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''The Martian Chronicles'' is a television miniseries based on Ray Bradbury's ''The Martian Chronicles'' and dealing with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell. It was aired on NBC in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours (nearly five hours on the DVD version). Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring". The script (by Richard Matheson) differs significantly from Bradbury's original novel from the 1940s; see episode summary below. ==Episode 1 Summary : "The Expeditions"== The first episode starts at the scene of ''Viking 1'' unmanned probe landing on the surface of the planet Mars in July 1976. A narrator is explaining what is happening and explains that the purpose of the probe is to determine whether or not Mars is inhabited. As the narrator is speaking, the viewer becomes aware that there are two viewpoints at NASA amongst the scientists who launched the probe: One group obviously believes Mars is uninhabited, the other is open to the possibility of indigenous life on the planet. Each has their convincing arguments, but ultimately the probe indicates that Mars does not harbour life. At the close of the scene the camera pans back to show a larger view of the probe's landing area, with what appears to be indigenous Martian settlements in the surrounding terrain, with the narrator noting that, "If the probe had landed just a few miles further on, things might have been different." Afterwards the opening credits roll. The next scene places the viewer at the Kennedy Space Center in January 1999 when the first "Zeus I" manned spacecraft to Mars is carried into orbit by a Saturn V rocket. The Zeus project represents the beginning of a major effort by NASA and NATO to explore and eventually colonize the outer planets. On Mars, Ylla (a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage) dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny the reality of the dreams, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts. He kills the two-man expedition, astronauts Nathaniel York and Bert Conover, as soon as they arrive. Mission control on Earth does not know the fate of the crew, and one of the senior astronauts Jeff Spender urges the project director Col. John Wilder to abandon the Zeus project because of concerns that Mars may already harbor life. Wilder (who has shepherded the project for ten years) refuses, among other things because he believes mankind might escape environmental pollution and war on Earth by colonizing Mars instead. A second mission is launched and the "Zeus II" crew lands on Mars in April 2000. To their amazement the crew (astronauts Arthur Black, Sam Hinkston and David Lustig) discover that they have landed in a town that looks exactly like Green Bluff, Illinois. circa 1979. They are warmly greeted by close relatives and loved ones who all died years ago. In fact, the Martians use the memories of the astronauts to lure them into their old homes, where they are killed in the middle of the night by the Martians. A third mission, "Zeus III", lands on Mars in June 2001. It is commanded by Col. Wilder himself with five other astronauts (Spender, Parkhill, Briggs, Cook, McClure) as subordinates. The crew discovers five ancient cities in the vicinity of the spacecraft, one of which apparently was inhabited only a few weeks ago. The scientists find that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox accidentally brought from Earth by the first two Zeus crews. The men, except for the archaeologist Spender and Colonel Wilder, become more boisterous. Spender loses his temper when Briggs starts dropping empty wine bottles into a clear blue canal. He knocks him into the canal. He leaves the rest of the landing party to explore Martian ruins. Spender (who always has had deep misgivings about the mission) then goes on a killing spree to avenge the destroyed Martian civilization and manages to shoot all astronauts except Parkhill and Wilder, who shoots Spender in the chest before he has the opportunity to kill them as well. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Martian Chronicles (miniseries)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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