The Project Doom Squeeze Experiment

September 1953 saw the return of The Adventures of Superman. But, before Season 2 began airing an odd Sci-Fi movie hit theaters at the beginning of the month that was based on a story by Robert Heinlein, Project Moonbase. He previously worked on a 1950 George Pal movie, Destination Moon, as a technical adviser and wrote some of the script. It was the first Hollywood movie to try to be scientifically accurate about going to space and the moon; a fun movie to watch. This is in complete contrast to Project Moonbase, where the technology is handled a little better than the characters, which aren't written for anybody.

Project Moonbase- It is the future of 1970 (September to be more precise) and the United States wants a moon base. A space station already exists in orbit as a launch bed for future lunar activities. But the "enemies of freedom" sneak a mole on board the mission. The three to make the historic first orbit of the moon is Major Moore, Dr. Wernher (the aforementioned mole) and Colonel "Bright Eyes" Briteis, a woman. Everything goes smoothly to the space station, but once the three board Magellan, their lunar orbiter, Wernher sabotages the mission. This forces Briteis to land on the moon to save everyone. Wernher admits he was under duress and wants to help now, so he and Moore moon walk to put an antenna on a ridge (because she landed them in a crater). Wernher dies on the mission, Moore makes it back and communications with Spacom (Space Command I assume) is restored. It is decided that the impromptu landing zone will make a perfect first moon base. General Greene, in charge of the mission, orders the two to marry so they can live on the moon without upsetting Americans, and most especially the US President who is also a woman.

Since it is 17 years in the future all communication devices will have a single antenna with a round double-ring on top. There appears to be no hippies or disco, but rockets are squat short designs that blast off to a disc-shaped space station about 350 feet in diameter. They do handle zero-G by telling us the characters are wearing magnetic shoes, and use a couple scenes with people walking on the walls and ceiling to sell it to the audience. I am assuming the film-makers couldn't figure out what to do with zero-G hair so they put shower caps of the future on all the actors.

The Magellan pod, which actually looks like the lunar lander we will use in 1969 (so this movie was only about a year off), has some interesting features. Inertia once again is handled poorly, but a wall of lights and a dial shows how many G's the astronauts are pulling during any acceleration. The bank of lights are numbered 1 thru 21 and I have no idea what they represent but they tell the pilot something. Everyone lays down in a hammock with controls and a lap belt to hold you in place. Not bad, but not realistic. For actual navigation a series of reel-to-reel tapes run through a computer, which is the auto-pilot. There is also a main view screen, a giant dial that measures the day and date, some lights indicating what the view screen is looking at and some kind of compass dial also related to the view screen. There is a lower level that houses supplies and a gondola that one sits in while it lowers you to the ground. To get to the space station we see two rockets, named Canada and Mexico. The three main characters fly in the Mexico, which has the same interior as Magellan, but to board it there is a lift built into the fin to take you to the flight deck. The space station (with the letters USSF on the side) has four docking ports equidistant around the edge that rockets shove their noses into. Those are the interesting parts of the movie.

This is the '50s and the characters are written as sexist as possible. Colonel Briteis got her rank for being the first human in space or something. Major Moore, her co-pilot for this historic mission, refuses to fly with her. We learn by the end that he's her ex-boyfriend and he hates that she out-ranks him. Almost everyone in the movie talks to Briteis like a child. At the tail end of the movie when Briteis and Moore are about to live on the moon for weeks, they are ordered to be married, because Spacom can't have them living together for weeks unmarried. There is no attempt to make sense of this, as Briteis, who is a fairly demanding pilot, suddenly wants to be married as if this is the only hope for her future. Then Moore is promoted straight to General so he can out-ran her. I know that in the '50s women's rights were almost non-existent, but no one looked at Lois Lane who is practically a poster child for "women's lib". It took World War II to put women in the working world in a vast enough scale to make a difference. Project Moonbase sets women back about a century. But that is a modern interpretation and I'm over-simplifying matters. This is supposed to be Science-Fiction where writers get to express progressive ideas, just not in this movie. At least we all have Star Trek.

Five Minutes to Doom- Lois (played by a new actress Noel Neill, who in fact played Lois in the serials) and Clark believe a man on death row to be innocent, and spend his final hours trying to prove it. Fairly straight forward but some shortcuts were made in the story telling. The man on death row is a construction site concrete inspector who is framed for murdering the foreman because he was about to expose a conspiracy to use poor steel construction on an overpass. There is no explanation how the owner of the construction company, Mr. Wayne, would benefit from murdering people, but neither does his secretary who eventually flips states evidence on him. Oddly we are never told what state Metropolis is in, but the governor's mansion is located up north in State City. These writers aren't even trying to make sense. The highlight of the episode is a hitman who tries to blow up the car Lois and Clark are in. He realizes this, grabs the bomb, and dives out of a moving car into a ditch as it explodes. Half is suit is ripped and you can see the Supersuit underneath. Luckily he covered up with a spare trench coat. Lois never asked how Clark survived jumping out of a speeding car hugging two sticks of dynamite in a lunch box.

The Big Squeeze- Someone on the writing staff must be a Batman fan. The last episode had a character named Wayne, and this one has a character named Grayson. Dan Grayson is an ex-con working at the Metropolis Furrier. Clark Kent has been tasked with coming up for the Citizen of the Year award and wants to give it to Grayson, without knowing his past. Not even his wife and kid know. But some shady dude, Luke Maynard, from the past blackmails him with a threat to expose him as an ex-con, and hurt his family. Clark knows something fishy is going on and figures out Grayson is being coerced. It all ends with Grayson being held at gunpoint in a cave and Superman must rescue him. Then Clark gets to share a life lesson on TV that being an ex-con means you've paid your debt to society and shouldn't be prejudiced against. Superman does a couple cool things in this episode. He rips a vault door off a wall and punches his way through a mountain to save Grayson in a cave. What's interesting is the blackmailer knows that Superman can't use X-Ray vision to see through lead, so he had a special lead-lined cave constructed. But as we learn, Superman can hear through lead just fine. How did Luke figure out this one limitation of Superman?

With season 2 a few things have changed. Perry White is on a tear about being called Chief, especially to Jimmy Olsen. Maybe it gives him bad memories of World War II. Jimmy got a haircut and does more slapstick idiotic things for the kids. The biggest thing of all is Lois Lane. Phyllis Coats couldn't continue to play Lois Lane so they cast Noel Neill. There is also some retooling of the opening credits.