After Action Report: Silent Running

Greetings WingNuts,

We have watched Silent Running and agree that it's an interesting movie but that it doesn't quite come together (like Wing Commander?). The special effects are incredible, the sets and costumes are excellent, the setup is an excellent story… but it never quite comes together into anything satisfying. A lot of that comes down to the lead, we thought, who ends up being somewhat difficult to root for. It's a movie I'm glad to have seen but it's definitely more cult than classic.

This will be a short report, though, as the movie had no known creative connections to Wing Commander beyond being incorrectly referenced in the film's original treatise. But we did note a few little genre connections! One little coincidence is that both films have acts set in ring systems! Silent Running's director famously used the film as an excuse to do the Saturn special effects he had envisioned for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Meanwhile, Wing Commander's second act battle is set in the "rings of planet 415" in the Dakota System.

The premise of the movie–flying forests out into space to preserve them-did remind me somewhat of one of the copy protection facts about the Goddard colony from The Secret Missions:

Goddard is famous for its Conservation Forest, spread out over 12500 square km. An estimated 7225 varieties of Terran trees have been transplanted to Goddard to prevent their extinction on Earth.

The repair droids that become characters had me thinking about the droids in the original Privateer which kind of work the same way. You get one tiny, static image of your repair droid… but it's your friend every moment you're in the cockpit!

By the way, one fun fact that I love and will preserve here is that in Italy the movie was presented as a sequel to 2001 called 2002: The Second Odyssey. They made some minor changes to connect it to 2001's lore including an introductory voiceover and replacing the ship's computer with the same voice actor that performed HAL (in Italy). And while that seems pretty weird, there is a strong creative connection behind the scenes, with Silent Running directed by Douglas Trumbull who did the SFX on 2001. But then I don't see how that would be like Wing Commander!