B-Movie Inspirations: Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969)

B-Movie Inspirations is a series of articles I write where I watch really bad movies and draw RPG inspiration from them.

“The European Space Exploration Council sends two astronauts to explore a planet similar to the Earth but located on the opposite side of the sun.”

IMDB

I found this movie on my various quasi-legal streaming options. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (also known as Doppleganger) is a 1969 Gerry Anderson sci-fi adventure starring various insignificant British stars and one token American who is brash and bossy. It is set in some near-ish future that apparently has considerable advancements in technologies because we have been to the Moon, now. There are x-ray machines for security like the ones we saw in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall. Spies can use cybernetic eyes with cameras to steal secrets from the enemy. They use those futuristic cars that you see in all the Gerry Anderson movies.

I love a good Gerry Anderson show of any kind. I cut my teeth into sci-fi with UFO and Space: 1999. This movie has that familiar feel of an Anderson show, with the hip 70s haircuts, short 70s dresses and men who slap their women when they get out of line. oh the 70s. *sarcasm*

The basic premise of the movie is that the European Space Exploration Council (Euro-SEC) has discovered another planet on the other side of the sun, in a total opposite orbit of Earth (so they are always at opposite points of the orbit at all times). At the start, they spend a lot of time on the politics and intrigue of space exploration. The bad guys who I assume are the Russians send agents with the aforementioned cyber-eyes to take pictures of top secret plans for the rocket system they plan to use for this mission to the new other Earth.

At the same time, the European countries along with the US bicker over the price tag for this mission (because it is so realistic to think that a joint European alliance would have money for this kind of program, right?) And of course, it’s the US that bails everyone put and pays for it, on the condition that they send a US astronaut – Colonel Glenn Ross. He will be accompanied by a British astrophysicist – Dr John Kane – who has not been in space before.

The next act covers all the training they go through and builds a little character. While the story spin is a little surface level stuff, it’s important to the overall plot. Of course, the fear of the bad guys in the East pushes the launch date sooner and the brash American shows his brutish attitude to the prim and proper British. They come to a compromise and we fade to the launch.

The journey is 3 weeks, so the formulated their own version of suspended animation, which looked more like coax-connectors surgically implanted on the wrists hooked up with hoses with various fluids going in and out. Three weeks pass, and the pilots awaken somewhat bearded and groggy, closing in on a planet that looks like Earth.

The big twist is that it IS just like Earth, just a little different. The astronauts crash-land on a Earth just like their own. The meet doubles of all those they left behind and learn that they too launch a mission with the same astronauts 3 weeks ago in parallel with the other Earth. They assumed that they had aborted the mission and returned, instead of being gone 6+ weeks. But slowly, clues began to show itself to the American astronaut – shaking hands with the opposite hands, text appearing backwards to him, and driving on the wrong side of the road. This Earth was the polar opposite of Earth – like a parallel Earth but with the polarities reversed.

In the end, the one surviving astronaut – the American – tries to get home using their technology but because they are so incompatible with orbiter they left above the planet that it all ends in one big crash.

Now, what inspiration could I have gotten out of that fairly simplistic plot? Honestly, this could have been a Star Trek episode, except not on Earth. Here are some ideas that I drew out of it:

• Opposite Earth: Knowing what we know now about space and the solar system, of course the idea of a planet on the opposite side of the Sun is crazy. However, what if a rift opens up and pulls in a planet in the opposite orbit? What if it is a parallel planet with alternate history like the Axis power won the war or the Communist took over the world? Now they have equal tech as earth or maybe advanced.
• Opposite Worlds: This would be more like a Star Trek episode – a world at war with another world on the other side of their star. But they never have seen each other, they just know they hate each other. Why?
• Doppelganger planes: Tooled for more a fantasy world, a rift opens to a mirror universe with opposites. Where good is evil and evil is good. Magic is polarized opposite, so when the magic users attempt to use magic, it backfire on them. Something is going to cause these worlds to collide and destroy both. They have to figure out how to adapt to the opposite polarity and stop the collision.

This was a very simple movie that was filled with a lot of fluff and unneeded plot. It was in fact sometimes pretty boring. To find out that it’s a world just like ours was kind of a let down but I suppose they thought it was cute.