I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I am surprised at the Harlan Ellison connection having just watched all 16 episodes back to back. As the story more correctly resembles a book called the Star Seekers from Milton Lesser in 1953 for the first part. The mix with strong elements of Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky from 1963. Then add the ship design from Silent Running modified for more domes. You get the story concept of the Starlost. So if considering how much these earlier these stories predate Ellison it more likely he adapted them and the other authors were never given credit.Oh and in case no one corrected the commented about Silent Running. It predated Starlost and it was the Silent Running footage that was used to pitch the project to US television networks.

And deservedly so, but I think the harshest critics of this show are being overly hard.The best way I can describe "The Starlost" is as a low-budget version of "Dr. Who". In fact, for the longest time (like someone posted on the BBS) I too thought this was a lost episode of the British TV show that I just needed to it track down.Through the miracle of Youtube I rediscovered it, then went on to investigate what happened to this show.Ho boy.As has already been posted, the creative powers were sold a bill of goods. The money people wanted to recapture that low steady audience market share that Star Trek had proved existed, and talked sci-fi types into creating what eventually became "The Starlost". The creative types, seeing that the wool had been pulled over their eyes, walked and put all the blame on the backers.I think this too is also too harsh. Harlan Ellison and his confederates were duped, of that there is no doubt, but, in my opinion, they should have bucked the money people, shot what they wanted, and pull a page out of the BBC's play-book by making a quality low-budget TV show.And, believe it or not, this is what they did, though unwillingly and begrudgingly. As other commentators have pointed out the production values are sub-par. The "special" effects are not so special, the supporting cast is hit-and-miss, and the rewritten dialogue should not have been as dumbed down as it was.But, in spite of all the poor tweakings by the financial powers, and despite the callous and blame-minded psychology that the creative team eventually adopted, the crux of the story still manages to shine.Poor production values to somewhat hamper this show, but despite marginal execution, the coordination of story and those same low production values help preserve the creative teams' intent.The SFX are poor (marginal at best), the actor thesping the computer terminal acts like he's in a B-movie, before CGI we're treated to a poorly shot (though magnificently designed) miniature and cheap video animation, and the local theatre groups cast in the support parts have a hard time keeping up with the leads. But, for all that, and for a show produced in the early 70s, it's actually okay for what it is.Mind you, if I were to helm this thing I would've either stopped production entirely or thumbed my nose at the backers and shot what I wanted. But, I would've made the best of a bad situation, and not cry foul when given the opportunity of a lifetime to shoot what could have been a truly magnificent sci-fi show.

Forget about "The Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits" or the classic "Doctor Who" years with Tom Baker: CTV's THE STARLOST is the creepiest, most subtly disturbing television show ever made for general audiences. The background story about how the show came to be reads like a Nazi War Criminal Tribunal transcript: Harlan Ellison -- not exactly the most laid back person in first place -- is suckered into helping to create an epic television show set in the future, with space ships, laser beams, intergalactic voyage, combining the best talents of the era (Douglas Trumbull, Ben Bova, "Star Trek"'s alumni of superlative writers) with state-of-the-art technology, to be filmed in London for a worldwide audience hungry for creativity that had never been seen before. The scope would have dwarfed "Star Trek" with an emphasis on real science, astronomy, physics, engineering and a fearless sense of speculation about what could be out there in the universe.Then it all fell apart: The budget was drawn & quartered, the production syndicated, to be made on the cheap in Canada with a production staff of unknowns who were not trained or equipped to handle such a project. The story premise reduced to the lowest common denominator and the talent marginalized by the stupidity of those who only saw it as another way to sell toilet paper, frozen dinners and underarm deodorant. Blatant misrepresentation of intent finally drove Trumbull and Bova from the sets, and finally Ellison announced he'd had enough. Before the first pilot episode was ever taped he'd demanded that his name be removed from the credits lest the producers reap an undeserved bounty off his well-respected propz. Hyped beyond any possible ability to deliver what it boasted, the show premiered in 1973 to abject indifference from thunderstruck audiences who could not fathom what the point of it all was, mixing 3rd rate television production techniques, bizarre illiteracy of both form and content, and bare-bones production values that were put to shame by that which it attempted to mimic.Without Ellison's guidance the show became a sort of working example of how NOT to approach the science fiction genre, at the same time dumbed down beyond belief and yet defying any sort of accepted formula. Punctuated by bizarre, ultra-cheap quasi-minimal production design, brain dead writing and lunkheaded conceptual inconsistencies, it is a unique, remarkable failure of humanity attempting to do something great and yet stubbing their toe on the wainscoting with each step. It was canned almost immediately with the basic conflict of the last remnants of humanity in search of a new world on a giant, derelict space ark unresolved. They are still out there, somewhere, lost and unable to find their way home due to indifference, greed and incompetence.And yet what a show it IS in the form of the precious 16 episodes that were made, 10 of which are available now on a DVD box set from Britain. It's the creepiest television show ever made for family audiences, nightmares of it's basic concept of three lost humans moving from compartment to compartment on an unbelievably huge, lumbering, abandoned "Earthship Ark" haunted me for thirty years. Most of it isn't very good in the traditional way of looking at television, but as a kind of kitschy, ambiguous and hopelessly retarded entertainment it's truly one of a kind, for which we should probably be thankful. Harlan may not wish it so but THE STARLOST remains a remarkable example of humanity at their most clueless, with the potential of what could have been eclipsing that which was.I will let others describe the details of the premise, what interests me about the show is how utterly rudderless, forlorn and misdirected it all feels looking at the remnants 30 years later. If you want a more accurate look at what the show COULD have been, make sure you read the book adaptation of Mr. Ellison's "pilot episode" story, PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES, which opens with a really eye-opening 20 page account of the hell he went through just to get this much accomplished. By all accounts he is to this day bitter, caustic, and openly hostile about the experience, and I agree that an authorized present day attempt to re-visualize his concept is entirely appropriate. Not a "re-make", since THE STARLOST as it is known today doesn't really officially exist. It was taken away from him and made stupid by those who pulled the strings; The idea is still worthy.None of which, by the way, is meant to denigrate the efforts of those who stuck around & gave it the good old college try. It's not their fault. They did their best and just happened to come up empty, though some of what survives to this day is remarkable: The principal leads (Kier Dullea, Gay Rowan, the perpetually gruff Robin Ward, and William Oster as the endlessly helpful computer "host") were very well cast and gave their all, and the guest appearances by some of the best & brightest of the day (the late Lloyd Bochner, a misplaced Walter Koenig, "Space: 1999"'s Barry Morse, priceless Ed Ames, and John Colicos who even makes the word vegetable sound like a Shakespeare sonnet) are wonderful. Trumbull's special effects don't come across well on the small screen but are entirely practical given Bova's scientific guidance. Superficially the show resembles "Doctor Who" though far, far less profound as realized.If it had been made right by honest visionaries who were interested in amounting to more than the sum of their parts it could have gone on for three or four seasons at least, perhaps even fulfilling Ellison's proposed story arc of the three heroes eventually repairing the ark and setting it on it's way again. Yet as an unfinished sketch of that idea it exists like a half remembered dream, haunting because of it's fleeting nature rather than hampered by never having been finished.8/10. In spite of everything, 8/10.

OK, so everyone thinks the production values were terrible, then why after 35 years, does this series still exist as clear as a bell in my mind? It was amazingly thought out and the possibilities for plots were infinite like any good sci-fi series. Of particular interest were the "bounce tubes". A travel method that involved jumping into a tunnel that had no gravity and being sucked to the other end. I couldn't wait for each time the characters did that! The show was filled with "wow" moments like the view of the destroyed command center, and the view out the the window at the incredible length of the ship. Note: The ship in this series was recycled a few years later as the ship in the movie, "Silent Running".I desperately hope that there is a television producer out there that is looking for an idea to remake. With modern computer animation and a cast of a few talented young stars this could easily be the Star Trek of the new century.