Starflight One

You will find parts of this movie, little segments of it, embarrassingly funny. When I first saw it in 84, it was engrossing. When watching it back I 2003, I just found it pretty pathetic, and felt a schmuck for watching back in the eighties. But they were very cheesy and dark times. The same goes for those Airport films, me and Dad ribtickling ourselves over them. What we've got here is a fictional, what if scenario, about a hyposonic airplane, a Concorde shuttle that can make the distance from Los Angeles to Sydney in two hours. In no way is a two second exterior shot of Sydney airport, Sydney airport. What cheek. We have a good cast here too, notably Linden and Majors, one of many few films he did. While in the air, a rocket has exploded sending hulks of a metal careering towards the super cool airplane. Forced to rear up, drastically, they caught in orbit, for which there is no way to return. I remember in olden days, this got incredibly tense. And when the plane set down again, a relief came over me, although a score of passengers got lost in one of those shutes that blew up. But you just take Starflight One for what is it, a guilty cheesy, eighties pleasure, for the whole family, with unintentional laughs here and there.

When I saw this premier on TV I had high hopes that Dykstra would unleash his miniature wizardry on a made for TV movie. I mean, afterall, Star Wars? Star Trek? Battlestar Galactica SFX credits? We all had high hopes. Then the movie aired.

Well, to be honest, I don't recall much other than thinking that this was an extension of the Airport Franchise, only the first Airport film at least had some dramatic teeth in it. The subsequent sequels, even one with George Kennedy at the controls of a Concorde, seemed to get ever moreso dreary. Well, Starflight is no different, but, some, and I do emphasize SOME of the FX are decent enough.

The truth of the matter is that as per a previous reviewer, kids were savvy enough to know that planes couldn't reach suborbital velocities with the technology as it was explained. Heck, I think even reasonably educated adults probably had a few "huh" moments going for them as the drama unfolded.

The shooting style, the acting, the cast, the music, even launching the space shuttle, I could give all of that a pass, even seeing Lee Majors in this thing. But, when they put in the "one thing" that would save them, that's when I finally changed the channel. I think this film aired once more that same year late at night, or the following year during the summer, but, to the best of my knowledge, it never saw the light of day again.

If you're bored, need some airborne disaster action on your TV or computer monitor, then maybe give this thing a single viewing, but don't say I didn't warn you.

In fact I think this was a KTMA episode. But one scene that stands out in my mind indelibly is the one where Hal Linden's character is spirited off Starflight by sticking him in the coffin that was transporting the Australian ambassador to the US back home for burial or some such, and the body is stiff as a board (or a mannequin) after being removed from the casket and floats around the cargo hold wearing the pointiest shoes I've ever seen . Somehow I don't think a casket is airtight enough to survive the rigors of spaceflight!

"Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land" is a silly made-for-TV disaster flick that could have been titled "Airport '83: Trapped in Space". While the film is modestly entertaining at times, it's just too preposterous to believe. The plot: a hypersonic jet takes off for Australia and ends up stuck in outer space by accident. Director Jerry Jameson fared better with "Airport '77", and the cast (Lee Majors, Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton, Tess Harper, Ray Milland, etc.) have done better work than this. Not a real bad movie but not a real good one either. This movie originally aired as a three hour movie on TV; the home video version was edited by about 30-40 minutes and retitled "Starflight One".

** (out of four)

I'll admit it: I used to love this movie as a kid. But that was when I thought anything was possible. Now that I'm older (and have seen the Airport Movies), I realize just how bad this movie really was.

First, it should have been called Airport '83, since it has a nearly identical plot to the rest of the Airport series (especially The Concorde: Airport '79, where technical malfunctions screw up the Concorde).

Second is the truly abominable acting. Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man himself, stars as the plane's captain, who is married but shacking up with the head stewardess (Lauren Hutton, which explains why she is given a first-class seat out of the plane at the end). Hal Linden plays the designer and head engineer of Starflight One, who seems very uncomfortable in his role. The rest of the cast was too terrible to mention as their parts didn't even get off the ground, so to speak.

Third are the obvious mistakes, scientific errors, and plot holes that are large enough to fly a Star Destroyer through. For example: -Starflight was equipped with a flange that allowed an airlock to be fitted over it. But if it was never designed to operate in a vacuum (like outer space), why have it there in the first place? -Captain Briggs mentions that everything still worked, including the engines. If the engines worked, and they were in a decaying orbit, why not just transfer to a higher orbit? -In this movie, NASA service techs seem to be recruited from NASCAR, since they are able to service and launch the Space Shuttle Columbia several times in two days (which is physically impossible, and why didn't that second shuttle help out sooner?). -It was mentioned that Starflight was not built with a heat shield. Bt at the speeds that it was designed to operate at, kinetic heating and friction would necessitate SOME kind of protective layer on the aircraft.

-How come we never see the blonde female astronaut's face? -Starflight uses scramjets to provide thrust, but these engines cannot operate from a stand-still as they are shown to do; they must be in motion before they can operate. -An aircraft that is designed to operate at Mach 6 and higher speeds would not likely have such huge wings in proportion to its body, or even be spindle shaped; in fact, its actual design would most likely be a lifting body.

And now for the good stuff: why I liked this movie. John Dykstra, who came up with the ships for Star Wars and Firefox, was the one who designed Starflight One; the plane, while not believable, still looks very good. Also, Lalo Schifferin's score was very good and dramatic. In all, about a 6 out of 10.