Televised Angst

Most television series aim towards a happy and/or positive ending of some form and seldom deviate from particular formats going back to the earliest days of the medium. There has also been a segment of memorable and not so memorable programs that focus on the theme of a group of people who are lost in remote and mysterious places, either by their own making or by forces beyond their control, and have to deal with their situation while desperately trying to get back home.

These next sections will focus on a selection of series that have elements in common with Aniara, some of which may surprise you and one that is more than just coincidentally similar!

Lost in Space

You might think the most obvious first choice for a television series relevant to Aniara is one about a retrofuture yet still nuclear family leaving an overpopulated Earth in 1997 to settle a new world in the Alpha Centauri system, only to have their starship thrown off course via a stowaway saboteur, leaving them to wander the Milky Way galaxy while trying each week to either reach their intended mission home or get back to Earth. 

You would, however, be mistaken in this case.

Lost in Space, which spent three seasons on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network from 1965 to 1968, had begun as a relatively serious science fiction series in its first season. 

Then the phenomenon known as Batman arrived on a rival network (the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC) in 1966. Based on the superhero character and his world from DC Comics, the Batman television series put a very campy and over-the-top spin on its main heroes, their wild assortment of villains, and the plots they are wrapped up in, to enormous popular success.

Wanting to cash in on the Batman train, the makers of Lost in Space lightened the tone and themes of their weekly stories and most of the characters in a similar vein, to mixed results, depending upon whom you seek out for a review. There was certainly no real sense of existential angst as displayed in Aniara, even as the characters ended up forever lost in space when the series was abruptly cancelled in 1968.

A Three-Hour Tour… 

How little did I know, when I used to watch a certain American television series from the 1960s in syndication as a kid in the early 1970s, that I would one day be comparing this seemingly light-hearted and even innocuous comedy program with a heavy avant-garde Swedish science fiction film based on an equally mordant poem. 

The television series? Gilligan’s Island. Yes, that television series. 

Allow me to elucidate…

Originally aired by the CBS network from 1964 to 1967, Gilligan’s Island presented the weekly adventures of seven people who became stuck together on an “uncharted desert isle” somewhere in the vast South Pacific Ocean after their chartered tour boat was shipwrecked by a powerful storm at sea. 

As this was a comedy, nothing seriously bad ever happened to the “seven stranded castaways” on Gilligan’s Island. If anything, the group often lived and did rather well despite having “no phone, no lights, no motor car. Not a single luxury,” as the memorable theme song declared in the series back story.

The characters were never able to leave the island during the original run of the series (being cancelled unexpectedly by the network before they could have a fourth season did not help their predicament, either), despite a very strong desire to return to civilization dominating the plot of nearly every episode. 

As a child, Gilligan’s Island gave me an early case of existential angst, as I found the castaways’ endless inability to escape their fates as frustrating as they did. This feeling was only heightened by the fact that this supposedly uncharted island was constantly being visited by all sorts of people, creatures, and even machines who often possessed the ability to get them home yet managed to fail at this task in one form or another. 

Conversely, many older viewers often expressed a different take on the characters’ situation: They wondered why any of the castaways would want to trade living in a tropical paradise for the stress and strife of crowded modern society.

UPDATE: The castaways would eventually make it off the island in some of the later iterations of the franchise. At one point they even became stranded again, this time on another entire planet in a distant star system, in a short-lived animated series in the early 1980s titled, shockingly, Gilligan’s Planet. This later program was a Saturday morning rehash of the original live action series, only this time they focused on space themes and tropes.    

What compelled me to compare two franchises that seem so diametrically opposite to each other in just about every way on the surface? It began when I recalled one of the more famous parts of Gilligan’s Island’s equally famous theme song, which was also my inspiration for the title of this essay section…

A small charter boat christened the S.S. Minnow, with a crew of two and five passengers, set sail one fateful day to cruise the waters around some of the island state of Hawaii “for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour.” When I saw Aniara for the first time where they mention that the transportation vessel would take three weeks to travel from Earth to Mars with its eight thousand passengers, the similar number (if not length of time) led me to see other similarities between them:

• Both ships are taking their passengers on relatively brief cruises with provided amenities such as meals.
• Both ships are knocked off their original courses and destinations and lose directional control of their vessels due to unforeseen circumstances and the subsequent loss of their engines: With the Aniara, it was being struck by natural cosmic debris in the poem and artificial space junk in the film which diverted them from Mars. For Gilligan’s Island, a fierce and unexpected tropical storm blew the “tiny ship” far away from Hawaii.
• Both crews lose their shipboard abilities to communicate with home, further hampering their attempts at rescue. The castaways on Gilligan’s Island do have a commercial radio for staying in touch with the mainland, but they can only receive radio signals with it, not transmit. In the poem version of Aniara, the ship is able to receive news about Earth for a while.
• In both cases, the respective vessels were saved from fatal disasters by “the courage of [their] fearless crew[s].”
• The passengers and crew develop an overriding focus to be rescued and get back home once they realize they are trapped in their current situations.
• The command structures of the crews with their authority over the passengers remain on both ships after their respective accidents. The status structure is stronger on the Aniara since the crew is much larger, but in Gilligan’s Island, the captain of the S.S. Minnow is continually looked up to as the de facto leader of the castaways during their island stay.
• The social class structure which the passengers belonged to before they went on their fateful trips remains largely intact afterwards. This social status is particularly noticeable in Gilligan’s Island, as highlighted by the wealthy couple, the Howells, who maintain their rich lifestyles and attitudes despite no longer having direct access to the bulk of their monetary and material wealth.
• There is not a lot of ethnic diversity on either ship. 

• In the case of Gilligan’s Island, this was due in part to the series arriving around the same time as the Civil Rights movement in the United States; television programs and films were just starting to portray more non-white characters. 
• In fact, as Gilligan’s Island was still airing on CBS, the first Star Trek series debuted in late 1966 on a rival network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This science fiction adventure series, set several centuries in the future with an interstellar level civilization, was soon noted for having one of the first truly diverse casts of main characters on American television. 
• In contrast, the focus on the seven stranded castaways was their social diversity, which as you will see later in this section was no story accident.
• With Aniara, this film came from Sweden, which has a current demographic of 91 percent white citizens. This does not excuse everything, of course; however, the sky lift that brought up passengers to the transport ship came from Europe: One gets the strong impression that those who could make it off the environmentally traumatized Earth and relocate to relatively safer Mars were the ones who could afford to be rescued. In this respect, the demographics aboard the Aniara deliberately speak volumes about society.
• Both series have characters whose names are primarily known and called by their respective professions:

• For Aniara, among the most prominent examples are MR the Mimarobe, The Astronomer, and The Intendent. The Astronomer’s real name, Roberta Twelander, is seen just once during the recorded video broadcast welcoming passengers on the Aniara and never spoken on screen.
• For Gilligan’s Island, all the characters do have known full names (yes, even Gilligan, whose first name is Willy), but they were very seldom stated in the series. Most of the castaways are referred to each other by only one of their names, while the ship’s captain is usually called Skipper (an alternate word for captain) and Roy Hinkley is far better known simply as the Professor. It is also interesting to note that the Professor is portrayed as the smartest and most level-headed person in the group; he also brought a large collection of research books with him on the trip. All these traits parallel those of The Astronomer in Aniara.
• Both groups had encounters with outside elements which led them to believe they would soon be traveling home. In every case, the hoped-for rescue would fall through.
• Both groups made continual efforts to recreate for themselves what they miss from their respective homes with the resources available to them.
• Storms occasionally played havoc with the lives of the castaways.

It is also worth noting that in both stories, certain amenities which should have soon fallen into very short supply due to their respective situations, remain constant and available:

• For the Aniara, the spaceship continued to provide power from its backup systems for several decades, even after the emergency ejection of the nuclear fuel rods from its propulsion system. They also managed to keep thousands of people alive and relatively content on a diet of processed algae. The ship’s supplies of alcohol also somehow stayed available for years: Either the Aniara came very well-stocked with libations to begin with, or someone along the journey figured out how to distill algae into alcohol.
• The folks on Gilligan’s Island were also comparatively well supplied as each episode called for, despite being on a small and remote desert island somewhere in the Pacific, which the theme song drummed home each week was “primitive as can be.” It was later revealed that the series writers were going to explain this continual selective abundance by having the castaways find an abandoned yet stocked cargo freighter just off the island from which they could retrieve supplies. The creative staff later decided it would be more amusing to simply not explain how the castaways got the items they needed when they needed them and dropped this concept.

COMMENT: Another related running joke that viewers and fans of the series have long pointed out is that the castaways, in particular the Howells, took a lot of luggage for what was supposed to be a three-hour tour. I am sure a number of in-universe excuses could explain this, but in the end that would only take away from the ironic humor of the series, as was shown with the freighter concept.

It was these parallels I listed that made me wonder if somehow the filmmakers of Aniara were influenced to one degree or another by Gilligan’s Island? American culture is certainly pervasive throughout global human society, for good and bad; that cultural saturation includes decades-old light comedies which even those who have never seen one episode of the series are at least aware of. 

I was even influenced in this thought process during the scene of Isagel giving birth to her and MR’s child: The male midwife assisting them, a middle-aged man in appearance, greets their son upon his arrival into the world with “Welcome, little buddy!” The term “little buddy” is what the Skipper is well known for calling his first mate Gilligan as a term of friendly affection. To add, Gilligan was also the most childlike and innocent character among the all-adult castaways.

I know part of this is probably just me trying to justify my much younger self’s taste in television programs. It is more than likely that the Swedish producers knew nothing about Gilligan’s Island (hey, I was unaware of Aniara until quite recently, and that work is considered to be one of Sweden’s national treasures) and would not have seriously considered it as an influence if they did, nor would they have admitted to such a thing if they wanted to be taken seriously.

Thankfully for you, dear readers, I have no such hinderances, for I revel in making these wonderful and enlightening comparisons wherever they may come from. Being an intellectual snob only makes one miss out on discoveries and deeper meanings that exist in the most unexpected of places. Plus, it is just plain fun!

Perhaps the primary reason why I can make so many comparisons between Aniara and Gilligan’s Island is that the characters undergo similar if not exact situations, which lead to human beings responding and behaving in certain predictable ways. As just one of many examples, compare even a handful of science fiction films that deal with a post-apocalypse world and strong similarities will arise between them. This is due, more often than not, to the expected and predictable reactions of human beings thrust into parallel situations, rather than just straight up plagiarism or lazy writing. 

Although I have referred to Gilligan’s Island as a lightweight comedy more than once in this essay, there was more underlying depth to the series than one might imagine. Perhaps in its own cultural way, Gilligan’s Island is the American version of Aniara, for it too is very well known, iconic, and even beloved by many of its citizens.

The creator of the series, producer and screenwriter Sherwood Schwartz (1916-2011), once said he wanted viewers to take away from Gilligan’s Island the idea that everyone needs to get along with each other to survive, despite our differences, for we are all together on a single point traveling indefinitely through space. 

Looking at Schwartz’s filmography, a fair number of his television series share the prevailing “we are all in this together” theme with Gilligan’s Island. The following list gives you a flavor of their similarities, in order of their broadcast dates:

• My Favorite Martian – Aired from 1963 to 1966, this CBS series focused on an advanced being from Mars who crash lands on Earth and must adapt to his new world by dealing and working with humans while attempting to repair his spaceship so he can return home – which he never did, despite being able to invent all sorts of devices, including a time machine.
• It’s About Time – Aired for just one season on CBS, from 1966 to 1967, we meet two American astronauts in a Gemini-style spacecraft orbiting Earth which somehow travels “faster than the speed of light.” As a result, they flew through “the barrier of time” and end up in a prehistoric era, where they have to deal with the primitive natives while trying to repair their ship to get home. In this case, the astronauts do get back to the late Twentieth Century and take a cave-dwelling family with them, where comedic hijinks ensue. As with Gilligan’s Island, this short-lived series also has a catchy theme which explains the premise each week. See and hear here:  https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/itsabouttimelyrics.html
• Dusty’s Trail – This syndicated series lasted less than one year, airing from September of 1973 to March of 1974. Set in the American West of the 1880s, it is a reworking of Schwartz’s Gilligan’s Island, complete with having actor Bob Denver (1935-2005), who played Gilligan, now playing the lead character named Dusty. The rest of the cast mirrored the castaways, although they were performed by different actors. The premise is that a wagon and stagecoach consisting of two coachmen and five passengers get separated from their wagon train that is taking settlers to California. The group spend their time trying to find and reconnect with their larger cadre while having adventures in very similar fashion to the denizens of Gilligan’s Island, only in Old West fashion. In addition, just like their far more popular predecessors, the lost wagoners are cancelled before they can reconnect with their wagon train and resume their journey.
• Together We Stand – Although this series surprisingly does not involve a group of people who are stranded together and trying to get home, Schwartz’s theme of humanity working as a unit despite our differences to survive and thrive may be found with this short-lived spinoff of his most famous series, The Brady Bunch (1969 to 1974). Aired on CBS from 1986 to 1987, the series involved a white couple who adopted two children of different ethnicities. The episodes focused on how the blended family learned to understand each other and get along.

For those of you who want to read and hear the complete lyrics to the opening and closing scenes of Gilligan’s Island, here you go: https://lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/gilligansislandlyrics.html

Star Trek Voyager

The Star Trek franchise, which began as a television series in 1966 on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), cannot be seen as a true parallel to Aniara, despite the shared focal elements involving crewed ships in deep space set several centuries in the future. 

In general, except for the episodes involving temporary strandings for dramatic effect, the Star Trek universe is densely populated with intelligent species who deliberately venture into deep space for exploration and settling “strange new worlds.” They conduct these adventures thanks to the utilization of advanced interstellar vessels with FTL propulsion systems known as warp drives. 

The closest parallel might be the series Star Trek Voyager, first aired on the now-defunct United Paramount Network (UPN) from 1995 to 2001. The crew of the United Federation of Planets (UFP) starship USS Voyager find themselves involuntarily brought across the Milky Way galaxy over seventy thousand light years from where the UFP resides in the Alpha Quadrant of our vast stellar island. 

Although the trip back home from the Delta Quadrant is initially estimated to take 75 years, the crew of Voyager still have their warp drive propulsion system and the means to continually replicate their food and drink supplies, among other beneficial high technologies that the passengers and crew of the Aniara could have only fantasized about. 

Eventually, Voyager reestablishes contact with Starfleet, their quasi-military branch of the UFP in the Alpha Quadrant, and finally returns to Earth far ahead of the original schedule, largely intact and even improved in several areas, thanks to their near-constant encounters with other technological species and alien worlds.

For the World is Hollow…

I want to highlight two episodes from the Star Trek franchise that dealt specifically with generation ships and the issues they stirred up that reflect on some of the more serious concerns encountered by those have made real dives into conceiving such interstellar missions.

The first one is the third season episode from the original series titled “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”. It premiered on NBC Television on November 8, 1968.

A race of humanoid beings called the Fabrini constructed and launched a generation ship inside a large planetoid two hundred miles (320 kilometers) across and powered by atomic energy. The Fabrini did this to save select members of their species before their sun went nova about ten thousand years ago. 

As the centuries passed, the people of Yonada came to think they were living on an actual planet. This viewpoint was helped along by the design of the planetoid’s interior, which had both a “surface” and a “sky”, with the latter having an artificial sun, a day/night cycle, and stars. 

The Yonadans’ lack of awareness was also enforced by the Oracle of the People, the advanced AI that oversaw all aspects of their daily lives. The Oracle functioned as a virtual deity and was worshipped as such, along with the Fabrini ancestors who made this journey possible. 

Enforcement of this belief system was conducted by the Oracle using a small device labeled the Instrument of Obedience implanted in the right temples of all the Fabrini descendants. The device could inflict physical pain up to the point of death, depending on how severe the Oracle considered the individual’s crime. 

As we saw in this episode which contributed to the long show title, one elderly Yonada male was killed by the Oracle via his implanted instrument for revealing out loud that he once climbed a mountain, which was against the law, and discovered that his world’s sky – and thus all of Yonada – was an artificial construct. 

QUESTION: If the Oracle could – and did – kill the elderly Yonadan for confessing his forbidden act, why didn’t the AI (or the original Fabrini designers) have methods to prevent people from accessing those mountains to avoid such a problem in the first place? Or why didn’t it punish the man for climbing at the time when he did so in his youth? It was quite apparent that the Oracle could monitor the thoughts and actions of every person who had the Instrument of Obedience in their heads.

Certain aspects of the plans for this particular generation ship were left vague, either to add to the mystery of the Yonada or perhaps simply due to imperfections in the script. Sadly, many third season episodes of the original Star Trek series were often hit-and-miss when it came to production quality. Having to wrap up an entire story in under one hour is another factor in leaving unanswered questions in the worldbuilding process.

One item not fully addressed was the ignorance of the Yonada people about their world: Was it planned by the Fabrini designers as an emotional cushion to help them survive the ten-thousand-year journey across the stars? Or did the knowledge of Yonada being an artificial vessel and their goal of reaching a new place that was “rich, green, lovely to the eyes, and of a goodness that will fill the hearts of the people with tears of joy,” as the High Priestess Natira described their intended destination from what she had been taught, simply fade over the generations as these people came to know of only one world?

The impression one is given is that the Fabrini deliberately set up their generation ship’s society to believe only certain things about their world, to have these worldviews perpetually reinforced by an AI who was also treated as a god, and to only have the true purpose of their existence revealed once Yonada arrived at their new home planet one hundred centuries later.

If this is the case, when did the Fabrini bring about this radical action? Certainly, those who built Yonada and the first generation to occupy it knew the vessel’s real makeup and purpose. Or were these original passengers somehow led to believe something else from the start? 

How did the makers morally justify the use of an AI that not only kept every occupant in the dark about their reality and monitored every thought and action, but also physically punished and terrorized anyone who went outside a rather narrow set of views? We even witnessed one Yonadan essentially punished to death via severe pain for the transgression of discovering his world was artificial. 

This combination of oppressive fear and selected ignorance might keep a society in check over a long period of time, but what consequences will it have when the final generation reaches their new world and they learn the truth about their existence? Will the shock of being deliberately deceived for millennia be too much for them and lead to open rebellion, suicide, and genocide? 

Did the Fabrini plan for such a contingency, or did they simply assume the Yonadans will be delighted with their new home and the fact that the Universe is far larger and more complex than they ever imagined? The episode certainly leaves one with the impression that these people will be just fine with the latter supposition.

Another issue brought up in this episode is that Yonada suffered some major technical problems that would have caused it to collide with the destination planet named Daran V, destroying both the generation ship and wiping out Daran V’s native population of three billion inhabitants.

The Oracle seemed oblivious about these serious guidance problems and failed to inform any of the inhabitants of Yonada about them. The AI also actively fought the USS Enterprise officers who tried to access the vessel’s main control room to resolve the issue. Whether by Fabrini programming or taking on the role enroute via some form of learning algorithm, the Oracle gave one the impression it was not putting on an act when it behaved just like an arrogant and overly strict deity.

We do not know if any of the Yonadans would have been educated enough to fix the more serious technical issues on their ship even if they were given access to them. It also appears doubtful that there were any other AI onboard to serve as backups to the Oracle or deal with other ship systems. 

This lack of redundancy and having a crew that is deliberately left unable to grasp the technical parameters of their world are flaws that one hopes would never be duplicated in a real generation ship.

On a relatively more positive side, Yonada did possess a supply of nuclear missiles which one assumes were designed to remove both encroaching natural celestial bodies and deliberate threats from hostile or otherwise dangerous vessels. Since the residents of Yonada were made unaware of their surrounding reality, this defense system had to be automated. 

The downside to this setup is that benevolent and benign vessels such as the starship Enterprise were targeted by the Yonada defense system. Thankfully, the Federation ship could handle this comparatively primitive technology (the Fabrini used chemical rockets) with their superior defense capabilities. The attack also inadvertently alerted the Enterprise crew to the presence of Yonada and eventually its true nature as a generation ship, along with its potential impact with an inhabited planet – which of course Captain James T. Kirk and company resolved just in time.

Three decades later, Star Trek Voyager introduced another alien generation ship in their fifth season episode “The Disease”, first aired on February 24, 1999. Built by a humanoid species calling themselves the Varro living in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, this ship began its existence as a deep space exploration vessel. Over time more modules were added to it and a generation ship came to fruition.

When the USS Voyager encounters the Varro generation ship, they have been traveling through space for over four centuries. These ETI are quite xenophobic due to the many hostile encounters they have had with other intelligences over time (the Star Trek universe is quite the dangerous place, judging by how many scrapes the main characters in each franchise encountered every week). However, they do enlist the aid of the Voyager crew to help with worrying structural issues they are having with the vessel.

Although the focus of this episode is more about a romance between two characters and threatening diseases – ironically, the original series Star Trek episode about the Yonada generation ship also involved an interspecies romance and a deadly illness as plot points – “The Disease” does bring up an important issue about generation ship societies: What if some of the denizens no longer want to be part of that long journey and instead wish to leave the ship and head off in their own direction?

The Varro dissenters take action by introducing engineered parasites designed to eat away at their ship’s structure. This forces the individual pods that compose the generation vessel to break away from each other without harming the overall ship itself or its inhabitants. In the end, most of the Varro decide to stick together in their separate living sections while the dissenters head off to explore a binary star system. 

One interesting aspect of the Varro generation ship is that it is equipped with warp drive. In effect these travelers could venture to many star systems in relatively short periods of time. This contrasts with the design and purpose of most other generation starship plans, which assume slower-than-light propulsion methods and very long voyages through interstellar space.

As noted, the Varro are mistrustful of other intelligent species (a rather wise precaution in this reality) and prefer to live aboard their ship rather than settle another planet. This is yet another contrast with most generation ship plans: That the goal of such a mission is to reach a suitable world to start a new life upon for the arriving descendants of the original crew.

There is a certain level of safety and practicality to a generation ship that remains in space rather than striving for one particular target. Planets have their own sets of hazards, even comparatively benign places such as Earth. Staying in space and only stopping at other worlds to explore and replenish supplies would give the passengers both a higher chance of survival and a definite continual growth of their celestial knowledge. 

It is interesting to think that while we still conduct most of our SETI efforts towards Earthlike exoworlds to find other intelligent beings, many of the more advanced societies may be roaming the galaxy in an expanded version of a maritime cruise ship that stops at different islands, but the crew and passengers keep their vessel as home base. 

Thankfully, modern SETI has finally begun to look for what are labeled technosignatures produced by the interplanetary and interstellar activities of sophisticated alien societies and not just electromagnetic signals sent in our direction. It will be interesting to see if some of these “signatures” are from species who prefer the nomadic life from the comforts of massive spacecraft, venturing throughout the Milky Way galaxy as they please. 

The Starlost 

In the fall of 1973, Canada produced and released a science fiction series devoted to the adventures of human descendants on a vast generation ship. Titled The Starlost, it was created and written by science fiction author Harlan Ellison (1934-2018), with fellow author Ben Bova (1932-2020) as science advisor. 

Ellison became disillusioned and highly disappointed with the low-quality production values of the series and eventually disavowed it. Nevertheless, The Starlost was the first science fiction television series solely devoted to the theme of a generation ship as its setting. 

Only sixteen episodes were released before The Starlost was permanently cancelled in early 1974. The background story is one quite similar to most generation vessel plots:

In the Twenty-Third Century, the planet Earth is facing some unspecified doom. Whatever is going wrong, it is bad enough – yet not quite so sudden – that the authorities are compelled and able to construct a giant interstellar vessel they call Earthship Ark.

At over two hundred miles (320 kilometers) long and fifty miles (80 kilometers) wide, this Ark has a long rectangular center which serves as the control and command hub of the ship. The center includes the main propulsion system: A Bussard ramjet that scoops hydrogen from the surrounding deep space environment and converts it into fusion power. The series calls it a CTR drive, for Controlled Thermonuclear Reactor, pushing the Ark along at nearly the speed of light.

Connected to this elongated hub are 37 domed biospheres each twenty square miles (fifty square kilometers) in size. Each living area contains people of different cultures chosen especially for this mission. Earthship Ark is aimed at another star system for the descendants of the surviving human race to one day settle.

One hundred years into the journey, an unspecified accident happens that wrecks the Ark’s primary control center and kills most of the crew. The biodomes are automatically secured from each other and the ship continues onward uncontrolled. As the centuries pass, the various communities begin to forget they are on a vast ship and the original reasons why they were placed there. 

One man named Devon, raised in a community styled after the Amish, eventually discovers the truth about his world. He comes across the Ark’s library computer, which functions just well enough to tell him about the true nature of things and that the ship is on a collision course with a Sol-type star! 

With two companions, Devon attempts to find the auxiliary bridge located on the far side of the Ark, steer the ship away from the approaching star, and eventually reconnect all the biodome societies to help find and settle a new world humanity could call home. Of course this task will not be easy, as it calls for weekly drama and danger along the way.

The Starlost “Bible” is not just an informative look at the plans for the series by its creators to guide episode script writers, it is also an enjoyable examination into how one group of people in the latter half of the Twentieth Century imagined the reasons and plans for designing a generation ship. Thankfully, it may be found and read online here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230319184920/http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Misc_Bibles/The_Starlost_Bible.pdf

For example, here is how the authors imagined the reactions by our species when it was learned that Earth was doomed and who decided among them not to take their fates lying down:

When the end was seen to be inevitable, the reactions of all of Earth population were polarized. Bizarrely. The majority of the “average” people went mad in proscribed ways: catatonia, libertinism, utter apathy, psychotic behaviour, violence, self-pity, hopelessness. 

But there was a sizable Minority who reconciled themselves to the death of the planet and who resolved to keep the seed of humanity alive. They were artists and physicians and technicians and philosophers who realized the only thing left to them was saving a segment of the Earth’s population that could viably be sent into space to settle on other worlds.

To this end, they began to build the Ark.

This next bible segment describes where the Earthship Ark was constructed in space, along with who, what, and how many were included on this journey… 

In the dark spaces between the Earth and the Moon, they began to build the Ark. Two hundred miles long, built to hold 500,000 people, designed by space engineers and estheticians to carry the genetically-preferred and carefully-selected cream of the human crop to other island universes, other galaxies [!], other suns, other planets… Earthlike planets where they could sow the seed of the Earth and permit the races to flourish.

All of this happened three hundred years from today. The Ark was built, staffed, and stocked with a supercargo of half a million men, women and children of all races ages and beliefs. Animals were put aboard, hydroponics gardens, whole cultures were built and put aboard, out there between the Earth and the Moon.

And then, the Ark left.

And the Earth was destroyed.

We also learn about the background of the main characters and their world, the biodome called Cypress Corners. Designed to keep the population under its artificial sky both healthy and stable, the society has unfortunately also become both rigid and oppressive – a genuine concern for real generation ship cultures when it comes to managing them over the centuries. 

Just as Devon and his friends break away from their society and subvert its enforced norms, it is unrealistic to assume that at least some individuals in generation vessels won’t think and feel a need to move beyond the rules of their cultures for any number of reasons. Will stomping out individual thoughts and acts be a necessary part of protecting the group order, or will it only lead to stagnation and extinction?

Sadly, The Starlost never got very far in its exploration of these themes and its encompassing worlds. Hopefully the series did and even will inspire those who one day want to build such vessels in reality and bring awareness to the needs and issues of spaceships and their inhabitants who must maintain themselves for centuries and millennia.

As its name suggests, TV Tropes examines all the often-typical aspects of the series with some good insights into what would and would not work in reality:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheStarlost

All the Tropes has a bit cheekier take on The Starlost, but still makes valuable and insightful points on the series:

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Starlost

If Aniara and Star Trek Made a Baby Together… Space: 1999

In 1975, a new science fiction television series emerged from Great Britain titled Space: 1999. 

Showcasing perhaps some of the best practical special effects of its era developed for television, Space: 1999 told the story of a collection of several hundred people living and working on a sprawling international lunar base located in the northern hemisphere crater Plato designated Moonbase Alpha.

One day – September 13, 1999, to be exact – the denizens of Alpha found themselves and the Moon violently hurtling away from Earth and out of the Sol system into the wider reaches of the Milky Way galaxy at a high velocity. The culprit: The sudden explosion of the vast stores of nuclear waste brought from Earth and buried on the lunar farside, ostensibly to protect humanity from the lethal levels of radiation contained in this refuse. 

The men and women of Moonbase Alpha soon became involuntary explorers of interstellar space, riding a spaceship 3,476 kilometers (2,160 miles) across made of ancient rock. Each week for two years they would encounter strange new worlds and exotic life forms as they hoped to either find a way back to Earth or settle upon a compatible new planet to call home.

As was often the case on television in those days, Space: 1999 ended rather abruptly after only two seasons. The Alphans who had survived their journey across the stars were left with fates unknown. 

UPDATE: A seven-minute-long fan-made film titled Message from Moonbase Alpha premiered at a Space: 1999 Breakaway convention in Culver City, California, on September 13, 1999 – the exact date when the Moon was forcibly removed from our Sol system in the series. 

Utilizing one of the actors from the original series as the representative spokesperson, a final transmission is sent from the base to Earth, informing whoever detects and decodes it that the Alpha systems are beginning to fail 24 years after they involuntarily left Earth’s orbit. The residents plan to abandon the Moon for a new terrestrial-type world they have encountered and hope to make it their new home. The Alphans even predict that the Moon’s passage by this exoplanet will make it slingshot back to them a quarter century from their time.

An interesting and relevant quote: “And to state our belief, though our Moon’s progress was random, our odyssey does have a purpose, one still in the act of revealing itself….”

For all the details of this short film, considered worthy enough to be called the forty-ninth episode by the fandom, see here:

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/txmfma.html

There may have been some issues with certain details on how the Aniara ended up damaged and drifting through space, but these are mere quibbles compared to how Earth’s natural satellite was flung into the void in Space: 1999.

The introduction to this Moonbase Alpha Operational Guide page titled “The Science of Breakaway” by Marcus Lindroos shows why the mere detonation of a collection of nuclear waste would never budge the Moon…

The main problem is that the Moon is way too big and massive for the basic premise of the first Space: 1999 episode to work. Even if the current global stockpile of 30,000 nuclear warheads were brought from the Earth to the Moon and then simultaneously detonated there, it would merely create another crater.

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/pguide/xrsfb.html

COMMENT: The most recent report of global nuclear weapons places the estimated number at just over twelve thousand. So now there is even less of a chance of sending our Moon on a cruise around the galaxy. For those who want the details on current nuclear weapon numbers, see here:

https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/

If you read further on in “The Science of Breakaway” you will find just how much energy it would take to move the Moon out of its orbit about Earth and then exit the Sol system. The short answer is: So much that our celestial neighbor, along with everyone and everything on it, would be vaporized into lunar dust. 

Although we never witnessed the breakdown of society with the residents of Moonbase Alpha, there were numerous instances of personal downfalls and volatile reactions to being trapped on a runaway world careening through deep space. 

With regular resupplies from Earth a thing of the past, the Alphans had to depend on their own resources. Unlike in Star Trek with its nearly magical replicator technology, food had to be grown and tended on the lunar station. 

According to this video, there are hydroponic farms on the base. In the first season episode “Mission of the Darians”, one character mentions how certain “components [are] use[d] to provide our food on Alpha. They’re processed and recycled of course to make them palatable.” Yet aside from various moments of food being shown and mentioned, including a “French restaurant at the end of block D level 9”, the series never went into any real detail on how the base kept over three hundred personnel fed daily. 

These sections of the Moonbase Alpha Operational Guide do go into some detail on how the lunar base gets and maintains its food, water, and oxygen supplies. Interestingly enough, algae play an important role in the Alphans’ survival: “Most food is processed from the protein rich algae which are grown in the three Recycling Plants, which have the capacity to feed the entire base.”

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/maog/maog6.html#p58

The Aniara ran out of their main food stores just two months after the accident, forcing everyone on board to rely on processed algae for the rest of their lives – though they somehow managed to keep plenty of alcohol on hand for years after (did someone build a still?). Never once did the film indicate if the Aniara residents tried making gardens or if any of the cargo being carried in the ship’s holds had food supplies, which would only make sense since they were heading to Mars and its settlements.

It is fortuitous that the video mentions the Space: 1999 episode “Mission of the Darians” as the story focuses on a huge generation starship made by humanoid beings who were fleeing their old world for a new one on a journey that would take one thousand years to complete. 

Many of the tropes about generation vessels are present in this episode: 

• A severe accident with their nuclear power plants wipes out most of the inhabitants one century into their journey. 
• The survivors fall into two camps: A very small group of healthy elites and the rest who are affected by the radiation that still lingers throughout the ship. 
• The elite control the masses by pretending to be gods who require worship and obedience in order to use the majority of the populace as both sources of food and for organ transplants to extend the lives of the elites, who can no longer naturally reproduce.

You may watch the complete episode here, thanks to YouTube:

This page contains the episode details, including a full transcript: 

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/t22motd.html

Going Green

Although I do not recall the exact episode this following scene from Space: 1999 was in, I do remember that the leaders of the Alpha base attempted to help the staff get over their homesickness for Earth by having them watch scenes of terrestrial flora for long periods of time. 

The plan was that the Alphans would eventually get sick of seeing green Earth trees and grassy fields and not mind so much the unrelenting gray of the lifeless lunar regolith, to say nothing of the standard beige and other muted colors of their uniforms and décor courtesy of 1970s retro-future fashion sense.

The plan apparently worked for the denizens of this lunar base, but would it work in reality? In the next decade or so we will see real crewed bases on the Moon, which hopefully will not disappear into the void due to any nuclear accident. 

Will having images of Earth help the residents of the Moon, Mars, and other worlds we intend to explore and settle one day, or will they only cause deeper homesickness and other issues? What about after a few generations of permanent residency in space? Will such scenes even matter to those who have never set foot on Earth?

Recall that MR attempted to soothe the longing and emotional pain of the Aniara passengers after the loss of Mima with her beam screen projecting into space images of a lush Earth as it once was. This effort also seemed to work for those folks, so far as we could tell, at least for a while.

In 2012, NASA released a book on the current state of progress (and lack as well) in studying human physiology in long-term space missions for astronauts and cosmonauts. One behavior noted from the book, which I quote next in my linked review essay on the work, is what these space explorers did with their free hours while spending six months to one year at a time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit…

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/09/11/the-psychology-of-space-exploration-a-review/

Regarding this view of the shrinking Earth from deep space, the multiple authors of Chapter 4 noted that ISS astronauts took 84.5 percent of the photographs during the mission inspired by their motivation and choices. Most of these images were of our planet moving over 200 miles below their feet. The authors noted how much of an emotional uplift it was for the astronauts to image Earth in their own time and in their own way.

The chapter authors also had this to say about what an expedition to Mars might encounter:

As we begin to plan for interplanetary missions, it is important to consider what types of activities could be substituted. Perhaps the crewmembers best suited to a Mars transit are those individuals who can get a boost to psychological well-being from scientific observations and astronomical imaging. Replacements for the challenge of mastering 800-millimeter photography could also be identified. As humans head beyond low-Earth orbit, crewmembers looking at Earth will only see a pale-blue dot, and then, someday in the far future, they will be too far away to view Earth at all.

Red Dwarf – The Series, Not the Star Type

Between 1988 and 1999, then again from 2009 to 2020, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) produced one of the more successful niche series on television: The science fiction comedy known as Red Dwarf. The series is also a solid member of the Angst SF family despite being played for sitcom-style laughs, as we shall see.

Named after the most common type of stars in the Universe (also one of the most long-lived), Red Dwarf starts off in the late Twenty-First Century, where we come upon a space mining vessel of the same name and its primarily blue-collar workers. One of them, third-class technician Dave Lister, has been placed in suspended animation by his superiors as a punishment for illegally bringing a cat onboard the vessel – and a pregnant one at that. 

This event turns out to be a “lucky” move for Lister as shortly thereafter a radiation leak inside the Red Dwarf kills the entire crew except for the cat Lister smuggled in, as she was being kept safely in the cargo hold.

Lister remains in stasis for three million years until the ship’s AI, named Holly, determines the internal radiation has decayed to safe enough levels for Lister to reemerge into the Red Dwarf. While Lister has survived the disaster, he finds himself in the nearly intolerable state of possibly being the only human left in existence. Holly tries to keep Lister sane by recreating a hologram of his former immediate superior, Arnold Rimmer, for Lister to interact with. 

In addition to the existential horror Lister finds himself in, trapped in both space and time, Red Dwarf’s Angst SF elements include the fact that there are no aliens in this universe. In one early episode, titled “Waiting for God”, they come upon a small spaceship which Rimmer believes is an alien vessel with the bodies of dormant extraterrestrial beings. 

Rimmer convinces himself that these beings will be able to give him a real body to replace his holographic one once they are awakened. It turns out, however, that the ship is just one of the Red Dwarf garbage pods that had been ejected into space long ago and its “occupants” are the remains of chickens and other detritus from the crew’s meals. 

Many episodes of Red Dwarf deal with the characters attempting to either find Earth or seek help from others they come across in their journey – most of whom are either evolved descendants or creations from Sol 3 or alternate universe versions of themselves. As per the rules of both comedy and drama, nothing ever goes quite as hoped for or planned.

As we have witnessed elsewhere, including in the Aniara poem with the “arch-comic” clown Sandon, sometimes all one can do when confronting the vast and indifferent Cosmos is laugh at our circumstances, even if these actions too are ultimately futile. One might as well enjoy the trip one didn’t ask to be on in the first place.

Here is a short piece titled “Red Dwarf and the Meaning of Life” which examines the existentialism of the series, which the author considers it to be “one of the finest examples” of such comedy they have ever seen:

https://consciousnessthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/red-dwarf-and-the-meaning-of-life/

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – The character of Second Mate Stubbs in Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick (1851)

Ascension

Four decades after Canada unleashed The Starlost upon the world, however briefly and awkwardly, the nation brought forth yet another television miniseries about a generation ship and those who live aboard it titled Ascension, after the name of the vessel. 

The premise is that in 1963, United States President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and his administration feared that the Cold War was escalating to the point that humanity might destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust: The Cuban Missile Crisis that occurred in October of 1962 undoubtedly played a large role in their concerns.

To save at least some of the human species, a generation ship named the USS Ascension was built to house six hundred men, women, and children on a century-long journey to settle the Proxima Centauri system, the nearest star to Sol at 4.2 light years away. 

The Ascension was powered by an Orion nuclear pulse engine, which was being worked on in that era and showed great promise as a means to shuttle humans around the Sol system in record times (from Earth to Pluto in just one year, to give an example) and even the nearest star systems in under two centuries. See this essay for the details on what could have been if we had not abandoned the effort:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2016/09/16/project-orion-a-nuclear-bomb-and-rocket-all-in-one/

The big plot twist in Ascension is that the crew never left Earth: They were manipulated into believing they were on a spaceship traveling to Proxima Centauri to see if anyone would evolve at an accelerated pace in this isolated environment to enhance humanity faster than nature. Apparently the plan worked, as we witness one character at the end of the miniseries standing on an alien world with two suns in the sky, having transported himself there without the need for any starship.

Although Ascension was mostly a “whodunit” space opera, the series did provide a look at how humans might behave and what cultures would emerge over time far away from any further influences of the home planet once they left. It is also interesting to speculate if some people might actually evolve new biological traits under such circumstances and what this would mean for the entire crew and their mission.

Aniara… the Comedy Series

Recently, I discovered something else that the films Conquest of Space and Aniara have in common: A science fiction television series inspired by them. 

In Conquest’s case, it was a pilot called Destination Space. An effort made in 1959 by Paramount Pictures Corporation for a television series on the CBS network which did not come to fruition, Destination Space was a mature and serious look at America’s space program in a retro future which utilized both scenes and special effects from Conquest, presumably to save production costs (Paramount owned Conquest as it was the film’s production company, so that certainly helped). These very admirable traits are ironically what likely cost Destination a chance to be one of the first science fiction series aimed at adult audiences on network television. 

You may read more about Destination Space, including a link to the actual pilot, in my Conquest of Space essay section titled “Conquest of Space… the Television Series” here:  

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/05/08/set-your-gyros-for-mars-giving-a-second-chance-to-conquest-of-space/

In January of 2020, a new series premiered on the Home Box Office (HBO) pay television network titled Avenue 5. Development on the series started in 2017 under the direction of Scottish “satirist, writer, director, producer, performer, and panelist” Armando Giovanni Iannucci, who was born just six days after United States President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. 

COMMENT: No, there is no connection of any substance between the Kennedy assassination and Iannucci’s birth date that I am aware of. I just found it to be an interesting coincidence in space and time. Plus, Iannucci seems to have an ironic and even dark sense of humor, so he might find this fact bemusing.

Here is the premise of Avenue 5 as relayed on its representative Wikipedia page. You tell me if this description sounds familiar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_5

Avenue 5 has been described as “set in the future, mostly in space.” On board the interplanetary cruise ship, the Avenue 5, a momentary loss of artificial gravity and accidental death of its chief engineer sends the titular vessel 0.21 degrees off course. It’s estimated it will take the ship three years to return to Earth, and with only enough supplies to sustain her many passengers for the intended eight-week long cruise, the crew of the Avenue 5 must struggle to maintain order and return the craft safely.

Regarding the Wikipedia plot description era of “set in the future,” it has been stated in multiple canon sources that Avenue 5 takes place forty years from the series premiere, so that would mean its events occur starting in the year 2060. 

Most ironically, this is the same date which the famous English scientist, mathematician, and alchemist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) calculated around the year 1705 that the world he knew would end, based on his intensive studies of perceived hidden prophecies in the Judeo-Christian Bible. 

I have found no documented evidence that the Avenue 5 writers and producers deliberately placed their story in 2060 to make a subtle point about the possibilities for impending catastrophes for both humanity and our environment based on what Newton wrote about it over three centuries ago.

However, I find it wryly amusing and hardly implausible that they could have, considering the elements of the fictional world we are about to explore and how the early interpretations of Newton’s prediction by most news sources when presented to a wider public light in early 2003 influenced the general population’s perceived knowledge of this bit of history: Namely, that one of the most brilliant men in history was also a Biblical scholar who discovered that humanity and the rest of existence would come to a literal end just after the middle of the Twenty-First Century.

COMMENT: The real story behind Newton, the Bible, and the year 2060 is a fascinating one in its own right. As with most such stories, the details are far more complex and nuanced than what the general media initially had to say about them. To quote an expert on the subject, the Canadian scholar and historian Stephen D. Snobelen, Newton’s referral to 2060 “would be more [akin to] a new beginning. It would be the end of an old age, and the beginning of a new era,” rather than some form of apocalyptic doom for all things.

For the in-depth yet accessible particulars on this history, see this page on Professor Snobelen’s Web site about Sir Isaac:

https://isaac-newton.org/statement-on-the-date-2060/

As for the interplanetary cruise ship described in the Wikipedia entry, the Avenue 5, it is not guaranteed that we will have real luxury spaceships cruising the Sol system for pleasure by then. However, since this would be a money-making space effort and space tourism is a real business with plenty of physical room to expand, it should be safe to say that robust extraterrestrial tourism will happen before the age of autonomous interstellar probes.

Coincidence? I Think Not…

The first time I watched Aniara, one thing I guarantee you I was not thinking in the initial days and weeks of reflection after my experience was that this nihilistic Swedish film would make a great satirical television series! Both the Martinson poem and the film felt far too heavy and ultimately depressing to be either mocked or made into a comedic form of entertainment, except in a rather cruel sense. 

In hindsight, I should have known better.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had indeed done what I had once considered to be highly improbable, and just a few years after the release of the film version of Aniara. I soon commenced to watching both seasons of Avenue 5 to see just how much this series paralleled the film which preceded it.

COMMENT: Avenue 5 was cancelled in 2022 at the conclusion of its second season, with no sign of renewal. While the ultimate fate of the denizens of the vessel Avenue 5 was left in limbo, the funding for a rescue mission had finally been greenlighted in the final episode. It is fairly safe to assume, however, that even with this positive news, the characters would not have been out of the proverbial woods right away had a third season commenced. As Avenue 5 is also a comedy, albeit sometimes a darkly humored one, we may assume and hope that the remaining passengers and crew would eventually return to Earth, even if it continued to take longer than initially predicted.

As I went through each episode in order, I conducted multiple Internet searches to either validate or derail what others in that medium were similarly speculating upon about Aniara and Avenue 5. None of my investigations, nor the relevant written comments I read by others, produced any definitive references that producer Iannucci had borrowed the main elements of Aniara and turned them into Avenue 5. 

I did find this one mention from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) page on Avenue 5 located in its Trivia section – and I quote:

Based on Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s 1956 epic sci-fi poem “Aniara.” This is a more comedic take on his dark tale. The 2018 film “Aniara” is likely what prompted this series.

The one big downside to this otherwise intriguing quote is that there is no reference to where this bit of information originated from or by whom. It may well be just another speculation like all the others.

Recognizing the Lion by Its Claws

Despite the lack of confirming verbiage from either Iannucci or anyone else on his production team, the parallels between Aniara and Avenue 5 are both apparent and numerous, right down to the general atmosphere of the television series. 

Let us begin…

• At the very start of each episode, we see a long spaceship lit by Earth’s yellow dwarf sun (courtesy of the series title logo) moving slowly across the screen against the endless blackness of the Universe. This is very reminiscent of how the Aniara was portrayed in the film as the massive vessel ventured further into deep space.
• While the Aniara is nominally a transport ship carrying refugees from Earth to settlements on Mars, its interior is arranged in a very similar fashion to the Avenue 5, which is an outright luxury cruise liner. 

• In a further ironic twist, Avenue 5 was originally built as a transport vessel for a business called Outer Orient Space Shipping before being purchased by the space tourism corporation of Judd Enterprises and subsequently converted into a luxury cruise ship.

• The Avenue 5’s original design and purpose are still quite evident in its exterior form: While the bow (front) half is a gleaming streamlined white and gold thing of beauty and comfort, the stern (rear) half is dark and industrial looking, reflecting the fact that it is the workhorse side of the vessel. Although not a carbon copy in appearance, the latter half of the Avenue 5 did remind me of the Aniara’s overall design.

• The eight-week cruise of the Avenue 5 conducts tours from Mars to Saturn. In both cases, the Red Planet is one of the destinations and it is also a settled world. In addition, the Avenue 5 uses the gravitational slingshot method to move from one planet to the next, assisted by its main propulsion system. 

• The Aniara, which usually gets folks from Earth to Mars in just over three weeks’ time (with one very notable exception), had Captain Chefone describe a similar slingshot method to pacify (read manipulate) the passengers (and initially even MR) into thinking the ship would be back on course in just a few years. The revealed truth is that there were no celestial objects large enough in their uncontrolled flight path to perform this critical maneuver.
• The main dimensions of both spaceships are similar: The Avenue 5 is two miles (3.21 kilometers) long, carries five thousand passengers, and has enough oxygen to last three years. The Aniara is sixteen thousand feet (4.8 kilometers or 3.03 miles) in length and has a width of three thousand feet, or 914 meters. The ship of the film transports eight thousand passengers. The Aniara receives and replenishes its oxygen supply from the green algae grown onboard, which are also converted into a food source.
• Both ships are part of a fleet of similar vessels, although we know of only a handful for the Avenue 5 and just one for the Aniara. The Martinson poem mentions that the Aniara is but one of thousands of transport ships plying interplanetary space.
• When the ships’ food supplies start to run low, due to their mutual unexpected and extended journeys, the passengers and crew must rely on nutrition sources they consider less palatable than their usual fare. In the case of the Aniara, it is green algae; for the Avenue 5, it is live eels. 
• When the Aniara is first hit by space debris, we see the guests in the Mima Hall slide across its floor as the ship tilts from the impact. In the first episode of Avenue 5, the uber rich manchild who owns the cruise line, Herman Judd, puts together the largest yoga class in space of over one thousand passengers: Their combined mass overwhelms the artificial gravity system of the Avenue 5, throwing the vessel off course and causing everyone onboard to slide across the decks. In both cases, it was a combination of human neglect and narrow self-interest that placed the spaceships in the predicament they found themselves in.
• The real First Engineer of the Avenue 5, a fellow named Joe, is accidentally killed as a result of the yoga incident in Episode 1. Joe is given a burial in space, with his body placed in the solid gold coffin owned by Herman Judd, who brings it with him wherever he goes. 

• This is reminiscent of the Chief Engineer of the Aniara in the poem, who asks to be interred in space encased in a rescue capsule and sent towards the star Rigel. In the case of Joe, however, his coffined body ends up circling the Avenue 5 along with three other people who died in the accident due to the gravitation pull of ship’s great mass.
• In both cultures, traveling in space no longer seems to be the exciting, historic adventure it first was. The passengers respond to being in the Final Frontier in the same way most contemporary folks react to taking a jetliner flight – or a nautical cruise ship. Most of the passengers in both vessels seem quite ignorant of and indifferent to even basic space physics and astronomical knowledge, despite probably having more and easier access to information than any previous generation of humanity in their respective realities. In the Aniara’s case, space becomes a source of existential terror for some once they finally realize how vast and remote the Universe truly is.
• As the years pass and conditions change on the Aniara, custodial work and vessel maintenance start to fall by the wayside, with trash collecting in the corridors and hallways being just one example of this slow degradation of ship services. 

• On the Avenue 5, while conditions did not quite reach that level, the service staff began staging their own form of rebellion shortly after their ship’s own crisis: In one case, the housekeeping staff started folding those little white towels one often finds on their cabin beds, not into typical cute animal shapes, but a very different form described by one recipient passenger as a “sphincter.”
• While the Avenue 5 did not develop the outright cults that sprouted on the Aniara, there did emerge a “cuddle club” that had the trappings of being a cult, although far more pleasant and healing in nature than what usually sprouted on the Aniara. 
• Avenue 5 has multiple symbolic parallels to Aniara regarding the Spear/Probe, that mysterious cylindrical object which the crew of the Aniara retrieve from deep space in the film version, in the hope that it will provide a means for them to turn their ship around. Instead, they are frustrated in their attempts to learn its purpose and are unable to utilize it to save themselves. Here are some examples:

• There is Stormfalcon, a space station which the Avenue 5 comes upon in Season 2. The crew is initially led to believe that Stormfalcon is a military science base but is instead a high security prison housing criminals who are far too dangerous to keep on Earth. 
• Another event from late in Season 2 was the United States government deciding to “solve” the problem of the wayward cruise ship by destroying it with a missile! This is especially ironic as several Internet commenters had speculated that the probe in Aniara was not some sort of rescue craft, but a bomb meant to destroy that transport vessel as a form of mercy killing of the otherwise slowly doomed passengers and crew. As you may read in detail in the essay section on the probe, the only thing the object ended up destroying was the already eroding morale of the Aniara denizens.
• In Season 1 a rescue shuttle does arrive at the Avenue 5, but its pilot can take only one passenger with him back to Earth. As you might imagine, chaos ensues.
• An effort is made to reduce the extended space flight duration of the Avenue 5 from three years to six months by jettisoning bulk objects equivalent to the mass of five hundred people from the ship’s stern. Unfortunately, the objects are accidentally ejected from the Avenue 5’s portside, causing an extension of the ship’s stay in interplanetary space to eight years! The captain delays telling the passengers about this predicament until Season 2.

 

Climactic Change

Just as Aniara focuses on a future Earth ruined by humanity, our home planet in Avenue 5 is also undergoing the negative results of climate change and resource mismanagement, though of course with a (usually) far more satirical bent.

Here are some of the known and often frightening examples of environmental disaster mentioned in the television series:

• The Pacific Ocean is toxic.
• A famine in France killed an unknown number of children.
• Camels are extinct.
• The American state of Pennsylvania apparently suffered devastating fires, bad enough that one character had to add “before the fires” when explaining that he came from there.
• A passenger mentions that the hottest year on record, 2024, caused the death of the fish in their outdoor pond when its water boiled!

• Ironically, NASA confirmed in January of 2025 that 2024 was indeed the warmest year on record (so far) for the average Earth surface temperature! Not warm enough (yet) to boil unfortunate fish in ponds, but still concerning. See here: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/temperatures-rising-nasa-confirms-2024-warmest-year-on-record/
• A major source of protein for many people now comes from insects.
• There is a critical shortage of lithium on Earth. Not only is lithium an important chemical element for making rechargeable batteries for multiple devices, it is also used in treating various mood disorders and mental illnesses.
• Herman Judd had his conference room aboard the Avenue 5 carved from a giant and ancient tree taken from deep in an equally old growth forest: Subordinates had the tree chopped down and recrafted just for their boss, so he could feel he was ensconced in nature even when in space.

One must wonder what else has humanity done to their home world by the year 2060 and how long before the Avenue 5 is drafted and converted into a refugee carrier just like the Aniara to save our species – well, the rich parts of it at least. One also has to wonder if these people will have learned anything from what they have done to Earth.

The Wetsuit

In spite of what I have presented to you so far, Avenue 5 is no clone of Aniara. In addition to the fact that, being a television series, it had the time to expand on multiple plot threads, Avenue 5 also brought up a number of independent ideas. The interesting and entertaining part is that some of these different paths led right to story points and concepts found in Aniara.

One critical spaceship feature never mentioned about the Aniara was a radiation shield for the crew and passengers. Such a shield would be vital to protect the humans and anything else organic onboard from deadly cosmic rays and solar flares once they are beyond Earth and away from the planet’s natural defenses against radiation prevalent throughout space.

In contrast, not only is such a method of protection mentioned in Avenue 5, but it also becomes an integral part of the plot and humor elements in the series. To add the cherry on top, the device even finds its way to become yet another parallel with Aniara.

The Avenue 5 has a radiation shield called a wetsuit, a giant tube encircling the cruise ship filled with water and the organic human waste generated by its many passengers. As numerous news items on the subject pointed out when this aspect of the series was known, this concept is based on real space science: These substances are quite effective at blocking cosmic rays, which would otherwise be lethal enough to kill everyone onboard the spaceship.

COMMENT: Another substance that is very good at keeping out radiation is water ice. This is why some real deep spaceship designs incorporate a ring or sphere of ice around the vessel to protect their human crews both from cosmic radiation and particles. Water ice is also why scientists view ice-encapsulated ocean moons and other similar objects in the outer Sol system as promising places for native life: Their icy crusts not only protect the global seas of liquid water below them from cosmic rays, but they also serve as a shield to the powerful radiation belts surrounding such planets as Jupiter. Potentially habitable moons like Europa are embedded deep within the Jovian magnetosphere: Its thick layers of surface ice keep that radiation from penetrating to its ocean beneath, further safeguarding any organisms dwelling in those alien waters – or the ice itself, for that matter.

That the wetsuit involves human excrement no doubt filled the series makers with unbridled juvenile joy, as they got the Avenue 5 characters to repeatedly refer to the wetsuit and its contents as a “poop shield.”

In Season 1 of the series, the Avenue 5’s shield of sewage has an extensive external leak. The crew manage to repair the wetsuit, but the leak created a ring of solid excrement circling the cruise ship, along with the four coffins launched earlier in an attempt at a space burial for the crew and passengers who died during the initial incident that extended the passengers’ vacations. The reason why this material and the deceased literally hang around is due to the purported massiveness of the cruise ship, which creates its own gravity field. 

COMMENT: As the Aniara is bigger than the Avenue 5, it would therefore be more massive. However, items launched from that vessel such as the space burial of The Astronomer, do not create their own orbits about the ship. Then again, the television series has a humor agenda which the film is never obliged to follow. 

Where is the parallel between Aniara and Avenue 5 I mentioned earlier regarding the wetsuit, you may be asking? That comes after the owner Herman Judd decides, instead of attempting to get rid of to the ring of feces, to make it more visually appealing with a combination of glitter and lasers. 

As the passengers view the glowing multicolor debris cloud from their nondenominational prayer room (the closest thing the Aniara might have had to this room before their disaster was the Mima Hall, minus the windows), someone sees the face of Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) in the detritus. Soon the passengers who do see the Pontiff’s face are almost worshipping it and taking the image as a hopeful sign from God for their fates. 

This image and the lightshow parallel the Aniara where some passengers began a cult to the light of Sol and how the Mima was venerated after her demise. Later, MR would create an exterior projection of various pleasant Earth scenes as a form of replacement for the Mima to comfort the remaining passengers and crew. In both cases, however, the pretty-looking lightshows only maintain the veneer and illusion of hiding their banal and unpleasant realities. In the case of Avenue 5, it is a literal sh*tshow.

But That’s Not All…

Other aspects that the film and series share include scapegoating specific passengers and crew to assuage both cosmic and fellow passengers’ wrath and the dictatorial qualities of the leadership. These so-called qualities include attempting to hide the truth from the rest of the ship when situations take a downward turn, such as mishandled events in Avenue 5 that leave the vessel stuck in space even longer than the results from the original incident.

The Arch-Comics

As Avenue 5 is a satirical comedy, it makes sense that the series would play up the spaceship’s resident comedian more than was done in the Martinson poem and certainly the film version.

In the epic poem, Canto 50 was devoted to a fellow named Sandon, widely known as the Arch-Comic. He delighted the passengers with his wit and practical jokes, which served as a salve and comfort against the existential night as an alternative to the Mima, as humor often does. 

Eventually, however, even Sandon’s gifts were not enough against the oppressive weight of the Universe:

The arch-comic Sandon was lost in the vast cosmic sea. / Used up and worn down by the burdensome fortunes of man, / the arch-comic gave up his blahr, filling out his life-span.

The character was drastically reduced in the 2018 film: Sandon is now just the Bird Clown Sandon as listed in the credits, played by two different actors, one of whom was also an associate producer. This was the anthropomorphic bird costumed individual we saw briefly at the beginning of Aniara, greeting passengers with a wave as they first came onboard the transport ship. 

Bird Clown Sandon at first seemed quite out of place in a story with such a serious theme and so little obvious humor. Perhaps that was the intent: Society using cartoonish animal characters to deflect and dilute from a more difficult reality, such as Earth becoming unlivable at the hands of humanity. A fake duck in human clothing pretending to bring joy in a reality that is anything but joyful – now that is existential!

The character has no speaking lines until the time of the Aniara’s encounter with the strange multicolored particle cloud in Year 6: We see him half-out of his costume coming upon The Intendent and asking him what is going on as the cosmic cloud jostles the Aniara about. 

COMMENT: It is both amazing and disturbing that this Sandon is still wearing his duck costume six years after the Aniara was knocked off course. Does it bring him some sort of comfort and purpose? Was he ordered to keep wearing it by Chefone? Did he not bring anything else to wear?

“The bow shock is killing all our equipment,” the officer tells him. Then The Intendent gives Sandon a shove and shouts “Run… birdie!” We never see Sandon again and The Intendent soon becomes one of the victims of the particle cloud disaster.

I am not privy to why the filmmakers did not utilize Sandon in a much more meaningful way. Certainly, his character in the poem would have fit well with the nihilistic theme, that nothing humans do either against the Universe or try to escape from it will succeed in the end, not even the presumptive power of laughter.

Instead, we are given a mostly silent person in an outfit that seemed far more appropriate for an amusement park or children’s birthday party. Other than keeping Sandon in the film and giving him a very small role as a token nod to the poem, his true role and meaning is essentially lost on the audience – especially those who are not already acquainted with the poem. 

I know when I first saw the character, I wondered what he was even doing on the ship and in such a film as Aniara. I had not yet delved into the poem in full depth; even if I had, I probably would have initially missed the connection, since Sandon’s name could only be found buried in the end credits of the film – like so many other on-camera participants in this production, I must add.

Avenue 5 picked up the ball that Aniara had dropped and put it to much better use. It was perhaps also easier to explain the presence of a comedian onboard a pleasure cruise liner than a refugee transport ship. 

The Avenue 5 had a resident stand-up comedian named Jordan Hatwal, played by Himesh Patel (born 1990). Labeled as “The Funniest Man in the Universe,” this becomes practically a challenge to said Universe to render Hatwal as unfunny as possible, which is what largely happens. This in turn gives humor to the series audience as Hatwal fumbles at nearly every attempt to lighten the mood of the passengers. Hatwal may have been nowhere nearly as popular as Sandon, but the end result as happens in the poem still becomes their shared fate.

Is Existential Humor Too Ironic for its Own Good?

By Season 2, Avenue 5 seems to have gotten caught up in the existential nature so prominent in its inspiration, Aniara. Of course, the irony here is that Avenue 5 is a dark comedy – which makes the irony even more amusing.

In one interview, Iannucci had the following to say about the second season of his production:

“It’s basically about people in isolation. So, we’re just waiting to see what the mood might be as to how we pitch. Is it going to be bleak despair, or is it going to be very, very silly? Or maybe silly despair? I don’t know. We tried to make season one as silly as possible, but it seems to have strangely become a kind of documentary about present-day conditions.”

This quote from Iannucci reminds me of another science fiction series, The Orville. Premiering in 2017, the series began as both a parody and homage to the Star Trek franchise by Seth MacFarlane (born 1973). However, as the series progressed, the tone became more serious both in its plots and with itself as The Orville found its footing: Its makers realized they had more than just the television series equivalent of a tribute band to one of the most popular science fiction franchises in entertainment history.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery?

There is even a parallel between the titles of the two media creations, which I feel was deliberate. You may not think so at first – Aniara can mean sorrowful, sad, and despairing, whereas Avenue 5 and its sister ships (the ones mentioned in the series are Avenue 3, Broadway, and Lexington) are named after some very famous and wealthy thoroughfares in a huge and equally expensive urban society – but their meanings are relevant to their respective stories nonetheless, which certainly have many similar characteristics. 

The largest among them are the two centerpiece vessels, which stand as mutual examples of what modern technological humanity collectively craves: Material comfort, wealth, power, a feeling of control, and distracting entertainments.

I will even suggest that Iannucci purposely chose the moniker Avenue 5 to imply the connection with Aniara in terms of aesthetic word structure, length, and number of letters. Let us also note what should be obvious: Both media have the names of their respective ships as titles and only their ship names. 

When I learned about the existence of Avenue 5 and subsequently its significant influences from Aniara, I admit I was more than a little surprised. If you have already seen the 2018 film, read the 1956 epic poem, or viewed any of the operas based on the poem, the idea that this could all be turned into a satirical comedy series may not be among the first thoughts on your mind. 

Perhaps this is why a creative fellow like Armando Iannucci has had such a successful track record for several decades now, being able to mine fertile entertainment from a source most others could not and would not see in such a role.

Was Iannucci heavily “influenced” by Aniara for Avenue 5 in the same way that Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) borrowed much from the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet for his Star Trek series one decade later? For the record, Roddenberry downplayed the connection between his work and the earlier film despite the multiple obvious parallels, perhaps to avoid any accusations of plagiarism or even a lack of individual creativity. See here for the details of this bit of genre history: 

https://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/07/gene-roddenberrys-cinematic-influences.html.

I cannot find any explicit evidence for this inquiry of mine, as neither Iannucci nor anyone else on the series seem to have publicly addressed any connections between the 2018 Swedish film and the producer’s creation, so far as I could find. It is also rather sad and frustrating that most journalists do not seem able or willing to investigate further into these matters. Shall we blame the state of public education here, or something else?

Nevertheless, the parallels and timing seem to be more than coincidences: Yes, production on the HBO television series was begun one year before Aniara was released to theaters, but the poem which spawned the film has been around since 1956, with multiple operas and other performances of Martinson’s work since that time.

There is certainly nothing wrong if Avenue 5 was inspired by Aniara, of course. Beyond simply wanting to know the fuller development process of the series, I became quite intrigued by the idea that someone would take something like Aniara and make it into a form of comedy; that is often how humor and satire work, dark satire/black comedy in particular.

Look at the well-known example of the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The plot involves an insane United States general named Jack D. Ripper starting World War 3 based on a real paranoid conspiracy fear that he and many  Americans shared at the time: That the process of fluoridation being introduced into our water system meant to improve dental care was actually a Communist plot designed to chemically subvert and control the minds of its citizens.

When Stanley Kubrick started to develop Dr. Strangelove, the plan was for a very serious plot. After all, not only was this about nuclear war and the potential destruction of human civilization, Kubrick also took his story concept from a dramatic novel titled Red Alert, written by author Peter George (1924-1966) and first published in 1958.

The more Kubrick delved into researching about nuclear war for Dr. Strangelove, however, the more he realized just how utterly absurd the entire concept was: Cold War experts were not only saying that a war involving weapons which could obliterate entire cities in one shot and leave them toxic for centuries afterward were winnable, but that a certain percentage of the many millions of human beings who would be killed in such a conflict were considered acceptable losses to achieve a strategic and cultural victory over the enemy! 

It was statistics like this which made Kubrick turn Dr. Strangelove from a deadly serious film into a dark satire – and it worked. Thus, you had over-the-top characters like General “Buck” Turgidson infamously declare the following: “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” 

It is also a well-known fact that humor can reach more people to get a deeper and often otherwise very serious message across. Just ask Mel Brooks (born 1926), who was the creative genius behind films like The Producers (1968) and Blazing Saddles (1974): They tackled totalitarianism and racism, respectively, by mocking their many negative aspects and flaws without mercy. As they have become classic and very popular films, these works are still being honored and viewed widely to this day, continuing to spread their messages couched in the veneer of entertainment.

COMMENT: For those of you who still prefer your Cold War era cinema horror existential and humor free, there is always the 1964 classic film Fail Safe, released just months after Dr. Strangelove. It is an effective counterbalance to the dark satire of its predecessor, both of which involve United States Air Force (USAF) bombers flying to the Soviet Union under false pretenses to start a nuclear war, due to technical and organizational systems which were not as foolproof as those in command had hoped.

For your further edification on Avenue 5, here are links to some of the more useful and interesting sites on this series…

The official home site of Avenue 5:

https://www.hbo.com/avenue-5

The official Wiki Fandom site for Avenue 5:

https://avenue5.fandom.com/wiki/Avenue_5

An article and one video discussing the real science aspects of Avenue 5:

https://screenrant.com/avenue-5-science-hbo-show-space-true-accurate/

On a rather low film budget of 1.95 million euros (or 2.29 million in 2025 United States dollars), Aniara had to be both clever and frugal with their sets: They often opted for local malls, hotels, and ferry boats to stand in for their giant spaceship interiors.

In contrast, Avenue 5’s fancy space cruise liner was largely developed from whole (computer technology) cloth, as it were. The following links take you to various discussions and presentations of how the vessel came to life.

An excellent presentation by the studio which made Avenue 5’s screen graphics and concept art:

https://territorystudio.com/project/avenue-5/

More details from production designer Simon Bowles:

https://www.simonbowles.com/avenue5/

Cinematographer Eben Bolter describes how he fought against the typical norms of the genre in his work on the series:

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/avenue-5-hbo-cinematographer-interview

This is the article where I learned that the Avenue 5 vessel is two miles long (about 3.21 kilometers). A bit smaller than the Aniara, but still impressive compared to actual contemporary spaceships and structures – and apparently massive enough to capture objects from space and place them into orbit about itself:

https://www.space.com/avenue-5-space-cruise-ship-design-explained.html

A number of the main cast members and series creator Armando Iannucci sat down with Michael Schneider of Variety in the Variety Streaming Room (it was basically a big Zoom meeting call) to discuss how they brought Avenue 5’s futuristic sets to life and the research behind the fictional yet fabulous spaceship:

The Avenue 5 sets were impressive enough that Architectural Digest wrote about them:

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/avenue-5-hbo-production-designer-set-design-interview