In the Chinese calendar, 2015 is the year of the Goat. In Japan, it's Heisei 27. To Muslims it's 1436, for the Jews it's 5775, and by Buddhist reckoning it's 2559. In the Holocene calendar it's 12,015, which sounds pretty badass. As far as Unix is concerned, it's 1420070400. The UN has declared 2015 to be The Year of Soil, and if that doesn't make the New Year's Eve parties off the hook I don't know what will. (No, I am not waving my hands in the air like I just don't care; I genuinely don't care. Soil? Really? I like crops and burrowing mammals as much as the next guy, but one wonders what ideas got rejected. The year of Felt? The year of the Bibliography? This does not portend well.)
However, in the LabKitty household we name years according to fictional moonbases. Which means most years don't get a name, just a number. Not so 2015.
It is a special year, indeed.
In beloved loopy 70s TV series Space 1999, we had a base on the moon by (wait for it) 1999. The backstory was the moon and the base and a lot of polyester slacks were blown out of orbit in a ginormous nuclear explosion, silly future us stockpiling nuclear waste on the dark side of the moon, probably over the objections of space Jane Fonda. One can't help but ask: If we could get nuclear waste as far as the moon, why not just aim a little to the left and fly it into the sun? The more troubling question, though, is if the moon is no longer orbiting Earth is it technically still the moon? For an answer, you will have to look to someone beyond LabKitty's pay grade, or at least wait until I have had more to drink.
I don't much remember what was going on in 1999, being in graduate school at the time. But the moon is still there sans moonbase so I think we can safely conclude the predictions of Space 1999 did not come to pass. It was not the first work of fiction to miss the target deadline for colonization. We were there by 1980 in UFO, a television show made by the Space 1999 development team that manages to make Space 1999 look like a documentary. UFO features a national space agency beating back a relentless alien invasion using combined land-, sea-, air-, and moon-based space combat. In 1980, the real NASA couldn't get past low orbit. The triumph of Apollo had given way to the cost ineffective and occasionally homicidal Space Shuttle. Nobody had the guts to tell higher-ups a spacecraft that could land as an unpowered glider made about as much sense as a flame retardant that could double as a dessert topping. We should have taken the hint when the Soviets pulled the plug on Buran.
The much more optimistic Project Moonbase had us living on the moon by 1970. The film is in the awkward position of having a Robert Heinlein pedigree while also having been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I guess early sci-fi was easy pickings for Joike and the bots. That being said, Project Moonbase fared much better than other MST3K fare like First Spaceship on Venus or 12 to the Moon. The former I can only assume was filmed in the depths of an ether binge and the latter features (I'm not making this up) moon aliens who demand our cats. Project Moonbase also had a woman president, which was pretty ballsy for a film that came out in 1953 (technically, I guess it would be the opposite of that).
The 1973 BBC-produced Moonbase 3 is set in 2003 but the titular moonbase is built in 1995. There are a total of five moonbases in the programme, operated, respectively, by America, Russia, Europe, China, and Brazil. (I can understand America, Russia, Europe, and China, but was Brazil on some kind of fast track to space exploration back in the day? This is like William Gibson's odd obsession with Space Jamaicans in Neuromancer.) Most of the action in Moonbase 3 revolved around how miserable it is to live on a moonbase, which might explain the show's rapid demise. After a grand total of five episodes, the finale livened up things in traditional cheery British fashion, with the detonation of a hydrogen bomb above the Arctic circle extinguishing all life on Earth.
>In 2001: A Space Odyssey we were supposed to have a moonbase by 2001, along with an orbiting hotel and the means to get a manned mission to Jupiter. If I understand the plot, the monolith thingy puts in an appearance whenever it decides it's time for humans to level up to the next plane of cosmic consciousness or whatever, like grandma having GeekSquad pop by to put more RAM in her Internet. In the real year 2001, mostly what we got were crazies flying airplanes into buildings. I guess you can't blame the monolith for giving us a pass.
Which brings us to 2015 -- the year a moonbase is established in Paul Anderson's epic space gorefest Event Horizon. Laurence Fishburne and crew take the brand new USS Event Horizon out for a spin to Proxima Centauri and promptly disappear. Seven years later, Sam Neill arrives with a rescue team only to learn the propulsion system he built had a teensy design flaw that sorta kinda opens a portal to hell when it's switched on. (I'll bet there was nothing in the RFP that explicitly stated the propulsion system shouldn't open a portal to hell. Sam has some legal cover here, is what I'm saying.) Anyway, the crew is still a little peeved about the surprise detour and so recreates the experience of their maiden voyage for Sam's edification. Think: Hellraiser meets Apollo 13.
Event Horizon bombed at the box office, but Internet nerds line up to defend the film. It has a majorly creepy atmosphere, and it's nice to see science fiction on the big screen that doesn't have aliens, or predators, or aliens versus predators. The artificial black hole gravity drive dealio was a nice stab at real-ish future tech beyond the usual "warp factor eight Mr. Sulu" lazy technobabble. On the other hand, it did open a portal to hell. I guess that will give the Tea Party reason to riot if Republicans ever stop destroying NASA's funding.
None of this has much to do with a moonbase which, IIRC, doesn't appear in the film and whose existence is only established as an aside. Still, when you name years after fictional moonbases, you take what you can get. So: 2015 -- Year of the Event Horizon Moonbase.
In re our previous question, I'm now in a position to say: yes, it is.
However, in the LabKitty household we name years according to fictional moonbases. Which means most years don't get a name, just a number. Not so 2015.
It is a special year, indeed.
In beloved loopy 70s TV series Space 1999, we had a base on the moon by (wait for it) 1999. The backstory was the moon and the base and a lot of polyester slacks were blown out of orbit in a ginormous nuclear explosion, silly future us stockpiling nuclear waste on the dark side of the moon, probably over the objections of space Jane Fonda. One can't help but ask: If we could get nuclear waste as far as the moon, why not just aim a little to the left and fly it into the sun? The more troubling question, though, is if the moon is no longer orbiting Earth is it technically still the moon? For an answer, you will have to look to someone beyond LabKitty's pay grade, or at least wait until I have had more to drink.
I don't much remember what was going on in 1999, being in graduate school at the time. But the moon is still there sans moonbase so I think we can safely conclude the predictions of Space 1999 did not come to pass. It was not the first work of fiction to miss the target deadline for colonization. We were there by 1980 in UFO, a television show made by the Space 1999 development team that manages to make Space 1999 look like a documentary. UFO features a national space agency beating back a relentless alien invasion using combined land-, sea-, air-, and moon-based space combat. In 1980, the real NASA couldn't get past low orbit. The triumph of Apollo had given way to the cost ineffective and occasionally homicidal Space Shuttle. Nobody had the guts to tell higher-ups a spacecraft that could land as an unpowered glider made about as much sense as a flame retardant that could double as a dessert topping. We should have taken the hint when the Soviets pulled the plug on Buran.
The much more optimistic Project Moonbase had us living on the moon by 1970. The film is in the awkward position of having a Robert Heinlein pedigree while also having been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I guess early sci-fi was easy pickings for Joike and the bots. That being said, Project Moonbase fared much better than other MST3K fare like First Spaceship on Venus or 12 to the Moon. The former I can only assume was filmed in the depths of an ether binge and the latter features (I'm not making this up) moon aliens who demand our cats. Project Moonbase also had a woman president, which was pretty ballsy for a film that came out in 1953 (technically, I guess it would be the opposite of that).
The 1973 BBC-produced Moonbase 3 is set in 2003 but the titular moonbase is built in 1995. There are a total of five moonbases in the programme, operated, respectively, by America, Russia, Europe, China, and Brazil. (I can understand America, Russia, Europe, and China, but was Brazil on some kind of fast track to space exploration back in the day? This is like William Gibson's odd obsession with Space Jamaicans in Neuromancer.) Most of the action in Moonbase 3 revolved around how miserable it is to live on a moonbase, which might explain the show's rapid demise. After a grand total of five episodes, the finale livened up things in traditional cheery British fashion, with the detonation of a hydrogen bomb above the Arctic circle extinguishing all life on Earth.
>In 2001: A Space Odyssey we were supposed to have a moonbase by 2001, along with an orbiting hotel and the means to get a manned mission to Jupiter. If I understand the plot, the monolith thingy puts in an appearance whenever it decides it's time for humans to level up to the next plane of cosmic consciousness or whatever, like grandma having GeekSquad pop by to put more RAM in her Internet. In the real year 2001, mostly what we got were crazies flying airplanes into buildings. I guess you can't blame the monolith for giving us a pass.
Which brings us to 2015 -- the year a moonbase is established in Paul Anderson's epic space gorefest Event Horizon. Laurence Fishburne and crew take the brand new USS Event Horizon out for a spin to Proxima Centauri and promptly disappear. Seven years later, Sam Neill arrives with a rescue team only to learn the propulsion system he built had a teensy design flaw that sorta kinda opens a portal to hell when it's switched on. (I'll bet there was nothing in the RFP that explicitly stated the propulsion system shouldn't open a portal to hell. Sam has some legal cover here, is what I'm saying.) Anyway, the crew is still a little peeved about the surprise detour and so recreates the experience of their maiden voyage for Sam's edification. Think: Hellraiser meets Apollo 13.
Event Horizon bombed at the box office, but Internet nerds line up to defend the film. It has a majorly creepy atmosphere, and it's nice to see science fiction on the big screen that doesn't have aliens, or predators, or aliens versus predators. The artificial black hole gravity drive dealio was a nice stab at real-ish future tech beyond the usual "warp factor eight Mr. Sulu" lazy technobabble. On the other hand, it did open a portal to hell. I guess that will give the Tea Party reason to riot if Republicans ever stop destroying NASA's funding.
None of this has much to do with a moonbase which, IIRC, doesn't appear in the film and whose existence is only established as an aside. Still, when you name years after fictional moonbases, you take what you can get. So: 2015 -- Year of the Event Horizon Moonbase.
In re our previous question, I'm now in a position to say: yes, it is.
ADDED IN POST: I'm told Iron Sky says we got to the moon in 1945. Or Nazis did, who have been living on the dark side and plotting their revenge since the end of WW-II. (Man, is there anything that can't hide on the dark side of the moon? Nazis, Transformers, aliens, nuclear waste -- you would think NASA would stick a deer camera out there.) Alas, I don't know any more about the film. Iron Sky has been foundering in my Netflix queue for ages, apparently because the many white power organizations in the Circle Pines metro area are hogging all the copies. Skinheads have movie night. Who knew?
No comments:
Post a Comment