Astronaut, The
Entry updated 29 July 2024. Tagged: Film.
Made-for-tv film (1972). Universal Television for ABC-TV. Produced by Harve Bennett. Directed by Robert Michael Lewis. Written by Gerald Di Pego, Charles Kuenstle and Richard Biheller from an original story by Kuenstle and Biheller. Cast includes Richard Anderson, Walter Brooke, Susan Clark, Jackie Cooper, Robert Lansing, Monte Markham and James Sikking. 73 minutes. Colour.
In 1981, the first US two-man mission to Mars ends in tragedy when the astronaut who ventures on to its surface, Colonel Brice Randolph, dies after his suit is penetrated by the Martian atmosphere, containing "two unknown Elements" that first paralyse and then kill him. NASA administrator Kurt Anderson (Cooper) does not want to reveal the truth because he fears that it will lead the new US president, said to be skeptical of space travel, to cancel the space programme. So, he ended television coverage of Randolph's landing when he is afflicted, attributing it to a technical difficulty, and while the other Mars astronaut (Sikking) returns to Earth, he institutes a prepared plan to deal with such a disaster by recruiting a man, test pilot Eddie Reese (Markham), to undergo plastic surgery to become identical to Randolph; he is also extensively briefed on Randolph's background in order to persuasively impersonate him. Though a reporter who knew Randolph (Brooke) later wonders why he has changed, his appearances before the press are successful, but Randolph's wife Gail (Clark) soon realizes that he is not really her husband, initially angering her. But she warms to him after realizing that he is actually much nicer than her deceased husband, so they abandon the original plan – for "Randolph" to die in a pre-arranged boating accident after his supposed return to Earth and allow Reese to re-surface as himself – and instead resolve to carry on with the deception. In the meantime, apparently encouraged by the success of the US effort, the Soviet Union launches its own mission to Mars. Not wanting the cosmonauts to die on Mars, Anderson agonizes over what to do before deciding to contact the President with the truth, providing the Russians with a warning but also revealing his elaborate deception.
Presented as another genre entry in the long-running ABC Movie of the Week, this largely-forgotten film is a major curiosity, being aired as it was when the Apollo missions to the Moon were still under way. Real-life astronaut Wally Schirra appears in a cameo role as himself, oddly considering the very negative view of NASA presented here, although administrator Anderson ultimately vindicates himself as a principled person. A strong case can be made that Capricorn One (1977) plagiarized this film's central situation, and it also anticipates later films suspicious of NASA which argued that the Moon landings were faked. [GSt/GW]
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