Doppelgänger (1969 film)
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| Doppelgänger | |
 Film poster under its US title. |
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| Directed by | Robert Parrish |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Gerry Anderson Sylvia Anderson |
| Written by | Gerry Anderson Sylvia Anderson |
| Starring | Roy Thinnes Ian Hendry Patrick Wymark Ed Bishop Lynn Loring |
| Music by | Barry Gray |
| Distributed by | Rank Organisation Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 8th October, 1969 (UK premiere) |
| Running time | 101 minutes |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
Doppelgänger is a 1969 British science fiction film directed by Robert Parrish. The film was released in the US as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a title by which it is now better known.[1] The crew of a spacecraft journey to a previously unknown planet on the far side of the Sun, only to seemingly find themselves returning back to the Earth. The storyline is similar to an hour-long episode of the Twilight Zone entitled, "The Parallel".
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[edit] Plot
The film begins with the discovery of an unknown planet orbiting exactly the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, an idea reminiscent of the Antichthon or Counter-Earth proposed by Philolaus in the fifth century B.C. The European Space Exploration Council (EUROSEC) and NASA send British astrophysicist John Kane (Ian Hendry) and American astronaut Col. Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes) to the new planet in a rocket.
During their long voyage, they are put into hibernation, and are maintained by a pair of on board Heart/Lung/Kidney machines, meaning that they will have no recollection of the journey. When they awaken, they enter orbit of the planet and do an initial survey. They find the planet's atmosphere to be breathable but they see no signs of life. They decide to go forward with a landing. They suit up, and go through an access tunnel to reach their lifting body lander which slides out the rear of the mother ship.
As they enter the atmosphere, the ship's controls begin to short out and malfunction. They lose all control of the craft, which clips a mountaintop before crashing into rocky terrain. After the crew is clear of the burning wreckage, a suited figure picks them up into a hovering unfamiliar ship.
They find they have been taken aboard an air-sea rescue craft. It appears that the crew have somehow returned to Earth instead of going to the planet. They are discreetly returned to the space center, with Kane in critical condition. He later dies of his injuries.
Ross is grilled by EUROSEC officials who accuse him of aborting the mission. Ross denies turning back, saying he and Kane actually arrived at the new planet, and could not explain why he is now on Earth.
Soon, Ross puts together the clues to arrive at the shocking conclusion that he is not on Earth at all -- but on the planet he set out to find, which is an identical Earth where everything is a mirror image of our own. At first, his own wife Sharon (Lynn Loring) and others at the space agency think he is insane for claiming that signs, and even the layout of his apartment on the spaceport's base, are backwards, but he convinces the director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb (Patrick Wymark) that he isn't insane by easily reading documents and written directions shown as a reflection in a mirror. Webb is convinced when the base doctors examine his X-rays -- and discover that the layout of Ross's internal organs is backward compared to their own.
Ross theorizes that everything that happens on his Earth happens on this planet as well -- which means that the Ross of this world is now on his Earth.
The only thing apart from the mirror image that is different from Earth, and that makes the crew realize that they are not actually on Earth, is the night time, when they see three moons in the sky.
It is decided that Ross should try to return to his Earth, and a spare shuttle is prepared in which Ross will return to his spacecraft. There's a problem, though: if everything else is backward here, what about electricity? Is electrical polarity reversed here -- or is electricity universal, meaning that it has the same polarity on both worlds? They can't know, but decide to gamble; the shuttle's polarity is reversed.
He takes off in a shuttle he has named "DOPPELGANGER," meaning "double" (written in our manner of left to right) to dock with the Earth ship he came in to retrieve its flight recorder. But as he docks, the electrical systems short out -- they were wrong, the polarity of electricity is the same on both worlds. Ross loses contact with the ground base as his shuttle craft undocks from the ship, hurtling towards the ground with the automatic approach system locked on. This locks out his controls, resulting in his having no flight control as he descends, unable to communicate, into the atmosphere. When ground control realizes his situation, they disengage the system, but too late -- the shuttle crashes into a second mission rocket. Ross is incinerated as the crash causes a chain reaction of massive fiery debris flying explosions, completely destroying the space center in a style typical of Gerry Anderson productions.
The final scene shows an elderly Webb, long ago dismissed as head of the space agency, institutionalized and telling the staff there about what had happened (the disaster had destroyed all evidence). In his dementia, he sees his reflection in a mirror mounted in front of a window, and in an attempt to touch his mirror self, crashes through the mirror and window to fall to his death.
[edit] Crew
The film was produced by Gerry Anderson, who was best known for producing television series using the puppetry technique Supermarionation, indeed utilising many of his greatest techniques, primarily the use of models and pyrotechnics. It also has an innovative score by Barry Gray which, like the earlier Captain Scarlet makes great use of an Ondes Martenot, particularly during the 'sleeping astronauts' scene. However, the soundtrack is still unavailable. The success of this film led to Anderson producing live-action series for television, beginning with UFO, which recycled a number of props, actors and music from the film.[1]
[edit] Showings
Some UK television screenings of this movie have been derived from an incorrectly-prepared master.[1]
In order to create the illusion of a mirror-Earth - such as reversed writing and driving on the "wrong" side of the road - the film was shot as normal, but the mirror-Earth sequences were then subjected to an optical process known as "flop-over", which created the mirror-image effect. This was significantly quicker and cheaper than building sets and props with reversed elements and having to close roads in order to shoot sequences involving driving on the wrong side.
At some subsequent point prior to a UK TV screening, TV company staff viewed the print supplied by the film distributor and, not being familiar with the plot, concluded that the mirror-Earth sequences had been optically reversed in error. A second flop-over was applied to return the image to normal, and this went on to become the standard transmission version from that point onwards.
This version, if screened, makes viewers think that a "mirror" Colonel Ross has landed on the "real" Earth.
[edit] DVD Releases
It has been released twice on DVD in the U.S. The Region 2 version will see its first ever release on September 15 2008 courtesy of Universal Pictures.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Doppelgänger at Fanderson
[edit] External links
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