Original subtitles

Moonbase Alpha status report.

1095 days after leaving earth's orbit,

Dr. Helena Russell recording.

A strange and frightening thing is happening.

Our sensor and scanner readings

are reacting wildly, erratically,

projecting a weird turbulence of high intensity.

It is as though a strange presence is among us

taking control.

- Commander.

There is something out there.

- Let's see it on the big screen.

Maya.

- The turbulence is magnetic.

- Punch through it.

I can't.

There's something there.

- It's just a faint, but her vital signs are down.

Alan?

John?

- I'm all right.

- Oh.

Oh.

It's like thunder here, oh.

- Turbulence decreasing.

- Who are you?

- I am your creator.

- Yasko, get that image back.

- I'm sorry, I can't do any better.

- It's all right.

You don't have to bow down and adore me.

- That's not our style.

- You doubt my credentials?

- You haven't presented any.

- Oh I don't blame you.

With all these highly imaginative works of fiction

that you call religion have clouded your minds,

filled you with false gods.

However, I do assure you that I am

what you would call the genuine article.

- You look like an artist's rendition

of the genuine article, I'll give you that.

- Artists have their insights.

However, let us discuss these matters

in a civilized fashion.

Over a meal.

- That went out with Nero.

- With Messalina, as a matter of fact.

But you are right, it is a little old fashioned.

- No thank you.

- Pure protein, tastes like nectar.

One glassful is food for a month.

- Leave it.

- You earthlings were always the most skeptical

of my creations.

- It's our way.

You should know that.

- Skeptical, cynical, mean.

Perhaps it's why I always had such a soft spot for you.

Some of my creatures are like tame rabbits.

- Too bad.

- They'll be down on their knees by now

or offering up a sacrificial goat.

- We're a bit low on sacrificial goats.

- However one thing that does seem to have impressed you

in the past is force!

- All right!

All right, whoever you are.

- I told you who I am.

Magus, your creator.

- Whoever you are, you have a great deal of power.

Now what do you want with us?

- I want what I've always wanted

ever since I first created you.

To help you.

- How?

- You've been a great disappointment to me.

All those wars.

Your willful squandering of the natural resources

of the planet I gave you.

Your pollution of it.

- You said you were going to help us.

- I am.

- How?

- I'm going to give you something

that I have never allowed to any other species.

- What is that?

- A second chance.

- You're going to return us to earth?

- To a new earth.

A new Eden where you can begin again.

New Earth.

- John.

- Beautiful, is it not, Commander?

- We've learned to mistrust appearances.

- It is a quarter the size of old Earth

and its air, water and vegetable life are identical.

What about its sun?

- It has a sun like old Earth's

and in the same proportion to its size.

- Why didn't we see the planet before?

- Because I did not wish it.

You seem amused, Doctor.

- It's just that your answer is so exactly

what it should be.

You are what you say you are.

- The planet is ideal for humankind.

Your wanderings are over.

- Excuse me, but humankind does like to have

a little look around before it calls the place home.

- I suggest a team of you visit the planet's surface

to see for yourselves.

Maya?

- My readings indicate he's telling the truth

about the environment.

The planet could support us.

- Then we could settle there.

- It's data is identical to what I have about earth.

- All right, Magus, we accept your invitation.

- Excellent.

Then I suggest the team should be as follows.

Yourself of course as leader

since you are the one to make the decisions.

The lovely creature Maya must go

as scientific officer naturally.

The equally enchanting Dr. Russell as medical officer,

and Mr. Verdeschi.

Of course whether he knows it or not,

he is a farmer at heart.

Like generations of his family before him.

- I'm commander of this base.

If there are teams to be picked, I pick them.

- I am Commander of a great deal more

than this speck of dust.

That is the team.

Either that or none.

- All right, Magus.

Alan, while we're down there, you're in command.

- Right.

- Splendid, then I will transport you down

to the planet immediately.

- No, no.

We'll get down in one of our Eagles.

Typically stubborn, commendably cautious.

An Eagle it shall be.

- Tony, check the spacesuits.

- That will not be necessary.

- Check the suits, Tony.

Yasko, preparing for liftoff.

Have a seat.

- Prepare to liftoff, Eagle Four.

- You had to have it your way.

- That is one of my privileges.

- Yasko?

Yasko!

Koenig to Alpha, come in Alpha.

- Perhaps my way of transporting you has interfered.

It will come back later.

Shall we disembark?

- Commander Koenig, do you read me?

Do you read me?

Commander Koenig, come in Commander Koenig.

Do you read me?

- Oh John.

- The air is totally without pollution.

- And there don't seem to be any harmful bacteria in it.

- Wow, you could plant grain here

and have lasagna come out.

- You do like it?

- Well it seems compatible.

What about animals?

- There are some wild cattle, boar and horses.

Enough to start breeding from.

- Water?

- Water is pure and plentiful.

Fruit goes freely.

And the soya bean grows wild over the whole planet.

It is the Garden of Eden Mark ll.

You will be very happy here.

- Well I'd like to make a feasibility study

of the entire planet before we make decisions

about gardens of Eden.

I'd like to bring a task force here.

- Nobody else will be coming down.

- What?

- The decision has been made.

You are my new Adams, my new Eves.

- Koenig to Alpha, Koenig to Alpha.

Come in, Alpha.

- There is really no point in that tool.

- We're great triers, we primitives.

Koenig to Alpha, come in Alpha!

- Up there is your past.

Your future lies here.

- We choose our own future.

- I am your Lord and Creator.

You must put your trust in me.

- There are people up there that need us.

- I shall provide.

They shall not want.

- Just a minute.

The moon itself, what about that?

- The moon will continue to orbit New Earth

for a time anyway.

Then I shall send it on its way.

But it's our home.

- This is your home now.

Here you will live and love

and from you will spring the new human species.

Mankind's second chance.

- Now look.

Whoever or whatever you are,

- You know who I am.

Do not diminish my respect for you.

You are blessed among men.

For you this is the first day of creation.

- This is Moonbase Alpha, Moonbase Alpha.

Commander Koenig, come in.

Come in, Commander Koenig.

- Well they'll be down on that planet.

It's the only place they can be.

One thing's for sure.

We're certainly not gonna find them

by sitting on our butts here.

- I have worked it out in great detail.

I've been monitoring you for a long time.

- I trust we proved interesting subjects.

- Yes indeed.

I've worked out the pair bonding in great detail.

- The pair bonding?

- Yes, it's pretty important to establish

the right mix of genes.

- You plan to do a little genetic engineering?

- Precisely, and to that end I decided that you, Helena

should be Tony's mate.

And you Maya should be the Commander's.

- Wait a minute,

you've decided? - What?!

- Yes.

- Don't you think you should have consulted us first?

I mean that's very bad manners

and besides that it's very bad psychology.

- It's also bad biology.

We may not even be compatible.

- You got a lot to learn about humanity, Santa Claus.

- I know all about humanity, humanity is mine.

- Humanity belongs to no one.

- I have worked it out all very carefully.

You are all compatible.

You and the Commander will make

a fascinating interplanetary mix.

Psychon and Earth.

Your iron intellect my dear, typical of your species

interbred with the Commander's iron will

so typical of his.

- Those very qualities might get in your way.

- Your monitoring may not be as good as you think.

Maya happens to be very beautiful,

- But left to yourself, you would choose Helena.

I am well aware of that.

But it is not the mixture I want.

I'm afraid I cannot sanction it.

- I'm not looking for your blessing!

We make our own choices.

- Much less often than you think.

As for you my dear, your natural aristocracy

allied to Mr. Verdeschi here.

A man rooted in the rocks and the earth.

Your offspring will be remarkable.

- Offspring?

Yeah you would say that.

You couldn't just say children.

- There's one thing you've overlooked.

- What have I overlooked?

- We're not rabbits.

There's something else.

If you don't recognize that fact, who would?

- Ah, love?

I know all about love, I invented it.

There is just one rule.

You are in no account whatsoever to leave this glade

for the moment.

- Why?

- Because I do not wish it.

The boundary is very clearly defined

by that line of rocks.

You may not cross it.

Besides, there will be no need.

Everything you want to sustain you is here.

- I insist you reopen communications with Alpha.

- I do not wish it.

- But we do wish it!

- My regrets.

And now I must leave you.

It will be good to have a moon.

We've never had one before.

You will feel quite at home here.

Oh by the way, you'll find it's light

has all the magical romantic qualities

associated with it on Old Earth.

The Eagle, it's disappeared.

- We couldn't really expect him

to miss that trick, could we?

- That's atomic dispersal, that's very interesting.

- Well I'm glad you think so.

- No, it's still there somewhere.

Only he's exerting some power to disperse its particles.

Like powder dissolving in a liquid.

- Hey do you think that,

well that he could really be what he says he is?

God, I mean?

Jehovah?

- But those are just names your kind has given

to an all-powerful being that you think exists

but you don't understand.

- So you're saying that he could be God.

- Well if he'd come down to Earth a few years back

an awful lot of people would have said so.

- He's shown godlike powers

but the way that he's shown them, his methods, I don't know.

Two plus two doesn't make four.

- Well, let's go see what his food's like.

- Eagle One ready for liftoff.

- Alan, are you sure?

- It's been 24 hours, Yasko.

I'm going after them.

- Prepare to liftoff, Eagle One..

- Eagle One to Command Center, there's something wrong.

I haven't got liftoff.

- Well, his food's not poisonous.

- Well that's something.

What the?

- Try Helena.

- John?

- Maya?

- Very ingenious.

Magnetic field cocoons.

Positive, negative.

- He's making sure we do things his way.

He's paired us off.

- Yup.

- It won't work, Magus!

You hear me?

- Well, here we go.

It's that little old matchmaker in the sky.

- Yes.

- What?

- Oh, I said yes.

- I think I'm gonna get some more wood for the fire.

- I wonder who does his arrangements?

- Hmmm.

I wonder too.

- You know, that's an interesting theory of yours,

that God is just a name for,

for God.

- Comparative universal theology used to be a hobby of mine.

An interesting thing, we managed to find our God.

The creator of this universe,

to find that he had a god who created a bigger one.

- Our universe is just a part of it all?

- Hmm.

And another point about divine power.

If we learned to explain it,

I mean understood its mechanism,

I mean, would we regard it

as divine?

- You know we're being manipulated.

- Yes.

We are.

- It's just simple brainwashing, you know.

Music, I mean.

- That's what it is.

- It doesn't mean a thing.

- Of course it doesn't.

- After all, we,

can't fight city hall forever.

- No.

- Maya!

- Are you all right?

Thank you.

- Anytime.

- Good job, Maya.

The creature went in the cave, left some tracks.

Let's follow them.

- You were forbidden!

Why do you disobey?

Go back.

Go back!

Go back!

What is it that makes the human species so perverse?

- That was quite a show you put on last night.

What was it you didn't want us to see?

- I forbade you to leave the glade

because I knew the dangers that lay outside it.

I did not wish you to be destroyed

before we had even begun.

- Well what do you call the dangers?

The apes or those other things?

- Throughout its whole history

your species has been notable for two things.

Asking interminable questions and injuring itself.

- You haven't answered.

- You were homeless, I gave you a home.

You were hopeless, I gave you hope.

- We were never without hope.

- What more could you possibly ask for?

- Free will.

- Free will.

It is a phantom, a will of the wisp,

it exists nowhere in the Universe.

- We had it before you took it away from us.

- Your idea of free will is the right to say no.

- Free will is also the right to walk out of this glade

without you acting like something out of the book of Job.

- It is the right to try.

- John, are you all right?

- Yeah I'm all right.

Helena!

You all right?

- Maya.

- I'm okay.

We've hit force fields before.

Congratulations.

You're a big, big physicist.

- What is it out there you don't want us to see?

- We already know there are other beings

on this planet.

- And sooner or later, we're gonna get close to them.

- The ban was for your protection.

- Last night, did it look as if we needed your protection?

- Commander Koenig, I am well aware

that to erect any barrier in front of a human species

is immediately to challenge them to cross it.

However this is one barrier that will not be crossed.

- You can't keep a force field up forever.

- I can indeed, I can ill afford the energy.

But if you insist upon behaving like children

you must be treated like children.

But please, let us not quarrel.

Enjoy yourselves.

Huh.

What was it you used to say on old earth?

Make love, not war.

- We gotta get out of this zoo.

- Look, even if we break through the force field,

anything we try, he'll know about it

like last night.

- How did he know about that?

- ESP?

- No.

No, I don't think so.

I've scanned him just now.

There's some kind of power source inside him.

- An organic source?

- No.

It's an implant.

Fantastically potent, and I don't know how it works

but it's mechanical.

- Mechanical?

- It's a device.

Which means its powers are physical, not psychic.

- What did he mean when he said that he could

ill afford the energy?

- Well his powers are beyond our understanding, Tony,

but they're not limitless.

And he's got an awful lot to do with them.

- Well like what, for instance?

- Like he can hold this planet together.

Look, the moon is much bigger in relation to this planet

than it was to earth.

And very much closer.

- The gravitational pull.

- Hmm, Magus must be countering it

or else this planet would blow apart under the strain.

- Yeah, there's obviously something he's doing

that's stopping anybody coming down from Alpha, right?

- Right.

- We've gotta get out of here.

If we can get to those tracks outside the cave,

anything to give us a clue as to what's

going on around here.

- Yeah.

- Wait a minute.

I wonder.

Maya, a bird could do it.

- An owl, I think.

For its eyesight.

- Maya, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Good luck.

- Additional burst is in place, Yasko.

I'm going for liftoff again.

- Okay, Alan.

- I'm going up for full power!

- An owl.

I thought you were all extinct down here.

The more I learn, the less I know.

Away you go.

- You mean he caught you and let you go?

- Mhmm.

Which proves he's a superman but not supernatural.

- What about the tracks?

Did you find anything?

- I found the same ones.

Only inside the glade as well.

- Where?

- Over there, behind some bushes.

I saw it clearly from the air, come on.

- Looks like these rocks have only just been put here.

- Yeah, like it was blocked in the last few hours.

- We're still inside the force field.

- You know it's possible this cave connects

with the one outside,

the one that we saw last night.

Now if it does, we can get through it

and out of this glade.

Lasers.

Now!

All right, come on, stay close behind.

- Which way now?

- Quiet.

Stay here.

- Please, shoot!

- What?

- You will be doing what I desire.

- Why did you attack us?

- So that you might kill us.

That is why our kind go and fight the ape things.

He won't let us die.

- Who won't let you die?

- Magus.

He's the last of a line of Cosmic Magicians.

They could perform miracles through physics.

- What does he want?

- He wants the secret of creation.

To be able to create life.

And we mutants are the results of Magus' attempts

to discover that secret.

We're the children of other species he's trapped

and brought to this planet.

The results of his manic probing into our

earliest fertilized cells.

He won't even let us die.

- Why?

- He still thinks he may learn something

from our mutilated genes.

Down here's the only place we can get away from him.

He'll never come down here.

- Is there a way through the caves

that will lead us out of the glade?

Thank you.

Helena, Maya.

- Deceitful pygmies!

- Is he all right?

- Maya, no.

- An immature and irresponsible reaction.

- The last time we met, you were an owl, I believe.

I'm ashamed to stay that your species' mastery

of molecular tricks slipped my mind for the moment.

- So you take your revenge like a child.

You take me too lightly, you need a lesson.

- This is your Garden of Eden, is it?

And those are your Adams and Eves?

You are gonna use us like laboratory animals, weren't you?

- No, that was not my purpose with you.

- You know you're a bungler who creates nothing.

Nothing but misery!

- My purpose with you was to create

a new species of mankind.

Strong, resourceful, brilliant, dedicated,

all of qualities you possess between you.

And together we will work on the great mystery

of creation as a team.

I realize now I cannot solve it on my own.

- You call yourself a creator?

You're a fraud and a liar.

- A harmless deception to gain your confidence.

- You didn't.

- I have known and admired humankind a long time.

- Well it's not mutual, believe me.

- I have been among you many times.

I was Simon Magus, who offered to buy

the Nazarene's powers from his apostles.

I was Merlin, I was Nostradamus.

I was the magician in Ancient Egypt

who contended in magic with Moses.

No doubt.

- When the right time comes,

I will invest you and your offspring

with the kind of powers that I myself possess.

You will help me.

- Help you?

Help you to do that?

- Either you agree to my terms

or I will destroy your companions on the moon.

- Not even you can destroy the moon.

- I can destroy your base then, your life support.

- Repair crew to section eight.

Repair crew to section eight.

- Why?

- Maybe to put pressure on John.

- Stop!

- You agree to my terms?

- I agree to talk about it.

- You are a realist.

We will discuss it tomorrow.

- I think I've got it.

- What?

A way out?

- I don't know.

Let me try it out on you.

He had us whipped, he knew it.

Yet he wouldn't wait.

He wouldn't press home his advantage, why?

Because for some reason he can't stand the dark.

- What?

Superman afraid of the dark?

- Think about it.

Last night he left before it got dark.

He won't go in the caves.

And what about the laser?

The effect it had on him.

- Well he drew strength from it.

- Right.

- Of course.

He needs light.

His power comes from light.

- That would put him on the other side

of the planet now, where the sun is still shining.

- Well we saw him, last night

when we crossed the boundary.

- No we didn't.

That was a holograph.

A projection of himself in the sky.

- And that implant I detected in him,

that could be a light decelerator.

- A what?

- Imagine light traveling at 186,000 miles per second.

- Well for you I'll try anything.

- Well you find a way to slow it down

to zero constantly, as it's coming at you.

And then you harness the resulting energy.

- I didn't think that was possible.

- Ah, it isn't for us.

But they managed to solve it.

That's why they're super beings.

There must be some small crystal

implanted somewhere in his brain stem.

- The energy would be instantly available.

- And directed simply by thought.

- Unlimited personal power.

- He must be the nearest thing there is to being God.

- So how do we fight back?

- We have to find some way to cut off his source of power.

Which means to block out the light.

- How are we gonna do that?

- By being primitive.

It's the last thing he'll expect from us.

- Hurry it up, Magus'll be here in a minute.

- Yeah we gotta make sure it works.

Okay, got it?

- Yup.

- Okay, hang on.

Got it?

Got it.

- John?

All right cover it up.

It's a total blackout.

It's black as pitch.

- If this doesn't work, or Magus suspects,

it's the end of all of us and Moonbase Alpha.

- I know, Tony.

- You have considered?

- Yes we have considered.

- You will cooperate with me in my great work?

- Magus, we don't trust you.

Why should we put ourselves completely at your mercy?

- I need you, I cannot do it alone.

This is your guarantee.

- All right, Magus.

But these are the conditions.

There are to be no more experiments on the mutants.

Not even observations.

- Valuable things might still be learned from them.

One's mistakes offer more instructions

than one's successes.

- Those are our conditions and that is our ultimatum.

- As always, the arrogance of your species astounds me.

- And the horror of your deeds astonishes us.

- How dare you.

Primeval imbecile!

Without me, the planet will break apart.

Light, give me light or we'll all die!

- Koenig to Alpha, Koenig to Alpha, come in, Alpha.

Come in, Alpha!

- Only Magus' power is holding this planet together

against the pull of our moon.

- Koenig to Alpha, come in Alpha!

Koenig to Alpha!

- John!

John!

- The mutants!

You get aboard the Eagle!

I'll meet you there.

- John!

- Go on!

- Come on!

- Come on, we'll take you all back with us!

- No, no!

Thank you, no!

This is the best thing for us.

- All of you!

- You go!

Go!

Go!

- Commander.

- Helena.

Sit down, gotta get going.

One streak of light as the earth broke up around him

and Magus could still get away with it.

- That's a real longshot, isn't it?

- Would you like to bet against him?

- Nope.