Always unearthing rare gems, this week Kim Newman rediscovers a 1960s Brit sci-fi flick from Saturday morning TV.

I saw Spaceflight IC-1, a short, fairly flat, nevertheless unusual British-made science fiction film on Saturday morning regional ITV in the mid-1970s, but to my knowledge it's never shown up again in the UK -- I had to order it online from a US specialist in obscure cinema to take another look at it.

Made in 1965 (but not released for two years), it has the prosaic look and minimal effects work of early 1950s poverty row rocket films, but includes speculative business familiar from written s-f which hadn't been much seen in filmed space travel pictures (which usually went for monsters or, at a stretch, heroic pioneers). A clumsy opening, which feels as if it might have been added to pad the running time, has a jovial military man lecture the audience about the Insterstellar Colony 1 space mission as we see slides of the crew; this is followed by a tiny press conference which repeats information from the lecture and includes facts it surely wouldn't be necessary to impart a year into a well-publicised mission (note to screenwriters -- never have a character preface something said to another character with 'as you know ...').


In 2015, a coalition of nations including the USA, Canada and Britain have formed an alliance called RULE, which began as a disarmament conference but evolved into an intrusive, totalitarian state along 1984 lines. RULE has sent IC-1 on a long voyage beyond the solar system to establish an Earth colony (the pilot of Lost in Space tried something similar), with a specially-selected crew of four healthy couples (plus some extras in 2001-style freezer cabinets), their three children (a pre-stardom Mark Lester is one of the well-spoken boys) and a cyborg severed head in a fishbowl (John Lee).

As Year Two of the mission begins, Captain Mead Ralston (Bill Williams), a gravel-voiced American amid plummy Brits, is grumpy because he and his wife, teacher Jan (Norma West) haven't had a baby, which means he isn't passing on permission to the other couples to try to give their sons some sisters; it's implied but not stated that they are using mandatory contraception -- the pill was a big issue when the film was made. A crisis comes when Helen (Linda Marlowe), wife of mission doctor Steve Thomas (John Cairney), is diagnosed with a pancreatic infection and we learn RULE didn't put insulin on the ship because they wanted potentially unhealthy colonists to die in space.

When Ralston refuses Helen permission to use her remaining time having a baby, she commits suicide and Steve, backed by sarcastic Engineer Saunders (Jeremy Longhurst), thumps the Captain, locks him up in his cabin, and vaguely takes over the mission, though Mrs Saunders (Kathleen Breck) and glowering navigator Carl (Donald Churchill) disapprove. Carl, whose own wife (Margo McLennan) sides with the mutineers, eventually lets Ralston out and the Bligh-like Captain announces that he intends to execute the doctor and replace him with one of the cryo-frozen passengers, Griffith (burly Tony Doonan). However, the unfreezing process is inexact and Griffith bursts out of his container in Frankensteinian manner and kills Ralston before expiring -- Steve holds hands with Jan at Ralston's funeral and a final caption hints the resulting colony will be freer than the society left behind on Earth.


Screenwriter Harry Spalding, long-time associate of producer Robert L. Lippert, turned out a lot of genre movies (The Day Mars Invaded the Earth, The Earth Dies Screaming, Witchcraft, Curse of the Fly), and -- like the similarly busy Arthur C. Pierce (who scripted the theoretically competing Mutiny in Outer Space the same year) -- had a George Pal-like interest in the actual science in science fiction, but a drab, often-prosaic sense of drama and a tendency to off-the-peg characterisations. The subtlest thing on view is the head-in-a-bowl genius who has volunteered to become a cyborg human computer and rather wishes he hadn't -- but plays surprisingly little part in the story.

Spaceflight IC-1 is modestly innovative in its mix the rebellion-against-future-dystopia theme with credible deep space drama -- no hokey meteor showers, just the Dark Star-like grinding resentments of folks cooped up together for too long (with a surprising emphasis on adult sexual behaviour). Even the contrivance that the Captain has a key which can blow up the space ship makes more sense than usual in the context of a totalitarian state that would rather scupper the mission than let dissent seed the cosmos.