Alien Lover
After becoming orphaned and spending three months in a mental institution, Susan arrives at her aunt and uncle’s home to move in with them. Her Uncle Mike is only too pleased to be receiving a slice of Susan’s inheritance to pay her expenses, and when Susan begins mentioning that she’s having conversations with someone named Marc through a television set, Mike sees an opportunity to have Susan committed and legally gain full access to that inheritance. Mike and Marian’s son, Jude, comes home from college with his roommate for a visit, and Susan learns that Jude has seen and spoken to Marc as well – and that he’s scared to death of the handsome man on the TV. Lonely and lovesick, Susan refuses to accept Jude’s disturbing warning that Marc is the leader of an alien invasion force…but if her crush finds a way to step out of the TV, it could be the beginning of humanity’s end.
written by George Lefferts
directed by Lela Swift
music by Robert Cobert
Cast: Pernell Roberts (Mike), Susan Brown (Marian), Kate Mulgrew (Susan), Steven Earl Tanner (Jude), John Ventantonio (Marc), David Lewis (Dr. Steiner), Harry Moses (Richard), and Herman
Notes: This was Kate Mulgrew’s first television job, filmed sometime around her 20th birthday, though it was beaten to the punch by her debut in the series regular role of Mary on Ryan’s Hope (a daytime soap which went into production after Alien Lover). Just four years later, she was starring in her own series, Mrs.
Columbo. She was later a series regular on the late ’80s hospital series Heartbeat, the short-lived early ’90s James Garner series Man Of The People, 2007’s The Black Donnellys, Cartoon Network’s live-action series NTSF:SD:SUV, and most recently was Red in the Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, though anyone reading this site likely knows her best from her seven-year stint as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, a role she reprised (with a promotion) in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. Alien Lover was a TV movie-of-the-week aired as part of the NBC Mystery Movie, an anthology series that ran from 1973 through 1978, usually leaning on crime/mystery stories, but occasionally dipping into – as was the case here – the paranormal.
LogBook entry and review by Earl Green
Cast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Helen Kleeb (Aunt Margaret), John Zee (Arnold), James Blendick (Sanders), Wayne Grace (Baldy), Wayne Taylor (Big Nose), Thom Carney (Mersky), Larry French (Tex), Jim Mills (Lawyer), Ray Ballard (Poker Player), G.J. Mitchell (Carter), Arline Anderson (Teller), Karl Lukas (1st Truck Driver), Mickey Gatlin (2nd Truck Driver), Gene Borkan (Cabbie), James Whitworth (Bruiser)
Cast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Nancy Kovack Mehta (Caroline Klae), Farley Granger (Julian Klae), George Murdock (Captain Scopes), Peter Donat (Morgan Klae), Joe Maross (Ryan), Rayford Barnes (Pierce)
Notes: George Murdock would go on to play the recurring role of the doctor aboard the 1970s incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, and would gain further sci-fi infamy as the face of “God” in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, redeeming himself among Trek fans a year later as Admiral Hansen in the fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter The Best Of Both Worlds. Peter Donat would resurface as the villain in another cult sci-fi classic, as recurring enemy Dr. Mordecai Sahmbi in the 1990s syndicated series Time Trax.
At Space Station Delta, the starship Altares is preparing for an unprecedented mission: the first manned interstellar mission, utilizing a photonic drive that will create a time dilation effect relative to Earth; any messages the Altares crew sends back from Alpha Centauri will reach the descendants of the mission controllers who helped launch the ship. The Altares is crewed by two families, and even the children are fully trained in the technical and scientific aspects of the mission.
written by Johnny Byrne
The Keeper Of Traken and the character of Nyssa), Into Infinity was made between the first and second seasons of Space: 1999. As the Altares plunges into the event horizon of the black hole toward the end of the show, a psychedelic sequence ensues which eerily anticipates – in great detail – the bizzaro ending of the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole. The producers of the later movie were aiming for something cerebral, quasi-spiritual and ambiguous a la 2001: a space odyssey, but the similarities in the hallucinatory sequences near the end of Into Infinity and The Black Hole are striking.