Space Station 76

Science fiction is most often the medium of the future, looking forward to a tomorrow which may be brighter or may be troubled but will certainly be different, changed through a technology which has opened up a new possibility to humanity be it good or bad. Yet science fiction also has the past to explore and an equally valid subgenre is the alternate history, the world as it might have been had a different route been taken, or in the case of the deep space refuelling point Space Station 76, how the solar system might have been had the reality of economics not curtailed the ambition of the space programme.

The directorial debut feature of actor Jack Plotnick, perhaps best known as Allan Finch, ill-fated Deputy Mayor of Sunnydale who accidentally met the pointed end of Faith’s stake, from a script co-written with Jennifer Cox, Sam Pancake, Kali Rocha and Michael Stoyanov expanded from their earlier stage production, the name is telling. Not only are the seventies the key influence in the physical design of the film, the station exteriors and interiors, the ships, the costumes, the interfaces, the soundtrack, the attitude towards science and also in the way the relationships are expressed and explored, but the specific year referenced is also important: this is science fiction cinema before Star Wars changed everything.

Lieutenant Jessica Marlowe (The Lord of the Rings’ Liv Tyler) observes that asteroids find their perfect orbits, drifting for centuries without ever touching, but unbeknownst to her an instability has caused a collision within the asteroid field previously charted by her predecessor Daniel aboard Space Station 76, and like her own arrival it is the first whisper which will cause a cascading avalanche. Her commanding officer, Captain Glenn Terry (Watchmen’s Patrick Wilson, no stranger to the seventies having survived The Conjuring), is surly in her presence, refusing to discuss his work tracking the asteroids or the reasons for Daniel’s abrupt departure.

Misty (Boston Legal’s Marisa Coughlan) is superficially more welcoming but it soon becomes apparent that she sees Jessica as a threat, resentful of the easy friendship her daughter Sunshine (the wonderfully guileless Kylie Rogers) has formed with Jessica and the time her technician husband Ted (White Collar and In Time’s Matt Bomer) shares with her in the arboretum. Emotionally needy and with her affair with Steve Harrison (Sliders’ Jerry O’Connell, most recently seen in Veronica Mars) soon to be curtailed when he and wife Donna transfer to Starship 8, if Misty can’t be happy, she will sabotage it for others.

In the meantime, Donna (Rocha, another former Sunnydale resident, Spike‘s former love Cecily and later vengeance demon Halfrek) stays in their quarters, overprotective of her new baby, gazing at Viewmaster slides of the latest fashions and dreaming of her new life and  leaving behind the bulky cryogenic unit which contains her frozen mother-in-law.

A character analysis which could be seen as Spacewomen on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown rather than the modern expectation of science fiction, everyone is awkward, everyone is repressing something: Ted is getting stoned, Misty receives Valium on demand from automated station psychiatrist Doctor Bot (voiced by Stoyanov), Sunshine is starved of affection and Glenn is making his way through the cocktail menu between half-hearted suicide attempts and eyeing up space truckers.

Visually the film is a delight, with recognition due to cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, production designer Seth Reed (Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Minority Report), art director Jennifer Moller and costume designers Sarah Brown and Sandra Burns, Plotnick describing the colour palette as “a faded Polaroid” and recalling that there was a time in the seventies when people dressed as though they were from the future, the wide collars of the men contrasting with the flowing ethereal Kaftans for the expressive Mindy, dresses made of wallpaper for the uptight Donna and Jessica sporting a pair of white leather boots which had languished unworn for fifteen years in Liv Tyler’s wardrobe before filming.

With the visual effects purposely staid to reflect the limitations of the decade they are emulating, the station itself reminds strongly of the orbital office complex of Star Trek The Motion Picture while the geodesic arboretum is clearly a reference to Silent Running’s Valley Forge and her sister ships, the holographic communication by which Glenn contacts Daniel (Glee’s Matthew Morrison) is a rainbow beaming in from Logan’s Run, and the distant twin stars which illuminate the shuttlepods, one blue, one red, recall the colours the great Bob Peak chose for the posters of Superman the Movie, Star Trek The Motion Picture and Star Trek III The Search for Spock.

A more entertaining film than Liv Tyler’s previous encounter with asteroids in Armageddon, Space Station 76 will appeal to discerning viewers who enjoyed her more personal foray into genre in Robot and Frank with which it shares the optimism of the golden age of science fiction, an era when there was an innocent belief in the possibility that space exploration would continue and expand even if it was not envisioned in pastel jumpsuits, blue eyeshadow, blown dry feather cuts and Todd Rundgren playing on the music centre.

Space Station 76 is now available on DVD

 

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