MartinHafer After watching "Earth II", my first thought was 'was this a pilot for a proposed television series?'. Well, IMDb doesn't say but it does indicate it was made for television by MGM-TV...so I can only assume this was the case.The story is set in the near future. The United States has announced that it's building a permanent space station that will be its own self-governing and autonomous nation...open for the betterment of mankind. While the Americans, Russians and others enjoy this new station, the wicked Chinese decide to threaten the station with nuclear destruction.The special effects are very good for the time. While not up to the standards of "2001", the space shots are pretty nice. Additionally, the film had a great premise. But the problem with the film began with the plot involving the Chinese...and the film stayed stuck on this theme throughout the rest of the movie. Additionally, Marriet Hartley's character was inexplicably stupid...too stupid to be realistic. A flawed movie, certainly, but well worth seeing if you love sci-fi, as there is enough of interest to keep us sci-fi fans happy.

Mark-129 I saw Earth II as a Friday Night movie of the week back in 1971 as an eleven year old. The special effects and production design gave this film a great look, but the story charting the establishment of an independent nation on-board an orbiting space station lost me.Forty years later, I had the chance to see it again through adult eyes. Surprisingly, I remembered several scenes and plot points, but, the entire production was brought down by one simple fact: it's boring. The film has a lot of incident but little action. The cerebral dialog is interesting, but the performances are wooden in the extreme. Only Anthony Franciosa's opinionated character rose above the colorless performances of the rest of the cast.While I understand this was an effort for an intelligent SF series, the lack of human drama kept that series from happening.

chrisart47 The effects were handled by the same folks who gave us "Marooned" but with a superior edge in design and technical know how. 2001,s Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole of 2001} is cast as a space rescue pilot.The space shuttles in this feature bare a striking resemblance to our current shuttle design and the space suits are straight out of the NASA play book as the producers used technical help from major sources to ad realism.One exciting scene of a race against time shows astronauts chasing down a Chinese nuclear satellite as it re-enters earths atmosphere, this scene incorperated early video image technology to generate a shower of sparks creating a burning effect that looked 3-dimensional and will remind you of the slit scan effects used by Douglas Trumball in 2001.Intended as a TV pilot for a possible ABC series it is not to be confused with The short lived series Earth II 1993-94 featuring Clancy Brown and Tim Curry.I was enthralled at a network movie of the week of this quality and have seen it repeated on CBS,s Late show in the early 80,s Catch it if you can on sci-fi channel but good luck finding it on DVD or VHS. This picture is still contemporary in style and is worth a look.

Brian Washington This is a very rare made for TV movie with a great story and excellent special effects. The only thing that might be considered wrong about this film is that even though it is supposedly set in the future, this film is now very much dated. This film was made during the height of the Cold War and at a time relations between The U.S., the then Soviet Union and China were not very good. In fact, the U.S. is almost looked at as a pawn in the struggle between the other two super powers. However, this film does provide a good glimpse at the future and how space travel could eventually be routine and the possibilities of global cooperation in outer space.