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Gene Roddenberry wanted to prove he wasn’t a one-trick
pony. The creator of “Star Trek” hadn’t had much success
in movies (“Pretty Maids All in A Row” was a disaster)or
TV since his show was cancelled in 1969. “Trek” had begun
to take off in syndication and the expansion of “Trek” conventions
made Roddenberry of interest again to the networks. ***
His first pilot “Genesis II” was a post-apocalyptic
TV movie starring Alex Cord as scientist Dylan Hunt. Hunt
puts himself into suspended animation as part of a program
for NASA for future space flights in 1979. The cavern where
the experiments take place suffers a massive earthquake
cutting him off from the world and he’s left in suspended
animation until the year 2133. ***
Hunt is rediscovered by Tyranians a civilization of
human mutants (they have two belly buttons!) planning on
world domination. The only thing standing in their way PAX
a society established by scientists who rebelled against
the military minded Tyranians. Lyra-a (Mariette Hartley)
one of the Tyranians tricks Hunt hoping to use his knowledge
to rebuild their nuclear arsenal. ***
Directed by John Moxey (“The Night Stalker”), “Genesis
II” certainly had potential and the cast including Ted Cassidy,
Percy Rodrigues and TV regulars like Harvey Jason did a
solid job of making Roddenberry’s pilot memorable. It does
suffer from many of the clichés that tended to characterize
Roddenberry’s writing at its worst but on the whole script
does a surprisingly imaginative job of using back lot locations
to make the pilot look more expensive than it really was.
Roddenberry must have been fond of the name Dylan Hunt on
the TV show “Andromeda” which was eventually developed for
TV after Roddenberry’s death. “Andromeda” had some similarities
with “Genesis II” and was an example of Roddenberry recycling
a good idea. ---
Image & Sound:
“Genesis II” looks solid enough. The images are occasionally
soft but detail is surprisingly good given the age of the
TV film and the fact that it hasn’t been restored in any
way shape or form. There is a bit of dirt and debris that
shows up now and again but, on the whole, the film looks
quite clean. Color has faded a bit and blacks could be a
bit more solid but otherwise the show looks good. *** The
mono soundtrack puts dialogue front and center. ---
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