*** Just so there's no misconception regarding all
this, but I have never NEVER so much as implied that
the film-makers ever intended there to be a
"mothership" (for lack of a better word).

The Serling-Wilson script -- and the movie as-filmed
based on it -- never depict the Aft sections of the
ship that splashes down in Dead Lake. If they had
never made any sequels, then it's somewhere behind
that never-opened door in the rear of the hibernation
chamber area where I would have situated the CARGO
hold, the Mess, the Head, and all the other goodies
that an 18 month + journey to another star system
would logistically require.

But in "BENEATH" we see a "look-alike" ANSA ship from
the outside in its entirety -- and it's Aft portions
just are not large enough to have within it all those
necessities for a trip lasting a year and a half plus.
It took Taylor's ship 18 months (of SHIP-TIME) to get
from Cape Kennedy to Dead Lake, and if Brent's ship
had been sent out after him and took the same amount
of time to reach Earth-in-3955, then there's NO WAY IN
HELL that that little ship could've had enough in the
way of those necessities to last Brent and his
'Skipper' for 18 months. No smeggin' way, Jose!

And, in "ESCAPE", the ship which is assumed to be the
same one we saw in "PLANET" has somehow been altered
so as to be shorter (those hibernation bunks somehow
lopped off and discarded), and to have a different
hatch on the port side. There are POTA fans who say
that it was the intention of the filmmakers that we
accept the improbable notion that Milo somehow FOUND
the ship on the bottom of Dead Lake (how did he know
where to look???), dredged it up, dried it out,
restored power to the depleted Primary and Auxiliary
power units, cut off the back end of the ship and
soldered a heat-shield onto it, made that new
gull-wing hatch on the port side of the cabin, and
somehow made the ship spaceworthy. All in a matter of
several weeks -- a couple months, tops.

THAT notion is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard.

Remembering that Boulle's novel involved a
"mothership" making the 2-year journey to the
Betelgeuse system and carrying within it 3 smaller
vehicles -- shuttlecrafts -- with which the Earthlings
descend onto Soror, leaving their mothership up in
orbit... it occurred to me that MAYBE I could better
explain what the filmmakers put on-screen by
re-interpreting those 3 different ships seen in
"PLANET", "BENEATH" and "ESCAPE" as 3 shuttles
attached to a mothership which is designed to remain
in orbit, just like in Boulle's novel.

It ain't what Serling/Wilson or Dehn intended -- hell,
what Serling/Wilson intended seems to have been either
misunderstood or IGNORED by Dehn when he wrote
"BENEATH" -- but as far as I'm concerned none of that
matters. Dehn introduced the other ship, Skipper, and
Brent for one and ONLY ONE reason: he HAD NO CHOICE
but to introduce a new Protagonist due to the
unfortunate insistence of Heston to do no more than a
glorified cameo in the sequel.

If Heston had told 'em he would NOT reprise his role
as Taylor unless he had script approval, then Dehn
would've had to come up with a plot in which Taylor
was the Protagonist and the story was (in Heston's
view) worth telling. Heston's minimal participation
FORCED Dehn to find a quick-and-easy way to introduce
a new astronaut character who could have an adventure
that culminates in the Mutant world.

Dehn's "BENEATH" scenario actually violates what had
already been established in "PLANET", though that was
probably due to Dehn misunderstanding that original
scenario.

The task I set myself was to find a way -- if at all
possible -- to re-interpret the on-screen information
of all the POTA movies and TV episodes under the
"Mothership" Hypothesis, and see if it could make
sense without sacrificing lines of dialogue or visual
information (set designs, prop designs) from the
actual movies.

To MY satisfaction, it WORKS. Some may like it (like
Neil), and some may dislike it (like any number of my
detractors here in Yahooland). But what matters to me
is that it makes sense of the information regardless
of whether or not Dehn or anybody else at APJAC
intended things along my lines.

They made a whole lotta mistakes in those productions,
I'll be the first to admit. Crazy as it sounds, I've
been able to transform those mistakes into relevant
"facts" -- Unflubbing the Flubs -- so as to set the
groundwork, the backdrop, of my own POTA opus.

Serling/Wilson and Dehn seem to have had virtually no
real understanding of -- let alone expertise --
regarding Rocket Science. I am by no means an expert
on the subject, but I have a fair layman's
understanding of the subject, with the help of books
such as "TO RISE FROM EARTH" (a most excellent source
of info on the history and science of Spaceflight) . In
order to make my POTA project even remotely plausible
from a "hard SF" point-of-view, I had to find a way to
make the spaceship stuff presented in the movies and
TV show MAKE SENSE. It DIDN'T beforehand. But, with my
re-think of it, my Mothership Scenario, it now CAN
make sense. Of everything -- especially of the
EARTH-TIME clock information. The scenario is useful
and consistent, so I'm using it. And that's that.

Patrick
------------ --------- --------- --------- ------

> ------------ --------- --------- --------- ------
>
> I like to keep it simple. Let me get this whole "mothership" thing
straight -- you are proposing that a larger ship -- with Taylor,
Landon, Dodge, Stewart, Brent and "Skipper" (and who knows how many
more astronauts) were all in orbit above the Earth in 3978? -- and
that Taylor and his crew descended first and then Brent and Skipper
descended at some later point?
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

*** Actually, they were all 320 lightyears away in 3978, and when the
whole shebang -- Mothership plus 3 shuttles -- zipped back to Earth
via activation of its "Emergency Homing Device" (just like Virdon's
ship did), they travelled BACKWARDS through Earth-Time, from 11-25-
3978 to 7-01-3955 (just as Virdon's ship went backwards from "JUL 14
3085" to 3-21-3085). Both ships had ended up in the vicinity of Black
Holes (the one at Alpha Centauri having once been a planet which,
like Earth, was destroyed by a Doomsday Bomb). Both ships had an
Emergency Homing Device -- Jones activated the one on Virdon's ship,
and SOMEBODY had to be awake on Taylor's (Mother)ship in order to
send his Orion Mission back to Earth.

Both ships -- when warping in "overdrive" at maximum warp after
activation of the Homing Device -- travel at the EXACT SAME RATE: 1
lightyear every NEGATIVE 26.7125 days. Virdon's ship travels 4.34 LY
in 115.93225 "retro"-days [near Midnight of 7-14-3085, back to just
after Midnight, in the early hours of the morning of 3-21-3085]; by
the time Virdon's ship lands on the surface near Chalo, it's past
sunrise and Farrow's still asleep in the woods. Taylor's ship(s)
travel 320 lightyears in 8,548 "retro"-days [from November 25th, 3978
back to July 1st, 3955].

The only reason, though, that the single EARTH-TIME clock on Taylor's
shuttlecraft didn't click backwards to "3955" -- as did the one on
Brent & Skipper's ship AND the one on the Ape-onaut ship -- is
because something caused Taylor's ship to decouple from its docking
socket, unplugging the ship-to-ship computer feed. As long as
Taylor's shuttle was "plugged in" all the telemetry data from the
Master Computer on the MAIN ship was automatically fed into the
computer systems of the shuttle... but when the feed is cut off,
Taylor's shuttle's computer didn't know what the Main ship's computer
knew -- such as, that the Hyperdrive had been activated with the
Emergency Homing Device dictating the flightpath (back to Earth).

Thus, they retrogress from their Destination (in 3978) back to Earth
(in 3955), having gone across Space-Time and not just Space. The same
hyperdrive that can do this (due to exposure to the Space-Time
warping properties of a Black Hole interfering with the Space-Time
warping properties of the warpfield generated by their ship's
hyperdrive engine) can also zoom back through Time from 3955 to 1973,
which the Ape-onauts do -- watching the EARTH-TIME clock click
backwards.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
>
> I don't buy that. Brent and Skipper were on a rescue mission -- and
went out (launched from Earth) in search of Taylor and company after
he was missing for no less than 2 years.

*** Not quite. The President tells the Joint Chiefs that the ship in
which the Ape-onauts landed was "one of two" that had been "missing"
for two years. He says this sometime in the year 1973, probably in
the Autumn, since Armando mentions soon traveling to their winter
quarters in Florida.

If BOTH ships had been missing for 2 years, then that means that both
ships MUST have left Earth around the Autumn of 1971.

However, when Taylor gives his "final report" at the beginning
of "PLANET" the SHIP-TIME date reads "7-14-1972" -- and Taylor says
that "in less than an hour we'll finish our sixth month out of Cape
Kennedy... six months in Deep Space..."

Six months prior to 7-14-1972 is JANUARY 14th of 1972. If Taylor's
ship had been gone for 2 years prior to reappearing, then "ESCAPE"
would have to take place no earlier than mid-January of 1974.

Yet, when the Presidential Commission is dissolved by its Chairman,
it is said to be "the year of Our Lord NINETEEN SEVENTY THREE."

So, is this just a mistake?

Not the way I re-interpret it.

In my scenario -- which takes all 5 movies AND the TV show into
account as "canon" -- the 2 spacecrafts mentioned by the President
actually refer to the two MISSIONS:

1) the ALPHA CENTAURI mission, commanded by Colonel Virdon, and

2) the ORION mission, "the one commanded by Colonel Taylor"

The "two years" line, then, refers to the FIRST of the two missions
that had been sent out by ANSA - Virdon's voyage to Alpha Centauri.
His ship left Earth in the late summer of 1971 and, having only one
shuttle's worth of Mass to lug around inside its warpfield, is able
to travel the 4.34 lightyears to Alpha Centauri in only 9 years of
EARTH-TIME (corresponding to only a couple days of SHIP-TIME).

Taylor's mission to an unnamed star in Orion leaves about 4 months
later, in mid-January of 1972, and when Taylor and TWO of his final
crew blasted off from Cape Kennedy, it was in the gull-wing-hatched
shuttle that Milo later found -- NOT the one that we see in "PLANET",
which is one of two "sister" ships already docked to the Mothership
in orbit -- a ship that ANSA pretended was a mere "space station".

The combined mass of the Main ship plus 3 shuttles causes the Time
Dilation Ratio to be greater for Taylor than for Virdon; so, although
Virdon can get to Alpha Centauri -- 4.34 LY away -- in only 9 years
of EARTH-TIME, it takes Taylor's ship 2,006 years of EARTH-TIME to
travel 320 LY. If Virdon had gone to Taylor's destination, it
would've taken only 663.6 years of EARTH-TIME rather than 2,006
years, and if Taylor had gone to Alpha Centauri it would've taken his
more massive ship(s) 27.2 years of EARTH-TIME rather than just 9
years. [Thus, Taylor's mission is sent out with the foreknowledge
that he and his crew will get to their destination far into our
future... so that his destination must have something about it that
is supremely important -- otherwise, there are plenty of NEARER star
systems he COULD have gone to!]

The President has to differentiate the two ships -- Virdon's and the
smaller shuttle Taylor launched in -- because BOTH ships had a nearly
identical design, with the port-side hatch that opens like a
DeLorean's door.

Virdon's mission was due to arrive back on Earth after a total trip
time of less than a week of SHIP-TIME (actually, only about 3 days,
the way I've figured it), equivalent to about 18 years of EARTH-TIME.
Virdon left Earth anticipating that he would return in 1989. His wife
would be 18 years older, as would his son Chris. Why would a married
man like Virdon (or Jones) leave behind family under those
conditions? For the chance to be the FIRST human beings to fly to
another star.

Taylor, on the other hand, had volunteered to go on a mission which
wouldn't arrive at its destination until 2,006 years of EARTH-TIME
had gone by, in 3978. After experiencing only 18 months of SHIP-TIME,
Taylor and his crew would find themselves in the 40th Century, 320 LY
away from their home planet.

But... they took an "Earth" along with 'em. A "spaceship Earth".
A "mother Earth". In my scenario, the Main ship -- designed to remain
in orbit as its shuttles ferry colonists back and forth from ship to
surface -- is named "U.S.S. Earth", named after their homeworld.

Thus, I re-interpret two particular lines of dialogue:

"Landon, get out a last signal..." "... to EARTH, that we've landed!"

and

"Brent... did you contact EARTH?"

Now, Taylor had promised to make another "report" AFTER the "final
report" -- but not until they'd reached "touchdown". "... and that
completes my final report until we've reached touchdown... " he said.
Is this what he's ordering Landon to do, to make a report? To send
out a report on their mission status all the way from where they're
at (a planet 320 LY away from the Solar System) back to the planet
Earth? Is a "report" the same thing as "a last signal"? If the plan
is to send out a radio message from their position to where Taylor
believes the planet Earth to be -- 320 lightyears away -- then such a
radio message won't even reach Earth until the year 4298!

The way I've re-interpreted it, after waking up out of hibernation
NOT up in space, in orbit around the planet orbiting the star system
they'd headed for, but rather ON THE SURFACE already, and in the
water (which they weren't programmed to do), Taylor wants to "read
the tapes" -- to find out what the ship's computer can tell him about
their status (including WHERE they are). And, while he's trying to do
that, he orders Landon to try to get out a RADIO signal to a
mothership that he HOPES is up in orbit. If it isn't, then it means
the ship probably blew up and the shuttle had been able to detach
itself just before the catastrophe -- as it was designed to do, in
case they had a meltdown in their ship's nuclear reactor -- so that
the shuttle could act as a lifeboat.

Unfortunately, Landon can't establish radio contact with any ship
orbiting above -- because their Auxiliary Power cuts off. Even though
he doesn't have "time to read the tapes", Taylor later believes
firmly that they made it to their destination -- solely because he
saw the date "11-25-3978" on the EARTH-TIME clock. He anticipated
seeing that date on the clock when they arrived at the Orion system,
so he bases his ASSUMPTION on this single Earth-Time reading.

After the mothership "U.S.S. Earth" pops back into Earth-space (in
the gravity well of the planet Earth, and not of the Moon or the
Sun), it immediately begins to "fall" towards the center of gravity.
The Taylor-shuttle, unplugged from its docking slot, had been held to
the Main ship by only a guy-wire and when that guy-wire snaps,
Taylor's shuttle is propelled away from the Main ship and falls away
towards the planet Earth faster than the rest - because the Main
ship's rocket engines had been firing, leaving the shuttle to keep
falling, behind.

The Main ship cuts off its thruster for 2 reasons: with Taylor's
shuttle no longer attached on one side of it, the Main ship's center-
of-gravity is off-kilter, causing it to fly in an arc rather than in
a straight line trajectory; and, they don't want to be separated too
far from Taylor's falling-away shuttle.

Unfortunately, the only way to save Taylor's ship is to override his
shuttle's navigational computer and fly it back to their position via
REMOTE CONTROL... but they're in bad shape to attempt it.

So... what to do?

Somebody awake on the Main ship has to use a computer console to
remotely control the flight computer on the Brent/Skipper ship, which
has to be detached from the Main ship so as to return their center-of-
gravity to the midline. Taylor's shuttle and Brent's shuttle had been
attached to the Main ship in a configuration where one was on "top"
and the other was upside-down attached to the "bottom", their equal
masses balancing out [like a guy lugging around two heavy suitcases,
each one balancing the other]. The docking hatch of each shuttle is a
circular one in the "floor" of the Airlock chamber behind the aft
door of the cockpit-to-hibernat ion chamber, and a cylindrical conduit
runs through the Main ship connecting the two docking ports. If
somebody were in Brent's ship during Taylor's "final report" looking
out the front windows, he would see the exact same starfield, only it
would be upside down from how Taylor saw it.

Somebody in the Main ship (in between the two shuttles) would also
see the starfield, with Taylor's perspective, in the "upper"
hemisphere of the Main ship. The "lower" hemisphere contains the
enclosed shuttle bay in which the 3rd shuttlecraft is docked: having
no Airlock-floor docking hatch -- as the other two "sister" ships
have -- it can only be accessed by astronauts in EVA suits through
that gull-wing hatch.

Elsewhere in the Main ship are hibernation bunks for other members of
the crew (all but the 4 in Taylor's shuttle and Brent & Skipper in
the other one), as well as a well-stocked Cargo bay, a Mess [food
preparation and dining area], a Head [toilet-and- shower facility],
water tanks, a nuclear reactor to power the hyperdrive engine, fuel
supplies for the Main ship, etc etc.

After the Main ship remote-controls Brent's shuttle off and away,
three of the ANSA astronauts suit up and get into the 3rd shuttle.
They fly out of the small shuttle bay, away from the Main ship and
the thrusters on Brent's ship AND the Main ship are then fired,
putting both on orbital trajectories around the planet Earth, to keep
them from accelerating to crash landings on the surface. All the
while, Brent and Skipper -- who have been in hibernation for nearly a
year -- are kept in hibernation, so as to prevent them from going
through the few days' worth of food in the survival packs in their
shuttle. Because they're in hibernation, they don't know that the
Main ship arrived at their destination and subsequently zipped back
to Earth -- thus, when they awaken, Brent, seeing an EARTH-TIME
reading of "3955" will assume that they came out of warp short-of-the-
mark, and have landed on a planet about 316.33 LY away from Earth,
about 3.66 LY short of the 320 LY total distance they were supposed
to have travelled.

That's why (in my re-interpretation) Brent tells his Skipper, "I
don't know what planet we're on..." He doesn't know it's Earth
because, from the limited information he has, he's got every reason
to believe they're ALMOST at the destination, but not quite: short by
a few lightyears. From 1972 to 3955 is 98.85% of the 2,006 years of
EARTH-TIME they were supposed to experience, from 1972 to 3978. And,
multiplying 320 by 0.9885 gets you only to 316.33 LY.

"Brent... did you contact Earth?"

The PLANET "Earth"??? If they're on what they believe to be an alien
planet orbiting a star somewhere far away from our Solar System, then
there's no way they could get into "contact" with the planet Earth --
not without some sort of STAR TREK "subspace radio". But Taylor
didn't have such a radio in the first film, otherwise he could've
shut off the hyperdrive, gotten his ship at Rest velocity (relative
to the Earth) and then engaged in a REAL-TIME conversation with
somebody back Home. Taylor makes his Final Report while travelling at
a relativistic velocity, so that a whole day goes by on Earth after
only half a minute of SHIP-TIME.

No, these ANSA ships can't communicate via superluminal "subspace"
radio. In order to get into CONTACT with "Earth", Skipper would have
to mean something other than the planet Earth. Hence, I've re-
interpreted the name as being also the name of their mothership:
the "U.S.S. EARTH".

It would be like a Star Fleet dude asking the pilot of a crashed
shuttlecraft Galileo, "Did you contact Enterprise?" The Enterprise
would remain in orbit (of course), while a shuttlecraft would fly
down to the surface. A crashed shuttle crew would try to contact
their mission commanders up in orbit.

Thus, the ones who sent Brent and Skipper on a Rescue Mission to find
Taylor did NOT send them from the planet Earth. Rather, they were
sent by the Acting Commander of the Orion Mission, who is up in the
Main ship in a different orbit. Brent's ship had had Taylor's orbit-
to-landing trajectory information [telemetry] downloaded into its
navigational computer -- because the 3 astronauts in the 3rd ship,
racing after Taylor along that same trajectory, had remote-control
piloted Taylor's shuttle down to its water-landing. Brent's ship --
months later -- knows the trajectory enough to be able to land within
a few miles of Taylor's splashdown site, in the Forbidden Zone. When
he talks of "Taylor's trajectory" he CAN'T mean his flightpath all
the way from planet Earth (in January 1972) through hundreds of
lightyears and somehow back at planet Earth in 3955. Taylor's ship
was presumably LOST, right? It WOULDN'T be lost if somebody in
another ship had access to telemetry information so accurate that a
ship could be landed within spittin' distance of it. Dehn's intended
scenario is sheer nonsense -- I'll be the first to vehemently admit
it. It DEMANDS re-interpretation, so as not to be utterly
nonsensical. An orbit-to-landing trajectory, preknown by another ship
which had remotely piloted Taylor's shuttle down to the surface, can
easily be transmitted via radio-link to another ship within radio
contact range. It makes sense of the nonsensical flub Dehn introduced
when he wrote "BENEATH".

This post is, of course, wayyyy too long as it is, and I know I'm
gonna get grief for THAT alone, not to mention the content!

Patrick

In a message dated 9/5/06 8:06:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time, atragon1@aol. com writes:

Also, if Taylor is talking to a mothership in "real-time", why all that talk about a better bread of man?

Bill


"For those of you who are reading me now...."  This is classic Serling/Twilight Zone "soft SF" type stuff.  PLANET can't escape it.  You're not supposed to think about it in practical, real world, plausible, "hard SF" terms, etc.  Just let it pass over you and try to grasp what's being said in subtext.