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17th March 2010

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Planet Earth (TV pilot) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →

Planet Earth was a science fiction television movie that was created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Roddenberry and Juanita Bartlett (from a story by Roddenberry). It first aired on April 23, 1974 on the ABC network, and starred John Saxon as Dylan Hunt. It was presented as a pilot for what was hoped to be a new weekly television series. The pilot focused on gender relations from an early 1970s perspective. Dylan Hunt, confronted with a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, muses, “Women’s lib? Or women’s lib gone mad…” Planet Earth was the second attempt by Roddenberry to create a weekly series set on a post-apocalyptic future Earth. The previous pilot was Genesis II, and it featured many of the concepts, characters later redeveloped in Planet Earth. Sets and props from Genesis II also found their way into Planet Earth. A third and final movie, Strange New World, was aired in 1975. This movie also starred John Saxon as Captain Anthony Vico. In this movie a trio of astronauts returns to Earth after 180 years in suspended animation to locate the underground headquarters of PAX and free the people placed there in suspended animation. None of these three pilots was ever developed into a series; however, some of the characters served as prototypes for the later TV series (based on Roddenberry’s ideas) Andromeda.