Book Reviews

One of the odd things is that, no matter how well done this movie is or how important it has become in the history of science fiction films there really aren't very many books about it at all. There's the original novel, a four-part comic book series and a book or two I found otherwise but that's about it.

Forbidden Planet, Number 1

The cover goes back to the time in science fiction when it was traditional for monsters/robots/evil men to carry off beautiful women with an implied sexual activity. Thw way Robby's head is drawn gives him an evil appearance.

The inside front cover tells what how the movie came about. There's a crew list (all male) and their purpose being to search for the Bellarophon, a spacecraft that seeemed to disappear some years earlier.

The ship they are using is said to be 'the newest fighting ship' which is a little odd as there is no appearance of any kind of external gunports or anything like that. The weapons it does have seemd to have come from inside the craft for use outside only.

There's a very bothersome artistic technique used to draw thick lines of people's faces, apparently reflections of window blinds or something.

There's a household disintegrator beam to get rid of trash, something not seen in the movie.

Altaira appears on the last page of the comic.

Issue 2

There's lots of animal and plant graphics which establishes that the planet is not a wasteland. The graphics remind me somewhat of the original ones done for The Dark Crystal.

There's the tiger scene as in the movie and Alta still doesn't understand just how much an effect she has on men. There's the old question of is the woman at fault if men can't control their sexual desires.

The back inside cover has more on the film and that the original title was going to be Fatal Planet.

Issue 3

We are shown the Krell door whch establishes that their physical structure was quite different from that of humans. We know from the movie what the Krell monster looked like but there's still the question of whether or not this is what an actual Krell looked like.

The indication is that nuclear reactors are involved in generating energy on the planet and here there is a question. Since the Krell have been gone for hundreds if not thousands of years then wouldn't the nuclear reactors have stopped working by then?

The inside back cover has the uusal textual material.

Issue 4

This one follows the movie quite closely. The ship's doctor dies from the brain-boost machine, the Krell monster attacks the house, Morbius and the others flee to a control room, Morbius tries to stop the id monster and dies and the device to destroy the planet is set into action.

They flee the planet, get to a certain distance and the planet is destroyed.

The back cover again has textual material.

The Paperback

Forbidden Planet book

It's a little odd I think that there are so few published versions of this book. I'm kind of used to there being a bunch of different printings of a good book but in this case there's I think maybe three versions or around that.

I'm going to compare this to the movie and point out some of the differences and also just note some things that I though were interesting in and of themselves.

The book refers to the 'jungles of Venus.' Actually Venus is almost a literal hell with sulfuric acid clouds and very high surface temperatures. There's probably no life there of any kind.

Forward: This is written as excerpts from about written about 2600 AD.

There's one federation of humans; in other words, the Earth people somehow became united.

The Bellerophon was launched in 2351; the C-57 D cruiser (one of my favorite spaceships of all times) was launched twenty years later.

It took 2 years to get to Altair 5. Due to time dilation, though, twenty years passed on Earth.

The movie has no one person's view but the book has chapters which are divided into points of view of the doctor, Adams and Morbius.

There's a lot of cigarette smoking. I would think by that are in the future cigarettes would be long gone.

There is something about deceleration that requires the crew to be tied down or in some kind of deceleration chamber.

Altair has oceans, rivers and plains. In the movie all you see in basically a near lifeless desert.

Some crewman wonders what sex Robby is.

The book establishes that there are trees, shrubs, rivers and grassland plus desert on the planet.

There's references to the 'Force' which in this case refers to whatever destroys things and kills people.

Morbius' house has some kind of outside patio.

There are 8 monkeys in the book. By the end of the book there are only 7 and it's found out that they are not normal monkeys by any means.

The cigarettes have some kind of 'igniter' caps on them.

There's a scene where Adams and others leave the house of Morbius but then stop their vehicle some distance away, get out and try to spy on what is going on. This is missing entirely from the movie.

Farman gets arrested by Adams.

Adams turns out to be the monkey killer (accidentally, though.)

Adams has a nightmare that involves hearing breathing. This happens during an early attack on the ship.

The footprints found on the ground are 15 feet apart from each other. The average human has around a 2.5 foot distance between one footprint and the other which makes the monster having six times the length of a human stride.

Here's a question that came up to me, though. There are references about the monster breathing yet why would an energy creature need to breathe?

The monster appears to be about 5.5 feet tale and 10 feet wide at the widest.

Morbius is severely arrogant and full of himself.

Even before the end of the movie Morbius seems to have some health problems.

The doctor does an autopsy on the monkey Adams ran over and it turns out t he monkey may look like a monkey but it's insides are extremely strange.

The doc goes to Morbius' house alone and gives Morbius a drug to calm him down as something was definitely wrong with him.

A motive for the death of the Bellerophon people seems to be that the monster/Morbius did not want them to leave Altair 4.

The part with the doctor and Morbius involves a lot of talking and takes up a fair bit of time which was probably why this whole part was left out of the movie.

Unlike the movie Adams talks to the doctor on the phone while the doctor is using the brain boost machine. In addition, the doctor using it several times.

The monster attacks the ship and the men end up retreating into the ship. There's a problem here because it's been established that he first ship was destroyed as it was launching to return to Earth so why hasn't the crew of the cruiser realized that, if they take off to get away from the monster, their ship will also probably be destroyed.

Then the scene shifts to the monster's attack on Morbius' house which is pretty much how the movie handles it. As in the movie Morbius stops the monster, sets the planet to blow up, dies and the cruiser takes off and sees Altair 4 blow up.

Then there's another section of the report to finish the book.

I can see why parts of the book were left out because it would have made the movie too long. The story in the book is dated, of course, but it's still very well done (based on The Tempest by Shakespeare) and pretty much makes sense.

Forbidden Outpost

The review here will be relatively short. I will have a much longer review on my own web pages.

The story takes place shortly after Forbidden Planet's conclusions. The C-57-D Cruiser is heading home but there's a signal from the moon of a planet. The moon is large enough to support life.

From there the story becomes a mix of science fiction and a crime show. The Krell may all be dead but what they left behind elsewhere isn't and this is what reveals some really fascinating stuff about the Krell. Alta plays a major role and learns she can use something the Krell left behind and finds out just how that is possible.

There's some murders and political maneuvering, two women kept in the Krell outpost, a whole lot of political events that have a major importance and finally a ship from Earth willing to do anything at all to find out what secrets the Krell left behind.

It's a complicated formula but it manages to work. The most interesting part to me was the Krell base.I think the story does credit to Forbidden Planet.

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