“So then, don’t be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow has anxieties all its own. There’s plenty of misfortune for today” (Matthew 6.34).
Special Report: Journey to Mars is a made-for-TV movie that aired on CBS 25 March 1996. It’s an “as-it-happens” story that is presented as a news broadcast (from the far off future of 2005) chronicling the first human mission in its final two hours to touchdown.
I love this type of storytelling, have since I was first introduced to the Mercury Theater “War of the Worlds” broadcast when I was a kid. It hasn’t been done often on television, this movie is one of four that I’m aware of (Special Bulletin, Countdown to Looking Glass, and Without Warning are the others). So, on that March night when most folks were watching the Academy Awards, I tuned in to this movie.
Watching it just a week or so ago, I’m sorry to say it’s as bad as I remember it.
Let me get the big nit-picking complaint out of the way first. This live broadcast, as they present it, is impossible. Communication with anyone on or near the Red Planet would take, depending on its position in orbit relative to Earth, between five to twenty minutes. That means anything you said to someone on a spaceship preparing for landing on Mars would take at least five minutes to reach them and an equal amount of time for the response. So the whole premise of a reporter on board talking real-time with the broadcast team back home is not remotely possible.
That isn’t what makes this movie bad, though. The dialogue is plodding. None of these characters seem like real people. There’s a confusing sub-plot about anti-Mars protestors and who they might be working in concert with. It feels much longer than its 90 minute run-time. And the ending makes you wish you had a physical copy so you could throw it out the window and run over it in the street.
Very briefly, the mission, in its final hours is plagued by sabotage. The Destiny‘s computer is infected with a virus (which came from some device the reporter’s been carrying around) and the mission commander was somehow infected with nanotechnology—microscopic machines. Yet, thanks to the second-in-command they land safely. They step out on the surface, there’s some shocked reaction on the face of the crew, and the feed cuts to static. Roll credits.
But, bad as it is, it’s still got something it can teach us, or, better said, help us remember.
At the time of its airing, Journey to Mars was set nine years in the future. The world it portrays appears to be, while not wholly at peace, in a place of cooperation between nations. The crew of the Destiny is multinational. And it would have taken whole nations working together to plan and build a craft capable of travelling that far distance. Yes, there are terrorists and some bad fashion decisions, but it seems optimistic about a future that is less than a decade away.
With 2005 twenty years behind us, we know that movie got everything wrong about that year. We’re decades from sending anyone to Mars, assuming human and political will ever support such an endeavor. The global order seems to be remaking itself before our eyes as the pax Americana begins to fade. And if things don’t change, we may find that Mars is not the only planet in this part of the solar system with a difficult and dangerous climate.
That’s the trouble with speculative fiction, it can get a few things right now and again, but so much else it attempts to extrapolate from today about tomorrow ends up being wrong. Whether its not foreseeing how the internet became a part of everyday life, missing years-long conflicts in the Middle East, or believing people would still be watching network news, our ability to see what tomorrow brings is shaky at best.
Jesus’ words above come at the end of a section about worry, and culminate with the statement that tomorrow’s got worries of its own. I’d argue that he’s not just telling us that there are problems and concerns we’ll meet that’ll be unique to tomorrow, but that we can’t imagine what they may be. We can’t accurately predict the future based upon today.
This doesn’t mean bad things. Today’s problems may be met by a solution we could never have expected come a new day. Or in light of the joy brought with the dawn, what kept us awake through the night will seem insignificant.
Think, in light of this film, if you’d spent years concerned about spaceship sabotage or being infected by nanotechnology (which is still the stuff of fiction). Even in 2005, you’d found those to have been wasted worry. There were, as we know now, so many things in that year and those that have followed that we’d never imagined in 1996. Some tragic and terrible, and some more wonderful than we’d dreamt.
And tomorrow we’ll see the same.
Beloved One, you teach us that there is concern and joy enough for today. Help us live in the present, remembering we cannot imagine nor predict what tomorrow may bring.