Violence/Gore: None really. Even the Martians who die do so with your standard sci-fi fade-out - no muss, no fuss.

Sex/Nudity: Nah, this is too cerebral for that.

Best Line: “Life is its own answer. Accept it and enjoy it day by day. Live as well as possible. Expect no more. Destroy nothing. Humble nothing. Look for fault in nothing. Leave unsullied and untouched all that is beautiful. Hold that which lives in all reverence. For life is given by the sovereign of our Universe. Given to be savored. To be luxuriated in. To be respected.” (Ray Bradbury’s original text left largely alone)

Score:

No one is saying this is the greatest science fiction live-action literary adaptation ever, although there was a time in my youth when I foolishly believed it to be so. I was a huge fan of the novel and even more taken with the notion that I was able to sit it come alive on the small screen. So I looked past the awful effects, the chintzy wah-wah pedal-enhanced score and cardboard acting to the meaning behind the story. And I loved it. Age has mellowed my opinion, but it still ranks right up there, flaws and all. It’s a damn good attempt to bring Ray Bradbury’s epic saga of Martian colonization to life, and later attempts to do so in episodic form via the long-running RAY BRADBURY THEATER were equally as good but never as charming.

Episode 1 details the first three expeditions to Mars, a series of tragedies that surprisingly do not deter us from continuing to send more men into danger until that red planet is ours. Amurrican tenacity, huh? The first falls victim to a jealous Martian husband in an eerie setpiece that sets the perfect mood for the Martian setting and the rest of the series. The second, led by ’70s TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond, stands as one of the best individual story adaptations as the crew of Zeus 2 falls victim to a cunning telepathic trap that you might find equally moving and chilling. Finally, star Rock Hudson himself takes Darren McGavin, Bernie Casey and some no-name extras that you know won’t be long for this world or any other to the Martian frontier. There, Casey’s Spender becomes so enraptured with the now nearly-dead Martian culture that he snaps and begins executing the crew. His final exchange with Hudson’s Colonel Wilder establishes themes that will play out through the rest of the series, and you might even find yourself wondering - was that really Spender? Was it a Martian? And would it really matter either way?

In Episode 2, the story shifts to the colonizing period, and while Wilder does what he can to fulfill a promise to Spender to preserve the Martian culture, humanity has its way of washing over a place and absorbing it - but on Mars, that effect seems to run both ways. In one of many intercutting storylines, Fathers Peregrine and Stone discover an ancient Martian race that has long since abandoned its physical form (yep, they’re the Old Ones, as any die-hard SF fan could already have guessed), and this discovery causes Peregrine to contemplate some pretty bizarre permutations of the traditional faith. Fritz Weaver and Roddy McDowall shine in their roles, but the story is pretty hard to swallow even in this framework. The real gem of the episode is the tale of the Lustig family and the hapless Martian who decides to take on the appearance of their long-lost son. It’s a wrenching story, but watch for Hudson’s often bizarre facial expressions. Sometimes it looks like he isn’t sure whether he should look astonished or amused. The episode ends with a poorly executed encounter between Sam (Darren McGavin) Parkhill and some few surviving Martians, who have apparently decided to chase him in their little miniature tabletop sandships and give him half of the planet just before Earth is incinerated in a global nuclear fireball that looks suspiciously like a very bad painting. I love McGavin, but he plays his whole role as if he’s in a children’s TV show - and he might be right. Sigh

In the final episode, Earth is finished, and Mars has become a planetwide ghost town with few humans left to to preserve the race. Without a doubt one of the two most embarrassing chapters in the original novel (the other being an extremely dated racial tract) is adapted here with major modifications, rendering it even more insufferable and ridiculous. Even Bernadette Peters and her porcelain figure can’t save this one. A favorite chapter of mine involving a dying man and his strangely attentive family also suffers with the casting of Barry Morse as the enthusiastic hermit. Morse’s overacting is painful next to Rock Hudson’s lethargy and Roddy McDowall’s always reliable realism. Things pick up when a superbly cast British actor appears as a Martian ghost who finally gives Colonel Wilder a chance to learn about the Martian way of life. But then it all wraps up with a very poorly adapted “Million Year Picnic,” Bradbury’s final chapter in the novel, with uncomfortable British child actors clumsily speaking with American accents and trying desperately not to laugh at Hudson’s ’50s-style fishing hat and somnambulistic line readings.

So yes, there are flaws, and plenty of them. This is a late ’70s production attempting to adapt a sweeping epic in the annals of classic science fiction literature, and it trips up on a number of challenges that it must inevitably try to tackle. For one thing, the special effects are largely hideous, largely composed of very poorly scaled model shots of rockets that wouldn’t look out of place in an old ’50s Flash Gordon serial or an early ’70s DOCTOR WHO episode - appropriate enough since this was co-produced by Milton Subotsky, who also oversaw the two ’60s WHO films, and by the BBC as well. But even there the series manages to rise above its budgetary limitations with set, costume and make-up design that is almost masterful in its elegance, rough edges or no. And although I think Rock Hudson did a fine job, he is a tad, shall we say, uninvolved. At times, his face is a virtual mask of ambivalence.

It has often been said that Ray Bradbury stories are difficult to adapt faithfully since his prose is so poetic and his dialogue too flowery or elusive for an actor to perform with the same emotion captured on the printed page. If that were true, all those seasons of RAY BRADBURY THEATER must be an illusion. True, at times his work might irk those who try to bring it to the screen, but when they succeed the results can be magical. This is not to say that every line rings true here, but there are moments. Perhaps the two defining scenes for this miniseries, both of which focus on attempts to articulate just what it is that made Martian life so beautiful, are the exchange between Spender and Col. Wilder in Episode 1 and the one between Wilder and the Martian ghost in Episode 3. Even if the rest of this series does nothing for you, I guarantee you will hear those words echoing in your head for a long time after the final credits roll. And perhaps you might even learn something from them as well. This is Bradbury’s - and this production’s - greatest lasting achievement.

DVD Extras: None at all, and it’s a major disappointment.

ATB