The Martian Chronicles (1980– )

Earth sends its first manned probe to Mars in 1999, and a jealous Martian murders the two astronauts when his wife has erotic dreams of meeting them. Members of a subsequent expedition are ... See full summary »

Stars:

Rock Hudson, Gayle Hunnicutt, Bernie Casey

1 nomination.

Cast

Series cast summary:
Rock Hudson	...	Col. John Wilder (3 episodes, 1980)
Gayle Hunnicutt	...	Ruth Wilder (3 episodes, 1980)
Bernie Casey	...	Major Jeff Spender (3 episodes, 1980)
Christopher Connelly	...	Ben Driscoll (3 episodes, 1980)
Nicholas Hammond	...	Commander Arthur Black (3 episodes, 1980)
Darren McGavin	...	Sam Parkhill (3 episodes, 1980)
Roddy McDowall	...	Father Stone (3 episodes, 1980)
Bernadette Peters	...	Genevieve Seltzer (3 episodes, 1980)
Joyce Van Patten	...	Elma Parkhill (3 episodes, 1980)
Maria Schell	...	Anna Lustig (3 episodes, 1980)
Fritz Weaver	...	Father Peregrine (3 episodes, 1980)
Linda Lou Allen	...	Marilyn Becker (3 episodes, 1980)
Michael Anderson Jr.	...	David Lustig (3 episodes, 1980)
Robert Beatty	...	General Halstead (3 episodes, 1980)
James Faulkner	...	Mr. K (3 episodes, 1980)
Jon Finch	...	Christ (3 episodes, 1980)
Terence Longdon	...	Wise Martian (3 episodes, 1980)
Barry Morse	...	Peter Hathaway (3 episodes, 1980)
Nyree Dawn Porter	...	Alice Hathaway (3 episodes, 1980)
Wolfgang Reichmann	...	Lafe Lustig (3 episodes, 1980)
Maggie Wright	...	Ylla (3 episodes, 1980)
John Cassady	...	Briggs (3 episodes, 1980)
Alison Elliott	...	Lavinia Spaulding (3 episodes, 1980)
Vadim Glowna	...	Sam Hinston (3 episodes, 1980)
Richard Heffer	...	Captain Conover (3 episodes, 1980)
Derek Lamden	...	Sandship Martian (3 episodes, 1980)
Peter Marinker	...	McClure (3 episodes, 1980)
Richard Oldfield	...	Captain Nathaniel York (3 episodes, 1980)
Anthony Pullen Shaw	...	Edward Black (3 episodes, 1980)
Burnell Tucker	...	Bill Wilder (3 episodes, 1980)

Storyline

Earth sends its first manned probe to Mars in 1999, and a jealous Martian murders the two astronauts when his wife has erotic dreams of meeting them. Members of a subsequent expedition are hypnotized into believing that they have landed in the childhood community of their leader and have been reunited with deceased family and friends, and they are poisoned by the Martians. Col. John Wilder leads a third expedition and learns that a chicken pox virus brought to Mars by the first two expeditions has almost eradicated the Martian population. A member of Wilder's team becomes obsessed with protecting Mars from Earthman and murders some of the others in Wilder's party, before Wilder kills him. Colonists arrive on Mars to settle, among them priests seeking God, and a lone Martian masquerades as the most desired persons of various settlers. Global war on Earth reduces man's natal planet to radioactive waste, and most of the settlers returned there prior to the holocaust. Wilder struggles to ...

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Plot Keywords:

martian | fictional war | space colony | end of the world | outer space | 

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Taglines:

... a warning to all mankind.

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Genres:

Sci-Fi

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Details

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 January 1980 (USA)

Also Known As:

Crónicas marcianas

Filming Locations:

Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain

Company Credits

Production Co:

Charles Fries Productions, Stonehenge Productions, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

281 min 165 min (compact video) 293 min (DVD) 360 min 110 min (theatrical)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Robert Powell was asked to play the Jon Finch cameo

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Goofs

Characters on Mars talk to characters on Earth with no perceptible delay in communication. Even at their closest approach, signals would take at least 3 minutes to travel the distance between Mars and Earth.

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Quotes

Maj. Jeff Spender: You know, a race creates itself for a million years, refines itself, does everything it can to give itself respect and beauty, and then it dies - part in its own time, with dignity as it should be, but the other part... Does it perish of some majestic affliction? No, it doesn't. It dies of a disease that does not kill the youngest child on Earth. It's like saying that the Greeks died of mumps. Or the Roman Empire was decimated by athlete's foot.

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Connections

Referenced in Ghosts of Mars (2001)

User Reviews

You're alive

I saw this in 79-80, when I was 8 years old. It was shown quite late once a week on the BBC. Due to its late showing and married with my tender age, I was the only person out of all my peers who watched it. It left a big impression on me and I can still remember some of the scenes over twenty years on.....The thing is I have asked scores of people over these years to see if anyone remembered it. As the years passed and not one person said they had, I was beginning to wonder if it was a product of my fertile imagination - especially with its dreamy tone. Here we are on IMDB (one of my very favourite web sites) and you have proved to me that I am not totally mad. I hope it will be available in the UK one day so I can see just why it left this mark on me. I won't place a review though as it would be unfair after so long. LONG LIVE IMDB!!!