Vega in Fiction - Film and Television

Film and Television

• "The Cage" (1965; aired 1988), rejected pilot episode of Star Trek: The Original Series written by Gene Roddenberry and directed by Robert Butler, as part of the film, television, and print franchise originated by Gene Roddenberry. The USS Enterprise is traveling to Vega Colony to arrange care for casualties of the hostilities on Rigel VII, when it receives a distress transmission broadcast by a scientific expedition that has vanished on Talos IV. A landing party beams down; the Talosians capture Captain Christopher Pike and plan to breed him with Vina, an expedition survivor, to create a race of slaves. Cooler heads prevail.
• "Mirror, Mirror" (1967), episode of Star Trek: The Original Series written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Marc Daniels. This episode has a transporter mishap swapping Captain Kirk and his companions with their evil counterparts in a parallel universe. In the so-called Mirror Universe, the ISS Enterprise is a ship of the Terran Empire, a dominion as evil as the United Federation of Planets is benevolent. A horrified Kirk learns that his doppelgänger is guilty of multiple atrocities, including the massacre of 5000 human colonists colonists on the planet Vega IX.
• UFO Robo Grendizer (1975–1977), anime television series written by Go Nagai and directed by Tomoharu Katsumata. The planet Vega having become uninhabitable due to an environmental catastrophe, the Vegans first attack the peaceful planet Fleed in their own system, destroying it in the process, and then set their sights on the Earth as a world to conquer and colonize. Young Duke Fleed, who survived the holocaust and has fled to Earth with the Vegan super-robot Grendizer, organizes the defense of our planet and defeats the Vegans and their evil king.
• "One Moment of Humanity" (1976), episode of the television series Space: 1999 written by Tony Barwick and directed by Charles Crichton. When the Moon intrudes into the sphere of influence of the planet Vega, a deputation of Vegans, beautiful to behold, arrives at Moonbase Alpha to remonstrate, and ends by kidnapping two Alphans to the Vega system—abetted by telepathic ensnarement and Positronic Transfer. It turns out that the Vegans are androids, Vega is an artificial paradise planet and a prison, and the Alphans are able to liberate a human population that has been enslaved by the robots (compare following item in this article).
• Commander Perkins: The Vega Series (1976–1978), German-produced audio drama series written by Hans Gerhard Franciskowsky as by H. G. Francis. Scientists on the Moon accidentally open a portal between the Solar System and the planet Vega VIII. A high-tech kidnapping to the Vega system—abetted by telepathic ensnarement and Dimensional Transmission—begins a complex unfolding of tit-for-tat moves by earthmen and the hostile Vegans, until finally the roots of their interstellar antipathy are traced to the unraveling of a long-ago alien expedition to the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (compare the wicked city SoGo in Tau Ceti: Barbarella).

• Spaceballs (1987), sendup of Star Wars and other science fiction film classics written by Mel Brooks et al and directed by Mel Brooks. The planet Spaceball having become uninhabitable due to an environmental catastrophe, President Skroob first attacks the peaceful planet Druidia in his own system by attempting to kidnap its princess, Vespa (compare UFO Robo Grendizer above). "Solo" operator Captain Lone Starr responds to the offer of a reward and rescues her but his plan is thwarted when he runs out of fuel and crash-lands on the nearby desert Moon of Vega. They find their way to a cave occupied by the wise old Yogurt (played by Brooks), who introduces Lone Starr to the power of "The Schwartz". The film proceeds in this vein.
• Babylon 5 (1993–1998), television series created by J. Michael Straczynski. The Vega Colony is an outpost world of the Earth Alliance in the Vega star system, which hosts at least six other planets. Vega Colony appears frequently in the series as a space voyage destination and as the location of a medical center; the ice mines on Vega VII were raided for their explosives by the mad bomber Robert Carlson.
• Contact (1997), film written by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, and directed by Robert Zemeckis. (see also the novel Contact above). SETI researchers detect a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence—a transmitter array orbiting Vega (compare graphic). After an arduous decoding process, they first discover, then finance (Panel member: If you were to meet these Vegans, and were permitted only one question to ask of them, what would it be?) and finally implement the plans for a wormhole transport device that carries a single explorer (Ellie, played by Jodie Foster) to the center of the galaxy. There she speaks at length with a supernal sentience who manifests itself as her departed father, but she can bring back no proof of the contact—so that when she returns home few people believe her experiences actually happened.