Alpha Centauri in Fiction - Film and Television

Film and Television

• Lost in Space (1965–1968), television series created by Irwin Allen and variously directed. The astronaut family of Professor John Robinson, accompanied by their pilot Major Donald West and a robot, strikes out from an overpopulated Earth in the spacecraft Jupiter 2. The crew is frozen in suspended animation for the five-and-a-half year voyage to a known habitable planet of Alpha Centauri, on which they are to found a colony. The ship is lost in space due to sabotage by an enemy agent, Dr. Zachary Smith, who is trapped aboard the ship at launch. Hurtling on into deep space, the Jupiter 2 crash lands on an unknown planet. Although remote, this lost world soon becomes a stopping-off point for practically every space-travelling alien or monster in the galaxy, each episode seeing the arrival of some new visitor. (See Lost in Space, the film, below.)
• "Metamorphosis" (1967), episode of Star Trek: The Original Series written by Gene L. Coon, as part of the film, television, and print franchise originated by Gene Roddenberry. Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive, lived in the Alpha Centauri system for some years before his mysterious disappearance in 2119. He is discovered alive and living in obscurity with the Companion (an ethereal presence of pure energy) by the crew of the Enterprise, who agree not to reveal his whereabouts.
• "The Curse of Peladon" (1972) and "The Monster of Peladon" (1974), serials written by Brian Hayles and directed by Lennie Mayne for the television series Doctor Who. Alpha Centauri is home to a race of six-armed chameleon caterpillars. Timid and prone to panic, they are still loyal and dutiful members of the Galactic Federation. The members of this species lack individual names in the show.
• Into Infinity (UK, 1975), educational children's television drama (also known as The Day After Tomorrow in the US) written by Johnny Byrne and directed by Charles Crichton. The plot of Into Infinity involves the interstellar mission of the Altares, a science vessel of the future that can travel at the speed of light. Departing from its original destination, the nearby star system Alpha Centauri, the Altares moves deeper into space and her crew of three adults and two children encounters phenomena such as a meteor shower, a red giant star and, finally, a black hole, which pulls the ship into another universe.
• "The Golden Man" (1981), episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (season 2) written by Calvin Clements Sr. and Stephen McPherson and directed by Vincent McEveety. Under the command of Admiral Asimov, the spaceship Searcher enters the asteroid belt of the Alpha Centauri system and becomes trapped on a planetoid by a lethal magnetic storm. The crew comes upon Velis, one of the golden people, humanoids who possess alchemical faculties and age in reverse. Velis reveals that his companion, Relos, can use special powers to help the ship escape destruction if the crew is willing to rescue him from the prison planet Iris VII orbiting Alpha Centauri.
• Lost in Space (1998), film inspired by the television series, written by Akiva Goldsman and directed by Stephen Hopkins. In the year 2058, Earth will soon be uninhabitable due the irreversible effects of global pollution. Professor John Robinson will lead his family to the habitable planet Alpha Prime of Alpha Centauri to prepare it for colonization by building a hypergate in the system. This time the Jupiter 2 is equipped with a hyperdrive that allows faster-than-light travel. Again, they become lost in space. (See Lost in Space, the television series, above.)
• Impostor (2002), film adapted by Scott Rosenberg from a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed by Gary Fleder. The film takes place in the year 2079. Forty-five years earlier, Earth was attacked by a hostile alien civilization from Alpha Centauri, and war has raged ever since. The story follows Spencer Olham, a government designer of top-secret weapons, who is detained on suspicion of unknowingly being a bomb-carrying, replicant assassin created by the Centaurians. As things turn out, he is just that, as the body of the real human Spencer Olham is discovered at the crash site of an alien spacecraft—but the hidden bomb explodes prematurely and the planned assassination attempt fails.

• Transformers (2007), film written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and directed by Michael Bay. Optimus Prime, leader of the benevolent Autobots, narrates the collapse of the Transformers' home world, Cybertron. It was destroyed by war between the Autobots and the malevolent Decepticons, led by Megatron in his quest to get hold of the AllSpark. The Autobots want to find the AllSpark so they can use it to rebuild Cybertron and end the war, while the Decepticons want to use it to defeat the Autobots and take over the universe. Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers, originally orbited Alpha Centauri, but was thrown out of orbit in the war and sent wandering through the galaxy. Cybertron has a metallic surface; the atmosphere is breathable by carbon-based life, but liquid water is rare enough on the planet that its existence is in doubt (see Comics: The Transformers below).
• Avatar (2009), film written and directed by James Cameron. The film is set in 2154, when Earth's RDA Corporation is mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush habitable moon of the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri A system (see graphic). Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to humans, is inhabited by the Na'vi, 10-foot-tall blue-skinned intelligent humanoids who live in harmony with nature. The film's title Avatar refers to the genetically engineered Na'vi-human hybrid bodies used by a team of researchers to interact with the natives. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of the Na'vi, and sympathetic humans use their Avatars to lead them in a revolt against the corporate security forces.
• The Asylum film Princess of Mars is set on the fourth planet of Alpha Centauri, named "Mars-216".