Discuss The Martian Chronicles
Discuss → TV Shows → The Martian Chronicles → General
It's a cryin shame......
posted by rooprectSTAFFMOD on November 26, 2023 at 7:53 AM
It's a cryin shame that they didn't have the budget for better special effects, because otherwise this is a pretty faithful adaptation of Ray Bradbury's book (so far, I'm halfway through).
I'm reading the book and watching the miniseries one chapter at a time, and I'm noticing scene-for-scene how close it is, with a lot of the dialogue taken directly from the text without any changes. Even beyond that, I'm really impressed at how some of the actors delivered their lines. Of course there's some of that 80s tv tendency to be melodramatic, but on the whole it's really fun seeing and hearing the words come off the page.
So far my highest praise goes to Bernie Casey, probably best known for his minor roles in the 80s romps Bill & Ted and Revenge of the Nerds, but here in Part 1 "The Expeditions" he gives a great nuanced performance as Maj. Spender. It's a tough role, and even in the book it's sorta hard to believe that a careered officer would suddenly go rogue, but Bernie Casey pulls it off in a very believable and sympathetic way. Unfortunately Bernie Casey died in 2017 after a stroke. I think this may be his greatest acting role.
There were a few unnecessary bits that the tv writers threw in, such as the Earth scenes (not in the book) that tried to give this episodic story more of a continuous plot. I guess we can forgive that since most 80 tv viewers wouldn't have the patience for 6 hours otherwise. The biggest failing is the special effects, the rockets in space which look so toylike that they turn the whole production a bit campy. Disco music didn't help either.
But other than that, at least as far as Part 1, this is a really good show! The look of the martians, especially "Mrs. K" in the opening, is really amazing--gold contact lenses! (their eyes are simply yellow in the book). I love the way the opening chapter is done like a 1 act play on a tight stage, very minimalistic which is exactly how Bradbury wrote it.... The Martian Chronicles First Expedition
Reply by rooprect
on January 31, 2024 at 9:40 AM
Just finished watching the whole thing and wanted to add more...
The show has an anticlimactic vibe which is probably why it failed to grab TV viewers in 1980. But I really enjoyed it. The best happens right in the beginning, Part 1 - The Expeditions. That's the part I talked about above with tons of suspense, drama & action ...and the best chapter, The Third Expedition, with Bernie Casey as the astronaut who goes rogue and starts killing off the men on his team. I feel like that could've been an entire movie by itself.
After that everything becomes (deliberately) anticlimactic. The expeditions have established a colony and the Martians are "conquered". So the remainder of the show, and Bradbury's book, is a series of vignettes about humans adapting to Martian life. These are like fables about the folly of humans. The book is very dark and sarcastic, but that might've been too much for 80s TV so we get a considerably lighter version here. Detestable characters like the trigger happy cowboy Sam Parkhill are played with more comedy than malice. Here Darren McGavin plays Sam Parkhill in a way that makes us actually like him. In a way, that packs a harder punch when Sam gets his come-uppance, and Darren proves he can switch from comedy to tragedy on a dime. "Tell me Colonel, what's half of nothing?"
At the end of Part 2 the colonization of Mars (and the entire human race) is declared a failure, so things get even more anticlimactic in Part 3 as we focus on the few lone stragglers left. This is where the show, and again Bradbury's book, gets really introspective. There is almost no action as things become more poetic and soul searching. I'm sure this disappointed the 1980 TV audiences who were at the time watching flashy shows like Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, not to mention in theaters The Empire Strikes Back was released that year. This show was doomed, but I think that's what makes it such a bold effort.
The final scenes with Rock Hudson coming to grips with the future of the human race, his spirituality, the curse of Spender, and finally meeting his martian are almost Kubrickian, the way they warp your mind without any obvious answers. In fact, now that I think about it, this entire show is a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey which hits us with tense drama (the HAL story) and then wraps up with a cryptic denouement that seems to drag on, even though that's where the ultimate statement is being made.
Overlooking the lousy special effects and some hammy 80s acting, I think this series is a win. To anyone who's read the book, this is a must-see because I think it does stay faithful, aside from taking the edge off Bradbury's black coffee sarcasm with some 80s saccharine. To the average scifi fan........ eeeeeh you may not dig it so much, but you may enjoy its campiness. Oh... and Barry Morse (Victor from Space: 1999!) pulls off a great American accent... I almost thought they might've overdubbed his voice). I'm sure I'll be watching this again. Overall 7/10.