By 1947 his first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival, was published and in 1953 came one of his most famous SF works, Fahrenheit 451, about which he famously claimed not to be trying to predict the future but to prevent it.

Bradbury’s writing also branched out into the realms of films and television and many of his works have subsequently been adapted. He also produced The Ray Bradbury Theatre, a television series which adapted many of his short stories, which ran from 1986 to 1992.

Originally titled The Silver Locusts, The Martian Chronicles was quickly recognised as an SF work of some importance and unsurprisingly it was not long before various screen adaptations were touted. In the early seventies Bradbury himself was engaged in trying to get a screen version made and got many producers interested. However, although several had an option on the work, the projects always seemed to flounder as soon as the financial implications were considered. As well as its epic length there were the costs of such things as spaceships and alien landscapes to consider. Interested repeatedly cooled as science fiction was not seen as the sort of genre worth splashing out huge amounts of money on.

That was until the incredible success of Star Wars in 1977/78 which proved that SF could find favour with all age groups and even those not normally interested in the genre. Suddenly many a producer was on the lookout for a credible SF project. The mini-series format was fast becoming popular in the US at this time, particularly after the enormous ratings achieved by Roots. The vice-president of America’s NBC television network, Deanne Barkley, envisioned Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as ideal material for this format and commissioned Richard Matheson to produce a script based on the Bradbury work. Matheson had an impressive track record in SF and horror, with episodes of The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Kolchak: The Night Stalker to his name, not to mention the screenplay for The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

Matheson collaborated with Ray Bradbury himself, the pair rejigging the original storyline slightly so that it would work as three 90-minute episodes. The novel was essentially a number of short stories with an overall theme – man’s colonization of Mars. The major change for the tv version was that the character of Colonel Wilder, who originally only featured in the segment involving man’s third expedition to Mars, was now to feature throughout the piece to provide greater continuity and help knit the individual storylines together. Two of the stories had to be dropped entirely for timing reasons.

Originally projected to have a $6m budget, costs ultimately spiralled to over $8m dollars and included investment from both Germany and the BBC (hence both British and German actors subsequently appearing in the cast).

As a costly affair NBC hoped it would be a major attraction and wanted a big star name in the main role of Colonel Wilder. The name secured was Rock Hudson, who had been a major film star and something of a sex symbol in the fifties and sixties. The seventies had seen him find further success on television in the series McMillan And Wife. Hudson reportedly collected some 14% of the overall budget for The Martian Chronicles for playing this role.

Assigned as director was Michael Anderson, who had just proven his ability at handling special effects-laden projects with the 1975 film Logan’s Run. The musical score was provided by Stanley Myers, a British composer whose first SF credit had been some fifteen years earlier for the Doctor Who adventure The Reign Of Terror. Since then he had notched up an impressive CV and had just completed his most famous work, Cavatina, the theme for the film The Deer Hunter.

Filming took place in the later months of 1978, by which time script revisions were still taking place, by now without Bradbury’s knowledge or blessing. Most of the filming took place in Malta, with some in Lanzarote, both places ideal for an arid Martian landscape. Most of the interiors where shot at Shepperton Studios in England.

The mini-series actually fits quite neatly into its three episodes. The first, The Expeditions, involves man’s first tentative steps into investigating and then landing on Mars and the increasing determination after the initial missions are met with failure.

Episode two, The Settlers, describes what follows man’s successful landing on Mars – mass colonisation. Towards the end of this episode war breaks out on Earth and everybody is recalled to the home planet, though a few remain on Mars for a variety of reasons. These few become the last survivors of the human race when the war becomes nuclear and destroys all life on Earth.

The third and final episode, The Martians, witnesses the individual struggles of those last survivors faced with the prospect of having to eke out a new existence on Mars without any support from Earth.

Filming was completed and NBC were gearing up to show The Martian Chronicles in September 1979. However, at a press conference Ray Bradbury was somewhat critical of the finished piece and said it was ‘boring’. The press leapt on this and the ensuing negative publicity prompted NBC to remove The Martian Chronicles from their schedules. It was not broadcast until January 1980. Reviews were mixed although it did achieve respectable ratings and was also nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The BBC also had high hopes for the mini series they had heavily invested in and promoted it with a Radio Times front cover. The first episode went out at 8.25pm on Saturday 9th August 1980 and pulled in almost ten million viewers, no mean feat for a mid-summer timeslot. However audiences less familiar with Bradbury’s work were probably expecting far more in the way of aliens and action and the viewing figures subsequently dipped. It was repeated twice more, latterly in 1984, but has not been seen on terrestrial TV in the UK since.

Viewing the series now it is easy to see how some people are prepared to write is off as a flop. It comes across as quite dated, with obvious 1970s fashions evident and the model work, although not poor, is hardly top-notch either.

Many have voiced disapproval of Rock Hudson’s lead performance and it is true that he’s not particularly dynamic. However, it should be remembered that his character is supposed to be mature, an intelligent astronaut and a caring family man and Hudson’s relaxed portrayal reflects these traits and allows the storylines to come to the fore rather than his personality which is, in essence, just a bridge between the various stories.

Performances overall are mixed but there are still plenty to applaud, especially Barry Morse as the tragic Hathaway, desperately hoping that a ship will come to take him back to Earth, oblivious that the planet is now dead. Roddy McDowall turns in one of his trademark bemused personas as Father Stone in two episodes, and Kolchak star Darren McGavin once again successfully straddles the divide between drama and comedy with his portrayal of astronaut-turned-diner-manager Sam Parkhill.

Matheson’s direction is mixed. Some of the story segments seem long and drawn out, possibly the reason for Bradbury’s indictment of the production being ‘boring’. And it has too much of the lightweight feel that was the norm on US television in the late seventies. There are some good touches though. The gradual lifting of the fog after the second expedition arrives on Mars to find it resembling a small American town is expertly achieved and the sequence where the Martian has an identity crisis in the second episode is also well handled. Although the hops between Earth and Mars seem a little too convenient at times, at least Mars seems like a large place with vast distances between the various outposts.

In fact where The Martian Chronicles really scores well, even now, is in its realisation of Mars and its inhabitants. The landscapes have a truly alien feel to them, bleak and often littered with strange stone monoliths and obelisks. The Martian make-up still holds good, with their earless bald heads and sparkling eyes.

And yet The Martian Chronicles is not really about the Martians, in fact they only truly appear in about three of the short sequences. The story is more about human life. Many themes are explored: ambition, the try-try-again attitude after the original expedition ends in failure, bereavement, loneliness, faith, nostalgia, conceit, fear and of course the cold war. Even man’s colonisation of Mars is a thinly-disguised parallel of the colonisation by Europe of the Americas, and their ‘invasion’ of the native Americans’ homeland. Perhaps the most controversial sequence was when one of the martians appears to Father Peregrine as Christ, a form it is trapped in because of his unshakeable faith.

The destruction of Earth doesn’t happen in many television productions and it is well-handled here. As the graphic images of mushroom clouds appear on screen Stanley Myers’ music wisely avoids a thunderous approach and instead goes for something a little more emotive.

The Martian Chronicles did eventually recoup its production costs but not quickly enough for NBC to consider it a true success. Since the early eighties it has gradually become forgotten with little exposure or media coverage.

Rock Hudson never reignited his film career but remained a star name and sprang back to prominence in 1984 when he began appearing in the mega-soap Dynasty. Health problems became apparent when he began to have difficulty remembering and saying his lines. When Hudson arrived in Carmel, California early in 1985 for a public reunion with his old movie co-star Doris Day, onlookers were stunned by his gaunt appearance and disorientation. It was revealed shortly afterwards that the star was suffering from AIDS, a disease few people knew much about at the time. Hudson subsequently died on 2nd October that year aged 59 but at least in death he unwittingly triggered far greater awareness of the killer disease.

Several other members of the cast have also since passed on: Nyree Dawn Porter in 2001, Robert Beatty in 1992, Roddy McDowall in 1998 and Wolfgang Reichmann in 1991. Others, such as Barry Morse, Nicholas Hammond, Bernie Casey and Bernadette Peters remain active to this day.

Michael Anderson continues to direct films and television dramas, his most notable project since The Martian Chronicles being the 1989 SF flick Millennium. Writers Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson also continue to contribute works to the SF field. Composer Stanley Myers sadly died in 1993, his music for the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch being one of his final works. For many years his contribution to The Martian Chronicles was overlooked amongst his long list of impressive credits but in 2002 a limited edition CD soundtrack was released on the Airstrip One label. Asked to contribute to the sleeve notes, Ray Bradbury it seemed had lost none of his antipathy towards the mini-series: "The film was so boring I don’t really remember the music… Was it any good?"

Some of the individual story segments were subsequently remade as episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater. It would be interesting to know what Bradbury thought of these versions as it is this writer’s opinion that they were of inferior quality.

Video releases of The Martian Chronicles over the years have often been truncated, some even omitting the entire third episode, but thankfully the current Region One DVD release is the full version running to a whopping 293 minutes. Although flawed and certainly dated, its still a refreshing throwback to the days when epic SF productions still placed characters and storylines above glossy special effects. And it proves that one day there really will be such things as martians …

article copyright PPS / David P. May 2006