Venus in Fiction - Film and Television

Film and Television

• Many science-fiction movies and serials of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Space Ship Sappy, Queen of Outer Space (with Zsa Zsa Gabor), and Space Patrol, have used the concept of the namesake goddess Venus and her domain to contrive planetary populations of nubile Amazonian women welcoming (or attacking) all-male astronaut crews (even though the goddess Venus - or Aphrodite for that matter - had absolutely nothing to do with the Amazons; that role belonged to Ares, or to Artemis).
• The original Space Patrol displayed Venus (with the exception of cities and bases built by the United Planets) as the cloud-covered, swampy, dinosaur- and amazon-ridden version discussed above. (The few episodes of the Space Patrol radio shows set on Venus all took place in the highly-civilized sections of it.)
• The later British Space Patrol (1962) puppet television series featured episodes along these lines:
  • "Time Stands Still" episode. Stolen art treasures are being transported into space. Raeburn suspects that Venusian millionaire Tara is behind the thefts, but his palace is too well-guarded. Professor Heggarty develops a watch that speeds up the wearer's reaction sixty times, which enables Dart to sneak into the palace unnoticed.
  • "The Human Fish" episode. The Tula Fish in the Venusian Magda Ocean are evolving at an extraordinary rate and attack fishermen. The Galasphere crew are sent to help and discover that building materials, routinely dumped in the ocean, may be the cause of the Tula's accelerated evolution.
• Der Schweigende Stern (1960) (The Silent Star, vaguely translated into English as First Spaceship on Venus). In this co-production East Germany-Poland, based on Stanisław Lem's book Astronauci (The Astronauts), it is discovered that the Tunguska Event in 1908 was the crash of a spaceship from Venus, and a multi-national crew is sent to the planet. They find the Venusians to have destroyed themselves (probably in a nuclear war) and the environment to be hostile. We never see the actual Venusians, but in an eerie scene, humanoid flash shadows are shown on a wall.
• The Twilight Zone episode "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" shows a three-eyed Venusian disguised as a human chef. He tells a Martian sent before a colonisation force that Venus is forming a colony on Earth and has intercepted the Martian colonisation force.
• The Russian film Планета Бур (Planeta Bur) (Storm Planet, 1962) is about an expedition to Venus that discovers dinosaurs. The film exists in many badly-recut versions, including Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which were re-directed by Curtis Harrington and Peter Bogdanovich, respectively, under pseudonyms.
• "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" (1964), episode of The Outer Limits television series starring William Shatner as an astronaut who returns from a voyage to Venus suffering from unexplained mutations.
• Venus is the location of several Starfleet Academy training facilities and terraforming stations in the fictional Star Trek universe (1966– ).
• The British science fiction series Space: 1999 also refers to a mission to a space station orbiting Venus where the crew contracts a deadly virus and must be left to die rather than bring the infection back to Earth.
• A failed Russian probe that returns to Earth and wreaks havoc was a recurring "character" on the 1970s series The Bionic Woman.
• In Doctor Who, the Third Doctor purports to be an expert in Venusian aikido and sings Venusian lullabies. The Missing Adventures novel Venusian Lullaby elaborates on this, depicting the First Doctor visiting a dying Venus three billion years in the past. The Fourth Doctor holds a pilot's license for the Mars—Venus run.
• In the BBC miniseries Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (2004), Venus is the first destination of the interplanetary science vessel Pegasus. Cosmonaut Yvan Grigorev becomes the first human to set foot on the planet during a short manned landing, which due to the hostile environment, only has a planned duration of one hour.
• In the Long Game set in the year 200000 it is mentioned there is a sandstorm on New Venus.
• Venus was the first planet when a team of 8 astronauts were doing a grand tour of the solar system in Defying Gravity. 2 of the astronauts land on the planet in search of an object.
• In the second episode of Challenge of the Superfriends Venus is shown to be inhabitated by an advanced civilsiation called the Fearians. They form an alliance with the Legion of Doom, who trick the Superfriends into changing the world so it can support Fearian life. This will allow the Fearians to form a colony and the Legion will rule the world. The Superfriends are trapped by the Fearian Leader in a force field. However Green Lantern makes them invisible, causing the Leader to think they have escaped and turn of the field. He is defeated by Black Lightning and Green Lantern sends him back to Venus. The Superfriends then restore the world. The Fearian Leader has three-heads, with green skin and red eyes.