THE STRANGER (1973)

Neil Stryker is an astronaut heading home from a deep space mission, but navigational problems put the last leg of his trip home in jeopardy. There is an accident of some sort that knocks Stryker unconscious, and when he wakes up, he is in a hospital bed. Though he feels alright, the kindly Dr. Revere tells him that his vehicle crashed, his fellow astronauts died, and that he;s too weak to be released yet. Neil begins to suspect that he is being held against his will by Russian agents—when he mentions the doctor's namesake Paul Revere, the doctor doesn’t know who that is. We find out that Stryker's paranoia is legitimate: he is being watched through a one-way mirror by Benedict, Revere's boss, and he's given drugs to sleep so he can be interrogated by Benedict. Stryker manages to escape and is shocked when a telephone operator claims to have never heard of Florida, and especially when he sees three moons in the sky that night. He soon discovers he is not on Earth but on a twin planet called Terra which is opposite Earth and never seen in the sky. The Terran civilization is awfully similar to Earth's but is ruled by something called the Perfect Order which prizes peace over free will—propaganda piped constantly over the radio includes the phrase "Live in harmony and peace." He meets an elderly bookstore owner who shows him history books that only go back 35 years to the establishment of the Perfect Order. Anyone who is unhappy with the government is taken to Ward E to be reprogrammed, (i.e. lobotomized). Even as Benedict tries to track Stryker down, Stryker falls in with a small group of rebels and is given hope that he'll be able to hitch a ride on a space rocket to get back to Earth. But the Perfect Order sees all…

This is a TV-movie from the golden age of such vehicles, and its open-ended conclusion is a sign that it was also a pilot for a show that would presumably focus on Stryker as he remains on the run, like The Fugitive. The cast includes a couple of grand old pros (Lew Ayers, Dean Jagger), one old pro cult figure (Cameron Mitchell as Benedict), busy character actor George Coulouris as the bookstore guy, and a good performance by Tim O'Connor as Dr. Revere. Glenn Corbett (pictured) is the mildly handsome leading man, but it often feels like he's sleepwalking through the proceedings—in the beginning, that befits his status of drugged captive, but his tone doesn't change much through the film. Sharon Acker is quite bland as the putative love interest (though things never get that far), and a day after I watched this, I could barely remember anything about her character. It's fine on a TV-movie level, and didn't really deserve the treatment that MST3K gave it under its later video release title, Stranded in Space. [YouTube]