly, I think it would do very well as one of these prestige TV kind of, mini series because you could have a lot of interesting things of exploring different parts of the mission and the ramifications and the fallout of it all. Jim: Yeah, Ian: I will also say though a showing of this movie. Which is a double feature, which is, which is showing it and then showing the movie again. Mirrored could be funny just in terms of like show it again on the other earth, but it's just show it mirrored. So you get the reverse version is fun. Jim: I'm trying to remember. I remember reading this a long time ago that apparently in some European theaters, the projectionists when they're reviewing the prints. Thought the film had been flipped because everything's backwards. So they flipped the film and re reloaded onto the Matthew: Oh, no. Oh, that, like the second and third reels where they flipped around. They, Jim: they, they, they flipped it around. So they showed it what they thought was right. Oh, this, this is backwards. Why are we doing ? Imagine the audience sitting in that theater wondering what's going on. What is he talking about? Everything reversed. Ian: Oh, oh my brain, Matthew: Well, I have a recommendation for you. If you like this idea, this concept of the mirror world and what that could mean, if you haven't already seen it, a series that was on Starz a few years ago called Counterpart. And it wasn't about another planet, but it involved a mishap in a physics lab in Berlin that caused a tunnel to become a tunnel to a different planet. World a different parallel earth and very interesting. It's got jk simmons in a fascinating multifaceted role So that's well worth seeing if you like that idea and you want to see a modern take on it Ian: That sounds really cool Jim: Counterpart i've to look for that. Ian: Yeah overall though, I will say ufo and uh Space 1999 had a little bit more going for them in terms of anderson's later sci fi stuff using some of the same sets even You Matthew: Yeah, they were a little more focused but at the same time, they gave us larger scenarios in which he could tell more stories. Ian: Mm hmm. So Matthew: But this was fun. I think this is Ian: a resting piece. Yeah, I think so. This is fun. This was fun. Yes, thanks so much for having me. Matthew: It was, it was terrific having you join us, Jim. Thank you very much. Ian: It was wonderful. Thank you very much. A delight happy to hear from you and excited if we hear from you again on more. Jim: Yeah, sure. You know where to find me. Matthew: And listeners, you'll be able to find us, in a couple of weeks with more tales of media from the 20th century. Jim: In the meantime, go find somebody new to watch things with.