Originally published on Science Fiction Weekly
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
Aka Doppleganger
Starring Roy Thinnes, Herbert Lom, Patrick Wymark, Ian Hendry, Others
Written by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson, and Donald James
Directed by Robert Parrish
102 minutes
1969
GRADE: D+
It is the near future. Everybody drives really neat electric cars. The homes occupied by the characters don’t look like they’ve ever really been occupied by human beings, Much is made of the security precautions protecting the archives of the European space agency, Eurosec, where people like the visiting Doctor Hassler (Lom) have to pass through metal detectors and have their bodies scanned by viewers that provide a clear cross-section of their bones. So much is made of this that we deduce that this must have seemed really exotic in 1969.
Hassler is there to look at some top-secret documents which he’s not allowed to take with him, but unknown to Eurosec, he’s a spy, complete with a fake eye which is actually a miniature camera. As soon as he’s alone he pops the orb out of its socket and peers at the facts and figures. Lom, a fine actor who is best remembered as the French police official who developed a facial twitch in that very same eye whenever Inspector Closeau did something stupid in the Pink Panther movies, seems to have been cast here because of the uncanny control he possessed over that half of his face. He is truly excellent at keeping that eyelid tightly shut over a reputedly empty eye-socket while the other eye remains wide-open and alert; it’s a small skill, but an impressive one, and it is sadly, by far, the best thing any actor does in this movie. Hassler is, of course, soon assassinated at the orders of ruthless space agency honcho Jason Webb (Wymark), and the entire espionage storyline is then dropped entirely, I repeat entirely. It has almost no relevance to the rest of the story, except to persuade a reluctant NASA that it should fund the mission described in the title. Still, that’s a nice trick with the eye.
So, let’s summarize. Secret documents. A fake eye with a camera in it. The cold-blooded assassination of the spy for political reasons. A space agency run by a man who will not stop at murder to achieve his goals. All glossed over after the first half hour. Seriously. If you wanted to, you could call this movie Journey to the Far Side of the Never-Mind.
Starting over: Eurosec starts preparing a mission to the planet that has been discovered sharing Earth’s orbit, albeit in perpetual opposition with the sun as celestial midpoint. The American, Colonel Glenn Ross (Thinnes), is a stalwart sort with a troubled marriage. His wife Sharon (Lynn Loring) enjoys telling him that it’s his fault that they’ve failed to conceive a child, because exposure to radiation from prior space flights has rendered him sterile. He is, she snarls at him, “half a man!” Nice lady. Especially since the real truth, which Ross secretly knows, is that she’s been taking birth control pills. The heartwarming tete-a-tete ends with Ross smacking her around and thus establishing that she’s probably done the right thing.
After about an hour of this and assorted other jiggery-pokery involving the interminable preparations for this mission, the mission finally takes off, carrying Ross and his fellow astronaut John Kane (Hendry). Their interplay is so dull it makes one long for the snappy comic stylings and overwhelming personal charisma of the Apollo astronauts, contemporary to the making of this film; frankly, even the (deliberately) emotionally muted Dave Bowman and Frank Poole of the previous year’s 2001: A Space Odyssey come off as cool as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., by comparison. The addition of a couple of unnecessary dream sequences, in a film that needed more padding like Mel Gibson needs more problems with the B’nai Brith, slows things down still further; as do scenes of the astronauts moving in vacuum that, by that point, make the zero-g ballets of the aforementioned 2001 look downright manic.
Does anything of note ever happen in this film? Well, finally, with about a third of it left. A crash-landing on the new planet leaves Ross and the critically wounded Kane evidently back on the very Earth they left, where Ross is understandably asked some very hard questions about how it is that the mission ended up returning home after only three weeks instead of six. There’s a hard interrogation taking place in a circular chamber that Webb has evidently had constructed for that very purpose, leading to obvious questions about how often the head of a space agency would need such a thing. You certainly won’t find any such place in the contemporary NASA tour.
The explanation for Ross’s troubles ultimately turn out to be that the planet on the far side of the sun is an exact doppelganger of ours, duplicating everything that happens on ours in simultaneous mirror image. He is therefore stuck on the mirror world while the mirror Ross is stuck on ours, an exchange that leaves him and his double both struggling with reverse lettering on cologne bottles and light switches that are somehow always on the wrong side of the door. His marriage still sucks, though, so there are some handy-dandy points of reference. (However, we don’t ever get back to what the hell was going on with Herbert Lom.)
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were the creative team responsible for a series of science-fiction marionette shows that included Supercar, Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet, all of which seemed genuinely cool to kids growing up at a certain time and place and are utterly difficult to endure for even a few minutes decades later. (They also made the live-action shows UFO and Space: 1999.) These productions benefited by impressive special-effects miniatures, of the sort that cannot be mistaken for anything other than special-effects miniatures, but retain an odd integrity even so. The same can be said of the spaceships and set design of Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, which are good enough to raise its overall grade by half a letter. But the real problem is that their characters remain equally cardboard whether their limbs are being pulled by strings or motivated by real human flesh. Nobody here is worth caring about, even provisionally.
You could remove the first two-thirds of this story and make a passable half-hour episode of Twilight Zone. It wouldn’t be a great episode, but viewers wouldn’t have to sit through the rest of it to get to the point.
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 3:17 pm
Remember seeing this at the drive-in as a kid.
Comment By: Carmelo Rafala
February 13th, 2018 at 4:20 pm
Wow. Nice review. And i agree with your points, from what I remember of the film. (I have this film on DVD somewhere in the house. If I can find it I might watch it again with this review in mind.)
Comment By: Christopher L. Bennett
February 13th, 2018 at 3:28 pm
They did, in fact, do a TWILIGHT ZONE episode a lot like this — “The Parallel” in season 4, by Serling, with Steve Forrest as an astronaut who lands on a not-quite-right Earth and realizes it’s a parallel universe. I think I remember being reminded of that episode when I saw the movie. (Although I wonder if Serling was inspired by Jerome Bixby’s “One Way Street,” the story that later inspired Bixby’s “Mirror, Mirror” for STAR TREK.)
Comment By: Christopher Bennett
February 13th, 2018 at 4:20 pm
They did, in fact, do a TWILIGHT ZONE episode a lot like this â âThe Parallelâ in season 4, by Serling, with Steve Forrest as an astronaut who lands on a not-quite-right Earth and realizes itâs a parallel universe. I think I remember being reminded of that episode when I saw the movie. (Although I wonder if Serling was inspired by Jerome Bixbyâs âOne Way Street,â the story that later inspired Bixbyâs âMirror, Mirrorâ for STAR TREK.)
Comment By: Eric Cline
February 13th, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Was that the hour-long season of TZ?
Comment By: Christopher Bennett
February 13th, 2018 at 7:17 pm
Yes, it was.
Comment By: Dave Creek
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Serling did a lot of “not quite Earth” or “it’s really Earth” stories on TZ. And of course, he wrote the script for PLANET OF THE APES, probably the best-known “it’s really Earth” story.
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
I’ve long argued that PLANET OF THE APES is the biggest, most expensive TWILIGHT ZONE episode ever!
Comment By: Dave Creek
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
And quite honestly, given the cliche that is the ending, I’ve always wondered about the love for that movie. The ending’s well done, with Heston’s performance selling the tragedy of it, but we’d seen it before. As an aside, I heard about the ending long before I’d ever seen the movie. If I’d seen it when it first came out, before I was familiar with the trope, perhaps I’d feel differently.
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Still my favorite sci-fi movie all time, although I didn’t see it for the first time until 1971, a few years after its original release. (My parents thought it was too “adult” for me in 1968.)
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
And, yeah, back in 1971, my reaction wasn’t “Whoa! What a tired cliche!” but more like “Whoa. What a dramatic ending!”
And it still gives me chills . . . .
Comment By: Dave Creek
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Gotcha! Some things you just gotta see at the right age, I guess. I didn’t try to read ERB’s Mars stories or “Doc” Smith’s Lensman stories until I was well into my twenties. I realized I should’ve read them about ten or fifteen years earlier, when I would’ve just been swept up with the wonder of them and wouldn’t have been tripping over the prose.
Comment By: Christopher Bennett
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
The ending isn’t the only worthwhile thing about POTA. There’s a whole movie leading up to it. It’s the social allegory and satire that make the film worthwhile, with or without the twist at the end. Also the acting. It was a wise choice to compensate for the limiting prosthetic makeup by casting actors with great voices.
Comment By: Dave Creek
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
I certainly get that part. But it seems it’s the ending that is the most iconic scene for most people. Maybe it’s time for a rewatch.
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
And the build-up to the ending helps sell it as well:
“A planet where apes evolved from men? I don’t buy it. There’s got to be another explanation.”
“Don’t go looking for it, Taylor. You might not like what you find.”
“What will he find out there, Doctor?”
“His destiny.”
The foreshadowing makes the ending feel both shocking . . . and inevitable.
Comment By: Greg Cox
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
In short, it’s not just about the twist.
Comment By: Eric Cline
February 13th, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Dave, although I liked APES more than you, I think you’d like film critic Danny Peary’s review of it (perhaps it was in one of his CULT MOVIES books?). I think you’d agree with his take. One damning sentence I remember clearly: “The film’s sole virtues are the result of money spent.”
Comment By: Wyman Cooke
February 13th, 2018 at 5:17 pm
I saw this movie years ago. Whoa!