STRANGE NEW WORLD (1975)

The third in Warner Brothers' "PAX Trilogy" of unsold 70s sci-fi television pilots, Strange New World was quite different from its predecessors, Genesis II (1973) and Planet Earth (1974). For one thing, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who had developed and created those previous pilots for Warners was not involved in Strange New World, having moved back to his old offices on the Paramount lot, where he was working on a Trek revival.

With Roddenberry gone from the project, Warner Brothers drastically revamped the premise for their third go, retaining from the first two telefilms only the post-Apocalyptic setting, the idea of a cryogenically-preseved hero (in this case, heroes), the name "PAX," and star John Saxon, who had tested well in Planet Earth. His character was renamed, however.

Whereas the previous efforts had portrayed the PAX organization as a post-Apocalyptic bastion of science and civilization that dispatched "agents" to help guide the scattered human survivors and their isolated societies toward peaceful, productive futures, Strange New World had its 20th Century protagonists returning to Earth after a cataclysmic asteroid shower forces them to spend nearly 200 years in suspended animation aboard an orbiting space station. While Captain Anthony Vico (Saxon), Dr. Allison Crowley (Kathleen Miller) and Dr. William Scott (Keene Curtis) are all members of the PAX organization, they're not on any noble mission to help the various cultures they encounter, they're simply trying to survive and find the "lost" PAX headquarters, where they hope to find both safety and other surviving PAX scientists preserved in stasis.

Also unlike the two previous PAX pilots, World is broken into two distinct adventures (or episodes). In the first half of the film, our heroes come across one of those decadent sci-fi societies where everyone dresses like they're in a roadshow production of Caligula, with Roman-styled togas and leaves in their hair. They preach pacifism and their leader, Surgeon (James Olsen of Moon Zero Two), claims to have discovered the secret to eternal youth and immortality.

Needless to say, it doesn't take long for a suspicious Captain Vico to uncover the dark secret behind their longevity - they breed clones of themselves, which they then harvest for organs (and, just to make it even more immoral, they also use their clones as slaves)! This segment also guest-stars Hammer Films hottie Martine Beswick and Captain America, himself, Reb Brown (also of Yor fame/infamy).

The second half of the film takes place a few months later, based on our protagonists' now bedraggled appearance and lack of provisions. Searching for water and food, they discover a jungle-like area populated by exotic animals, and ponds with concrete bottoms. They soon deduce that the area was once a zoo, which is now inhabited not only by feral animal predators but also by two warring tribes of barbaric humans. One tribe hunts the animals for food, while the other group, called "The Wardens" and descended from the original zookeepers, worships the beasts and fights to protect them. Allison is captured by the animal-worshipers, while Vico and Scott have a run-in with the hunters. Eventually, with their help, the two tribes warily come to a cease fire, with hopes of a permanent peace.

What is most interesting to me is not how different World is from its two PAX predecessors, so much as its striking similarities to MGM Television's Logan's Run series, which debuted two years later. Both shows are set in a post-Apocalyptic future with a group of three characters - man of action (Logan/Vico), compassionate female (Jessica/Allison) and wise elder (Rem/Scott) - traveling in a clunky land vehicle through desolate landscapes in search of a (perhaps non-existent) promised land (Sanctuary/PAX Headquarters). In both cases, the trio encounters and becomes involved with varied, isolated enclaves of people with their own, twisted societies. While the basic premise is, of course, nothing particularly new for sci-fi, the specifics are rather close, aren't they?

Like its two brethren, Strange New World didn't spawn a series, instead airing - as many unsold pilots did in those days - as a TV movie in the Summer on ABC. In fact, it's the only one of these that I distinctly remember watching on its original airing. (I caught the other two on cable - probably on TBS or WGN - in the early 80s.) It was later released on VHS tape by Unicorn Video.

In the 1990s, since Paramount's Star Trek sequels/spin-offs were doing well in syndication and on cable, Majel Barret-Roddenberry dusted off some of Gene's old notes and sold them to television producers eager to exploit the Roddenberry reputation. Tribune Entertainment bought up the Genesis II/Planet Earth material and handed it to latter-day Trek veteran Robert Hewitt Wolfe to re-imagine as a spacebound adventure series. Pretty much the only Genesis II/Planet Earth elements that survived into the resulting syndicated series, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, were the name "Dylan Hunt," and the suspended animation gimmick that would bring the character forward in time to a unrecognizable future.

As with the first two PAX pilots, Warner Archive offers Strange New World on DVD as a manufactured-on-demand item. The "full frame," 4x3 transfer is pretty decent for its age, but no restoration or remastering appears to have been done. Audio is a perfectly satisfactory Dolby Digital Stereo. There are no extras included.