Saturday 18 December 2010

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969)

Doppelganger aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is a film by Gerry Anderson and his partners through their Century 21 productions.

It’s one of those films that I’ve continued to enjoy with each successive revisit although it has continually failed to find its audience, either getting mauled by the critics or simply dismissed as some kind of experiment by Anderson to move away from his puppet shows towards a live action TV series.
Though a little unkind to suggest this was ever the original intent, much of the films look did carry over into Anderson’s 1970 TV series; U.F.O.   Cast, cars, FX models, locations and space suits all got recycled for the small screen.
As we already know and will further discover, this has always been quite a common practice in film and television production.  It’s either a good way to add a touch of class to a low budget or frees up finances for other areas.  And let’s face it; these are not only a plausible design but they manage to retain a bit of that sci-fi-sexy-ness too.  Who wouldn’t want them gracing their production?
Very much in keeping with, and even sometimes in the company of, the Moon Zero Two suits these ones go on to have quite a varied career way beyond what could have been imagined when they were first created.  I’ve found a few of their subsequent appearances and I’m reasonably sure there are more as yet to be rediscovered but for now let’s just enjoy their origin.
Steve

2 comments:

  1. Many years ago I had an old Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films Classic magazine with Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun (large title) in it and found it fascinating but I could never find it on VHS, Flash forward to the Sci-Fi Channel picking up UFO which I fell in love with, Space 1999 was my first broadcast Sci-fi, I was real young when it was on and rediscovered it when I ran across the VHS tapes, all four. Well When UFO came out on DVD needless to say I picked it up and noticed that the suits and quite a bit more was also pictured in that Sci-fi FFC . When I found the movie JTTFSOTS on DVD I watched it a couple times back to back, It's just a real good movie, the ending is typical British . Don't get me wrong I love British Sci-fi, they actually have the yarbles to make a sci-fi series or movie that doesn't end happy. ... Blake's Seven anyone?

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    1. Nice comments and agree with the "typical British" endings. We do seem to like to stick it to the hero in the end. Not only did we shoot all of Blake's 7, we blew up Quatermass and have continually killed Doctor Who any number of times over the last 50 years. Big Brother still stands at the end of 1984 and the triffids are still at the top of the food chain long after their day. And I can think of darker. We may need help!

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