Plot
The rocketship MR-1 (for "Mars Rocket 1"), returns to Earth after the first manned flight to Mars. Thought first lost in space, when the rocket reappeared, mission control couldn't raise the crew by radio. Its ground-crew land the rocket successfully by remote control. Two survivors are found aboard: Dr. Iris Ryan (Naura Hayden) and Colonel Tom O'Bannion (Gerald Mohr), his arm covered by a strange alien growth. The mission report is recounted by Dr. Ryan as she attempts to find a cure for Col. O'Bannion's arm.
While exploring Mars, Ryan was attacked by a carnivorous plant, which was killed by O'Bannion; They also discover, after mistaking its legs for trees, an immense bat/rat/spider creature, who is later repelled by a freeze ray fired by Weapons Officer Jacobs. When they return to their ship, the crew finds that their radio signals are being blocked and the MR-1 is grounded by a force field. O'Bannion leads the crew to a Martian lake with a city visible on the other side. They cross in an inflatable raft, only to be stopped by a giant amoeba-like creature with a single spinning eye. The creature kills Jacobs and infects O'Bannon's arm. The survivors escape to the MR-1 and starts liftoff. The survivors then return to Earth, where O'Bannon's infected arm is cured using electric shocks.
When they examine all of the data brought back by the expedition, the mission scientists find a recorded message. An alien voice announces that the MR-1 crew were allowed to leave so they can deliver a message to Earth. The Martians are watching human development and believe its technology has outpaced cultural advancement. They warn humanity to never return to Mars or Earth will be destroyed in retaliation.
Read more about this topic: The Angry Red Planet
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)