BONUS BLOG -- 1969: DOPPELGÄNGER

What’s it about?

A probe sent to investigate solar activity accidentally discovers a new planet in the same orbit as Earth on the other side of the sun. The pan-European space agency that created the probe hits up NASA for a donation and uses the money to prepare a manned mission to the new planet. (Meanwhile, communist spies have infiltrated the agency and stolen sensitive data using high-tech eyeball cameras and -- actually, never mind. Turns out later none of that part is important at all.)

The two astronauts selected for the mission are for some reason put into a deep sleep for the three weeks that it will take to reach the new planet. When they’re revived, they discover they’re orbiting a habitable planet. But disaster strikes when they try to land on the surface, and as they escape from the wreckage of their spaceship it appears that they have somehow landed back on Earth. But not all is as it seems...




Is it any good?

DOPPELGÄNGER (aka, JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN) was produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. If you’re not familiar with the names (I wasn’t until very recently), they’re a husband-and-wife team who created a long string of distinctive British children’s sci-fi/adventure shows over six decades starting in the 1950s. They’re probably best known for the series they developed using the Supermarionation puppet process -- especially THUNDERBIRDS and CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERIONS -- but they were involved in nineteen different series in all.

I actually don’t really know much about anything the Andersons did. I did check out THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO back when I was doing 1966 movies, but otherwise the only thing I have to go on are dim twenty year-old memories of CAPTAIN SCARLET. So obviously I don’t know how whether DOPPELGÄNGER is representative of the rest of their work or if it’s an anomaly. It is a live-action movie, so there aren’t any puppets. But the special effects (especially the buildings and spaceships) seem to use a lot of the same miniature techniques from the THUNDERBIRDS movies. If anything, the effects in DOPPELGÄNGER are even better -- or at least more realistic.

The movie really has three parts -- the first of which is probably the weakest. The first half hour or so is concerned entirely with things like getting funding for the mission, political maneuvering in the European space agency and abroad, and security concerns about leaks of sensitive data. I always feel like I’m hurtling through a cultural wormhole whenever I watch British sci-fi movies, because they spend so much time on such mundane things. This can be either refreshing or frustrating depending on how it’s handled -- in DOPPELGÄNGER it’s mostly just a confusing digression. But one amusing note is how dependent the European space agency is on American funding -- even in a British-produced movie, they still have to go begging to NASA when they want to launch a mission. American sci-fi flicks almost never give a single thought to funding, and the few that do certainly don’t solve the problem by getting foreign investment. (Possible exception: CONTACT? I can’t remember who ends up footing the bill in that one.)




In any event, the funding and security concerns are finally wrapped up and put away so we never have to hear about them again. Instead, the movie shifts into one of those “training for the mission” modes that directors seem to think we all love so much. I would not complain at all if I never see another astronaut ride a rocket sled again (this is the third movie from the 1960s I’ve seen so far with such a sequence), but luckily there are other things going on during this part of the movie that are a lot more interesting. One of the two astronauts, for instance, is an American who was brought into the project to help get the funding. Though he’s a Neil Armstrong-like superstar, he has problems in his personal life. His wife belittles him by claiming that the radiation in space has sterilized him, and meanwhile the pretty head of security at the space agency is making eyes at him... It’s all pretty soapy, but it’s nice to see astronauts with more or less realistic problems and flaws.

Once the rocket finally takes off, the movie takes another turn since Earth-bound problems must necessarily be left behind. The two astronauts go into their narratively convenient (but otherwise inexplicable) three-week sleep. When they awake -- well, at this point I should warn that some big spoilers are coming. If you think you might want to watch this movie, I’d recommend stopping here since the ending is a Twilight Zone kind of thing that’s probably better if you don’t know much about it going in.

For the rest of you, when the astronauts awaken from their sleep, they’re in orbit around the new planet on the other side of the sun -- or so they think. But after crashlanding on the surface, they’re immediately picked up by an English-speaking rescue worker hanging from a helicopter. The British astronaut is badly wounded in the crash and more or less sits out the rest of the movie wrapped in bandages in an iron lung. The American, meanwhile, is transported back to the European space agency (in secrecy, natch) where we learn that he’s only been gone three weeks instead of the expected six that a round trip should have taken. The top brass naturally figure that the astronauts turned the rocket around for some reason, but the American insists they did no such thing.




The American goes home with his wife and more domestic scenes ensue -- but things only get weirder when he notices that everything in his house (including all writing and numbers) is reversed. It takes a little while, but the scientists finally decide that the planet on the other side of the sun is an exact mirror image of Earth. When Earth launched its rocket, the mirror planet launched one of its own with mirror images of the astronauts inside. So the three-week journey really was a one-way trip, and the astronaut really is on the new planet on the other side of the sun.

This is, I admit, kind of stupid. We’re supposed to believe that the astronaut didn’t see any writing until he got home and glanced at a cologne bottle in the mirror. (You’d think he’d at least be asked to sign a statement -- or an autograph.) Not to mention that we also have to believe that the astronauts somehow failed to notice that the planet they were orbiting looked like Earth with the continents flipped. But at the same time, it’s kind of neat. I like the overall idea of a mirror world, though sadly not much ever really happens with it. Everybody is confused at first and they make a big deal out of the three-week/six-week discrepancy, but then as soon as the astronaut discovers the world is backwards they pretty quickly accept what’s going on. To confirm the theory, they decide to send the astronaut back up to a part of the spacecraft that’s still orbiting Earth. I guess to see if it’s backwards? Unfortunately, they expect the polarity of electricity to be reversed (turns out it ain’t) so things end badly and all the evidence is destroyed and, well, I may as well just stop here.

In any event, DOPPELGÄNGER is not a bad a movie and I enjoyed it well enough. But except for a few isolated interesting elements, it’s pretty forgettable overall. One thing I haven’t mentioned much yet is that the special effects are really very good. Some of the vehicles and buildings are implausibly automated, but otherwise they are very cool. In particular, there’s a scene during the spaceflight where the sun rises over Earth that is truly something to see. The explosive ending -- in which flaming space wreckage lays waste to the space agency’s headquarters -- is pretty terrific as well.