A Sense-of-Wonderful Century. Gary Westfahl
return to the ship, and have the suit fall out of the ship once the airlock door is reopened. Even removing a spacesuit, then, in certain circumstances, proves beneficial to human survival in space.
If Destination Moon remains an underappreciated film, that might stem from the fact that, as Hardy notes, “for the most part its predictions were remarkably accurate” (125). Its depictions of slow-moving astronauts outside the ship resemble films of actual space walks; its scenes of men walking on the Moon, as others have pointed out, eerily anticipate television coverage of the Apollo missions; and even the improvisational, spit-and-chewing-gum inventiveness of their solution to the weight problem mirrors the actual way that astronauts and engineers on the ground devised answers to problems like those of the Apollo 13 mission. People rarely watch Destination Moon today not because it is undramatic, but because they have regularly watched real-life video footage which conveys the same sense of authentic drama.
For the next eighteen years, no other space film quite matched the stark intensity of Destination Moon’s confrontation with space, though some spacesuit films of that era had moments of evocative power. Project Moonbase (1953), the lesser film that Heinlein made without George Pal, offered innovative scenes of weightlessness in a space station and an accident on the Moon, while Conquest of Space (1955), the lesser film that Pal made without Heinlein, presented an unusually austere portrait of astronauts on Mars. Other reasonably realistic and dignified spacesuit films of that era include Ivan Tors’ Riders to the Stars (1954), the almost unknown 12 to the Moon (1960), and the television series Men into Space (1959-1960). Displaying some—but not enough—concern for safety, The Angry Red Planet (1960) places spacesuited Martian explorers in what look like motorcycle helmets with faceplates, protecting their skulls from dangerous collisions but offering unpersuasive protection from the harsh Martian environment. In the 1960s, there emerged films purportedly about the actual space program; these tended to be farcical at first, like Moon Pilot (1962) and The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), but later a few such films aspired to gritty realism, like Countdown (1968) and Marooned (1969).
However, the greatest spacesuit film of this period—and, perhaps uncoincidentally, the greatest science fiction film of all time—was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The film took its subtitle seriously; 2001 is very much an odyssey within and through outer space, with co-creator Arthur C. Clarke, famed for his realistic science fiction, constantly on hand to ensure scientific accuracy. Our first glimpse of a person in the future, following the celebrated jump cut from bone to spaceship, is the sleeping Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester), wearing a spacesuit without a helmet, well prepared for any emergency during his flight to near-orbital space. Although Floyd’s stopover at the space station, with its comfortable chairs and Howard Johnson’s restaurant, may briefly give the impression that future space travel will be a safe and familiar experience, much like today’s air travel, subsequent events in the film decisively indicate that will not be the case, for Floyd is back in a full spacesuit for his spartan journey across the lunar surface to the unearthed monolith. A brief scene that usually provokes laughter—members of Floyd’s party form a group and pose for the camera in front of the monolith—conveys a serious message: space is an environment unlike that of Earth, and longstanding rituals and activities may no longer be appropriate or logical in this new environment. Here, it makes no sense to take a souvenir photograph to record someone’s visit to a noteworthy site when the person in the resulting photograph will appear entirely anonymous, virtually identical to all the other people wearing spacesuits. (The point was also made in Destination Moon when Sweeney, just photographed apparently holding up the Earth, complains, “Nobody will know it’s me in this diving suit.”16)
The film’s most significant spacesuit scene, of course, is the suspenseful episode when astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), leaving his spaceship in an unsuccessful effort to rescue fellow astronaut Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) drifting in space, is locked out by the rebellious computer HAL 9000 and forced to figure out how to get back into the spaceship before his power and oxygen run out. His plight stems from a critical lack of preparedness: hurrying to save his friend, Bowman neglected to put on his space helmet before piloting his tiny craft or “pod.” Drawing upon a vignette in his earlier story “The Other Side of the Sky” (1959), Clarke had Bowman come up with a startling solution: first, he opens a manual airlock; next, after positioning the pod by the airlock door, he opens the pod and exposes his body to the vacuum of space; then, since the rush of escaping air from the pod drives him into the airlock, he has a few seconds to reach and operate the manual control, closing the airlock and restoring oxygen to the chamber, before the exposure to space kills him. Thanks to his careful preparation, he manages to do exactly that; then, after finding and putting on a space helmet to guard against further threats, he proceeds to HAL’s memory chamber and methodically turns the machine off. While Sweeney briefly faced the same potential danger in the airlock of Destination Moon, Bowman’s chaotic moments in the airlock of 2001 represent the pinnacle of the spacesuit film, the only time on film when a human being comes into direct contact with outer space—and lives to tell the tale.
Considering this episode, and episodes in previous spacesuit films, we see that the environment of space radically alters several conventions of filmed narrative. A scene in space looks different: with an enveloping background of dark black space filled with sprinkles of white light, and foregrounded figures in white spacesuits (the usual color choice, despite the idiosyncratic bright colors of Destination Moon, since white best reflects heat), viewers essentially see a starkly black-and-white environment, even if the film is shot in color. A scene in space sounds different, since sound does not travel in space. Some films, like Project Moonbase, convey this by having no background noise whatsoever, a brief return to the silent film; in his space scenes, Kubrick provided only the sound of Bowman’s breathing—reminding viewers that, when you are deep in space, the only sound you will hear is the sound of your own breathing; and the scenes of Floyd on the moon, and Bowman flying near the final monolith, are backed by the ethereal, discordant vocal music of György Ligeti, suggesting an unfamiliar and alienating realm. A scene in space moves differently: for long periods of time, everything may proceed slowly and incrementally, as people in bulky spacesuits gingerly maneuver in an unforgiving environment; then there may be sudden dramatic movements lasting only a few seconds. Finally, for all these reasons, a scene in space often must be explained differently: either it must be preceded by expository scenes, so that viewers will understand later events, or it must be accompanied by narration, conversation, or interior monologues providing on-the-spot information. Here, Kubrick boldly assumed that the audience could figure out Bowman’s problem, and his risky solution, without any prefatory or concurrent explanation; in fact (though some hasty last-minute editing of the lengthy sequence may have been a factor too), many viewers to this day have trouble understanding this episode, which may be why it usually receives little critical attention.
After the success of 2001, one might have predicted a new wave of grim, meticulous spacesuit films; but Kubrick and Clarke were a hard act to follow. In fact, the most influential science fiction film of 1968 was Planet of the Apes, whose astronauts are never observed in spacesuits and quickly emerge from their spaceship onto the surface of an alien planet resembling southern California, eliminating all impediments to routine adventure. As for stories that focused more on space travel, it was not 2001 but another, different sort of celluloid space adventure that became Hollywood’s template of choice.
At the time when 2001 was released, a television series named Star Trek (1966-1969) was finishing its second year; and during two seasons of weekly journeys through interstellar space, a spacesuit of any kind had never been mentioned or presented. The crew of the starship Enterprise wore only normal clothing, and the women’s clothing was positively skimpy. Most of the time, they were comfortable inside their spacious craft, thanks to life support systems and artificial gravity; when they needed to leave, they entered a transporter room to instantly “beam down” to an earthlike planetary surface or into another spaceship. In rare circumstances when the transporter could not be used, crew members traveled through space in a small “shuttle craft”; however, even when they were looking through windows at space only a few feet away, it apparently never occurred to anyone to bring along some protective gear.
For the most part, then, the crew