Sci-Fi: Space 1977

It's May, 1977. For the past twenty years, there have been two kinds of space-based science fiction films:

• The adventurous, shiny-chrome-bright, wholesome-to-horror sort (the black and white Buck Rogers serial, Forbidden Planet, Lost In Space, etc.) 
• The philosophical, hexagon-dome near-future what-if view (2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dark Star, Silent Running, etc.) 

These categories aren't exact (Star Trek sits between them), but if you're a B-movie producer, those are the two wells you're drawing from. And then, on May 25th, 1977, Star Wars: A New Hope is released. It's outrageously popular. Every other B-movie director sits up, salivates, and starts taking notes. What do people like? Spaceships and robots? Ok, we can do spaceships and robots. A princess? Got it. Some weird costumes? Grab some stuff from the Western and the Medieval section. And someone find me a distinguished British actor!

A whole slew of films took the plot elements of Star Wars, changed the order, and tried their luck.

Star Wars is a canon juggernaut today. The average character from the cantina scene has more backstory than I do. It's part of the cultural lexicon. But before canon solidifies, before Star Wars becomes a universe, other films moved in parallel.

Most nerds have thought "what if only the first Star Wars film was canon. Luke never uses a lightsaber. The Force doesn't move objects. Nobody's anybody's relative. What's a Jedi? What were the Clone Wars? Who is the Emperor?" In 1977, the facts are fluid.

Check out the "Soldiers of the Empire" article for the state of canon in 1977.

This blog article - this setting - assumes that all films directly inspired by Star Wars: A New Hope coexist in one shared universe: Space: 1977.

Film Criteria:

• Release date between May 1977 (Star Wars: A New Hope) and May 1980 (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back).
• Cannot be inspired by Alien (May 1979). A lot of films were; the special effects were less demanding.
• No parodies. The film's worldbuilding has to take itself seriously. There needs to be a sense that the director hoped, somehow, that it'd spawn a line of action figures and lunchboxes.
• Cannot take place mostly on Earth (or the moon). Earth can be mentioned, even visited, but it shouldn't be the whole setting.

The criteria are flexible. In this post, I'm going to review the potentially useful films. The next post will contain a synthesis of the ones that makes the cut, and the third post will contain some rules. I've got no particular timeline on this project. It's just a fun thought experiment.

And yes I've watched everything listed here while preparing this post and writing other content. If you want to fund my recovery, here's a link to my Patreon.

Unconditionally Canonical

	Message from Space	Battlestar Galactica	Starcrash	The Humanoid	Battle Beyond the Stars	Escape from Galaxy 3
	1978/04	1978-1979	1979/03	1979/04	1980/05	1981/02
Sequences
-Opening Text Crawl		x	X	X
-Opening Narration		X		X
-Slow Pan Under Giant Starship	X	X	X	X	X	X
-Diverse Rubber Alien Bar	X
-Streaky Hyperspace					X
-Starfighters In Formation	X	X	X	x	X	X
-Trench Run	X		X
Protagonists
-Heroic Farmboy	x	x			X
-Plucky Smuggler	x	x	X	X	X
-Furry Bear-Person
-Princess	x	x	X		X	X
-Wise Old Mentor	x	X	X	X	X
-Non-Speaking Robot	x	X	X	X
-Cowardly Emotional Robot			X
-Other Robot	X	X	X		X
Antagonists
-Dark Helmet	X	x	X	X		x
-Emperor	X	X	X	x		x
-Faceless Goons	X	X		X	X
-Giant Evil Space Base			X			X
Setting
-Slightly on Earth
-Mostly on Earth
-Earth Mentioned		x		X	X	x
Tropes
-Diverse Rubber Aliens	X	x			x
-Mysterious Mind Powers	X	x	X	X	X
-Lightsabers			X
-Light-weapons				X
-Stirring Orchestral Theme	X	X	X	X	x
-Leitmotifs
Texture
-Used Future	X	X			x
-Shiny and Chrome	X	X	X		X	X

Capital X indicates a strong theme, small x is a dubious or minor reference.

Message from Space
1978/04
The soundtrack, in places, lifts whole stanzas from Star Wars. The costumes are excellent. Some (but not all) of the spaceships are... literally space-ships, with sails and everything. But the starfighter sequences are surprisingly vivid. The special effects artists must have had experience with miniature plane battles, because they use clouds and asteroids to create very dynamic turns and maneuvers. The non-miniature special effects, especially the green-screen sequences, are... very poor. But hey, it fits Space: 1977.

Battlestar Galactica
1978/09-1979/04
Just the first season. It prompted a lawsuit, so there are definitely similarities between it and Star Wars. There are aliens (and at least one Satan), factions, politics, starfighters, etc.

Starcrash
1979/03

• Soundtrack by John Barry. A bumbling robot with a southern accent. Released nine months before The Black Hole.
• A protagonist is captured and suspended upside-down in a cave. A protagonist gets frozen and has to be carefully thawed via timelapse. A protagonist's arm is injured in a lightsaber duel. A floating city has to be evacuated. Released a year before Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. 
• A protagonist tosses his lightsaber to another protagonist, who proves unexpectedly proficient. The only way to save the day is to crash a ship into another ship in hyperspace. Released 32 years before the latest Star Wars trilogy.

Remarkably prescient, you might think. But on the other hand you've got janky stop-motion robots (both large and small), Christopher Plummer delivering some of the most ridiculous lines ever written, truly bizarre costume choices, very shoddy special effects, and young David Hasselhoff. 

The Humanoid
1979/04
After 3 minutes of credits, we get the opening crawl (also read aloud by an obliging narrator). The evil Lord Graal wears a black samurai helmet and commands a giant wedge-shaped spaceship. Floating landspeeders. Mysterious mind-powers (Tibetan mind-powers, no less). Laser bows.
Wait, what?
Anyway, this film is unquestionably Space: 1977.

Battle Beyond The Stars
1980/05
Seven Samurai.. in space! A plucky young hero forges a band of rebels, falls in love, flies a starship, etc. I'm going to combine this with Space Raiders (1983), which resuses most of the orignal effects and adds even more Star Wars elements.

Escape from Galaxy 3
1981/02
Technically it's outside the date range, but it's pure Star Wars inspiration. Space kings.  Planets exploding. All the miniature sequences are stock footage from Starcrash, just desaturated. Some of the props were recycled (or possibly remade). Even the protagonists have have similar names and costumes (Stella Star and Akton vs. Belle Star and Lithan).

Canon-Adjacent 

	Buck Rogers in the 25th Century	The Black Hole	Galaxina	Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone	The Ice Pirates
	1979/03	1979/12	1980/06	1983	1984
Sequences
-Opening Text Crawl			X
-Opening Narration
-Slow Pan Under Giant Starship		X	X		X
-Diverse Rubber Alien Bar			X		X
-Streaky Hyperspace		x		X	X
-Starfighters In Formation	X
-Trench Run	X
Protagonists
-Heroic Farmboy
-Plucky Smuggler			x	X	X
-Furry Bear-Person
-Princess	X			x	X
-Wise Old Mentor	X	x			x
-Non-Speaking Robot	X	X			X
-Cowardly Emotional Robot	X	X			X
-Other Robot		X	X	X	X
Antagonists
-Dark Helmet		x	X	x
-Emperor	X				X
-Faceless Goons		X		x
-Giant Evil Space Base
Setting
-Slightly on Earth
-Mostly on Earth	X
-Earth Mentioned	X	X	x	X	X
Tropes
-Diverse Rubber Aliens			X		X
-Mysterious Mind Powers		X
-Lightsabers
-Light-weapons
-Stirring Orchestral Theme		X	X	X
-Leitmotifs		X		X
Texture
-Used Future	x	X		X	X
-Shiny and Chrome	X		X

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
1979/03
Too earth-based to qualify despite ticking a surprising number of boxes. The Draconians and their dynastic politics could be included without any issues. The political maneuvering is worth stealing. The rest, nah.

The Black Hole
1979/12
Look, I love this film. I really do. The Cygnus is one of the greatest haunted houses ever made. The score is bombastic. The robots should be corny but they feel real, not like props supported on wires. There's a chilling 3-minute-long unbroken camera flight through literal Hell. Yet, for all that, the film is less Star-Wars-adjacent and more of a sequel to Forbidden Planet. Some elements will make their way into Space: 1977.

Galaxina
1980/06
This film should be disqualified as a parody, but it's pulled out of the dustbin for two reasons: the bumbling crew, lead by Avery Schreiber's mustachioed captain in a uniform straight out of Rogue Trader, are clearly player characters, and the sets are pure Space: 1977. The film feels like someone's Traveller sessions.

C: Where did you get that egg McKinley? Is that an authorized egg?
M: I found it with the rock-eater's belongings. He probably stole it from somewhere. What do you think laid it, sir?
C: Let me have it.
M: Sure sir.
C: A real egg... you know, people used to eat these things. Difficult to imagine, isn't it?
T: It sure is.
M: I can't imagine it. In fact, the whole idea is revolting. Makes me nauseous. Turns my stomach.
T: Enough, private.
C: May I?
M: You're not going to eat it, are you sir?
C: Why not?
M: Well it makes me nauseous, turns my stomach, I really don't think you should eat it.
T: He's right sir. You don't know what kind of an egg that is. You don't know where it's been or who made it.
C: Nonsense. If people concerned themselves about where eggs came from they never would have eaten them.
[Cracks avacado-like egg, pours green goop into wineglass. Drinks. Giggles. Wipes lips. Convulses violently.]

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
1983/05
Alright, it's more of a Mad Max 2: Road Warrior film, and there's a grating teenage sidekick, and it's from 1983. Why is this on the list? First, the spaceships were clearly inspired by Stewart Cowley, which automatically bumps it up a category. Second, it's Canadian. Third, the sets are sometimes gorgeous. And fourth, it's got a very used-future PC-adventure vibe to it.

The Ice Pirates
1984/03
This really should be disqualified for being outside the date range, including elements from Alien and Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, and arguably being a parody, but come on! Fighting robots to combat the other side's fighting robots, repaired in the middle of combat! Piracy! Silly costumes! Ron Perlman!

Disqualified

The 4 films of Alfonso Brescia: 
Cosmos: War of the Planets - 1977/09
Battle of the Stars - 1978/02
War of the Robots - 1978/04
Star Odyssey - 1979/10 
The first of four attempts by director Alfonso Brescia (a.k.a Al Bradley) to cash in. Delightfully low-budget but, sadly, aside from the title, it's got nothing to do with Star Wars. The first film is a riff on Forbidden Planet or Planet of the Vampires; the rest are Buck Rogers in all respects. The aliens have golden bowl cuts and everyone has lightsabers.

The fourth film, Star Odyssey is the only one that even comes close to consideration. Earth gets sold to a despot, sight unseen. He turns up to collect it. Yeah, it's a Buck Rogers plot full of black-and-white stock footage, but it's got R2-D2, mind-powers, lightsabers, robots making an adorable suicide pact...

The Bunglers in the War of the Planets (Brazilian Star Wars)
1978/12
Disqualified for being a parody.

War In Space
1977/12
Despite the name, this film has very little conceptual overlap with Star Wars. There are a few starfighter sequences, but it's almost entirely a blend of the 2 types of pre-Star Wars space films listed above: a Buck Rogers plot with 2001 space suits, with a Space Battleship Yamato twist.

Blake's 7
1978-1981 
A classic British sci-fi series. So British. In the event of a murderous government coverup and brainwashing scheme, seek legal representation and go to your supervisor. Disqualified because despite having a rebellion and spaceships, it's really more of a slow-burn western in space.

The series has one really unusual trick. The alien spaceship stolen by the main characters is very advanced, but not so advanced that it can't be tinkered with or repaired by human experts. It's like giving Robert Stephenson a Haynes manual and telling him to change a head gasket on a modern car. Sure, it might take him ages, but he could probably figure it out. But do the same to Pythagoras? He wouldn't stand a chance. I like that... even if the sets do wobble alarmingly when the actors push buttons, and some of the panels are just gaffer tape on particleboard.

H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come
1979/05
Canadian, but that's not enough to save it. All Earth, all chrome and '50s robots with big pincher hands and dryer duct arms. Nothing to do with H.G. Wells' original story, and nothing to do with Star Wars iether.

Gamera: Super Monster
1980/03
Despite prominently featuring a knock-off star destroyer on the cover and in the title sequence, the rest of the film is standard giant monster fights and singing children.

Flash Gordon
1980/12
Don't get me wrong, I love the film... but it's definitely closer to a parody than to a serious attempt at worldbuilding.

The Man Who Saved The World (Turkish Star Wars)
1982/11
Disqualified for containing shots of Star Wars, sound cues from Battlestar Galactica, etc, etc, etc. It's absolutely bonkers and well worth watching, but as worldbuilding material it's got... issues.

If there are films or TV series that fit the criteria that I've missed, let me know. Some potential candidates (like the superb Kin-dza-dza! and the dreadful Space Mutiny) ended up being cut entirely. The rules can't be bent too far or every film will get included.

Future Posts

The Setting (synthesizing and tabulating the canon and canon-adjacent films).
Rules (probably based on SWN or Mothership or something).

Star Wars: Storytelling and History

My father wasn't very good at inventing stories, but he tried very hard. He borrowed liberally from stories he'd seen before - radio plays, old novels, things he'd read as a kid and thought his children would like. We didn't have TV, movies were a rare treat, and we hadn't learned to read yet, so his stories were amazing. He could describe things very well, and he always knew how to play with tension and pacing.

One of my favorite stories he told had everything I liked in it. It had a princes and a brave hero. It had swordfights. It had space aliens and cannons and pirates and robots and danger - lots of danger - but the heroes made it out OK. I don't think he told this story more than once, but I remember it vividly. It was about a boy named Luke who came from a farm, and his friend Hans Olo, and their bear friend Chewbaka, and how they rescued the Princess from the evil Garth Vader, and how she got revenge.

Yeah, my dad told Star Wars as a story of his own (although he never claimed to have invented it), and let me tell you, the mental image I had of the story was very different than the film when I finally saw it years later. It wasn't wrong - he didn't change anything - but there were some things he couldn't describe or skipped or forgot. I think he'd seen the film once at that point.

This was before the sequels, mind you, or the prequels, or any of that. Star Wars for me, for a very long time, was a story and not a film.

Space Opera

The term "space opera" means something special. "Science fiction" is about science, about the potential future effects of things we have now, about a plausible way the world could be. 

Space opera isn't about the future. It's about the present. It's about us.

All really great operas need a few things. They need to be noisy. They need to be dramatic. They need to be beautiful. And they need to speak to the heart... and not to the mind. No physics. No science.

Nobody goes to the opera because the plot makes sense. Nobody in opera acts exactly like a real person, but everyone acts like something inside every real person. The soul, maybe. The subconscious. The bit that wants to scream into the night and set things on fire instead of eating ice cream and watching reruns on Netflix. Nobody in real life has ever sung about their morning plans and hopes and fears the way Calaf sings in Act 4, but we somehow wish we could.

And, in the words of Anna Russel, you can put your opera where you like. Set it in the Roaring '20s or in the Wild West. It's just set dressing and costumes; nice to look at but it's only one part of the experience.

Sagas

Star Wars is often called a saga. Someone's rewritten it into an actual saga, if you're interested in that sort of thing. It's excellent.

Anyway, sagas are usually stories of one family, with mythological additions, later authors, and side-notes. Characters from one saga show up in others. In this case, this is the saga of the Skywalkers. The scope is galactic; the focus is one chain of people, one small set of events. You could re-write the story to take place in Feudal Japan or Iceland. Take away the laser swords and the starships and the saga doesn't change because the people in it are still people.

Mos Eisley, Claire Hummel

The Last Jedi

I liked it.

Spoilers start below.

Star Wars: Choosing Music: Future Proof Version

Here's the future-proof version, with all links followed by track names and references in case the videos vanish.

Star Wars: Choosing Music

I like having music for my story games. It's a handy way to set the tone. For an Apocalypse World game I made hour long tracks of rain and wind mixed with static, screaming, and distorted music (Tom Waits, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, some Chinese pop tunes, etc.). For my Rogue Trader games I've got playlists of over-the-top nonsense. Cathedral-starships require it.

Here's how I picked music for a Star Wars game. It might be useful if you've ever wanted to have a game with a soundtrack but weren't sure where to begin.

Jabba's Schooner, John Dunivant

The Official Scores

You don't need an ultra-high fidelity edition, but you'll probably want all the movies. Buy them, rip them, and start listening track by track. Try to get a feel for what makes music "Star Wars"-y. Listen for leitmotifs or theme.

Every character gets a leitmotif in the movies. Darth Vader (00:12-00:37). Leia (00:00-00:55). Rey (00:00-00:22). Notice how short these lietmotifs are, and how each one has a distinct feel? You'll hear them throughout the soundtracks.

If you want to learn more about leitmotifs, the great* scholar Anna Russel does an excellent lecture on Wagner's Ring cycle. It's surprisingly helpful, and I'd love to see a Star Wars version one day.

*in a very technical sense of the word.

Anyway, there are some leitmotifs that just won't work in your game. Vader's theme is probably the main one. Unless your game contains Darth Vader, it's probably best to skip the Imperial March completely.

Sorting

Take all the tracks you think you can use and rename them. I used the format "Category - Description - Length". "Kylo Ren Arrives at Battle" becomes "Imperial - Turbulent - 2m02s". "The Asteroid Field" becomes "Space - Chase - 4m15s" The names let you immediately select a track based on what's going on in your game. The categories I used are: battle, filler, force, imperial, intro, leitmotif, outro, space, urban.

You will need to use a program like audacity to split a few tracks. That "Space - Chase" track needs to lose the first 50 seconds of the Imperial March. Audacity is ridiculously easy to use. It'll take no time at all.

New Tracks

There are a few rules for Star Wars-y music.
1. No singing. There are only a few piece with voices. "Duel of he Fates" and "The Emperor's Theme". No, wait, that's not the Emperor's Theme. That's not it either. Here we go.

If you're going to use pieces with voices, make sure it's for a really good reason.

2. No chorus. Williams repeats himself, but not in a way you could chant or dance to. This immediately eliminates a huge swath of music. This piece wouldn't work for Star Wars. This piece would. And this is going too far.

3. No pianos or electric guitars or bells. If you there are drums in the piece, they compliment the main theme but are never part of it. Huge booming drums aren't used.

This is the most time-consuming part of assembling your music library. Start with soundtracks to other films. Don't be afraid to be picky.

Look for pieces that have a strong "voice" - an instrument that dominates the piece, supported by other instruments. Look for violins, oboes, flutes, and trumpets. Avoid deep bass rumbles. Most Star Wars music is surprisingly light in that sense.

Leitmotifs

You should also consider building some leitmotifs for your characters from non-Star Wars tracks and playing them during pivotal scenes. I can't offer much guidance here. Try to pick a short (1 minute or less) bit of music that has a single dominant instrument. If you're able to find multiple tracks with the same theme (from a film soundtrack, for example), you're golden.

Examples from my game. Apologies in advance.
The lonely pilot who dreams of adventure.
The same pilot, in a militant mood.

The bounty hunter and his ancient and powerful family.
The bounty hunter confronts his destiny.

Because that my game would have a Western theme, and was full of scummy and villainous characters, I broke my ban on guitars for leitmotifs only.

The murderous protocol droid in a calm and reflective mood.
The stories the protocol droid tells of his past.

Consider giving your game a theme as well. I start every major story arc with the main theme and a custom crawl, but immediately afterwards, I cut to this bit of music while describing the opening scene.


To test if your tracks selection is good, load them all up and put them on shuffle. If anything sticks out, edit or get rid of it.

In Play

Grab a tablet and use a program or a folder that lets you see all your tracks at once. You'll also need a volume slider so you can fade out one track, switch, and fade in another track. With practice you'll be able to do it while talking.

Finally, because youtube is fickle and I like future-proofing, here's a version of this post with all the names of the tracks listed.