Red Planet (miniseries)

Red Planet is a 1994

Jim Marlowe (voiced by Benny Grant), Jr., and his little sister, Phillis Jane "P.J." Marlowe (voiced by Haven Hartman), are teens growing up on the distant mining world of New Aries. Life on New Aries is difficult, with its surface being a red-colored desert. Along with the harsh climate and severe weather, there are many dangerous creatures living on New Aries, such as the three-headed Cerberus Hounds, the swift and voracious Water Seekers, and the misunderstood Locals, creatures so rare and dangerous they border on urban legend.

Jim has recently acquired a new pet, a "roundhead" called Willis (voiced by Pat Fraley) with the parrot-like ability to mimic human speech and record conversations. When Willis needs to move quickly, he extends his limbs which gives him a quadrupel appearance, and can climb virtually anything. Willis is small, furry, and playful, can survive both on the surface of New Aries and the Earth-like atmosphere of the colony, and has some sort of connection with the Locals on an almost empathic level.

As Jim and P.J. are about to be sent off to a boarding school, their mother (voiced by

Willis then tells Jim that it is time for him to go. He is finished being a child, and must become an adult via metamorphosis. One of the colony's doctors correctly assumed that Willis was not a separate species from the Locals, but rather a Local in its infant form. Jim says that he will wait for Willis to finish changing, but Willis states that this will take a long, long time. He and Jim will probably never see one another again.

Many decades later, New Aries has been terraformed into a green, Earth-like world, with humans and Locals living side by side in peace. Willis, now a full-grown Local, has befriended Jim's young granddaughter, and spends time with her wandering the grass-covered hills and telling her stories of the adventures he and her grandfather had together.

Episodes

1. Part 1 (5/14/94): written by Martin Isenberg, Robert Skir, and Julia Jane Lewald
2. Part 2 (5/21/94): written by Julia Jane Lewald
3. Part 3 (5/28/94): TBA

Differences from novel

• The story takes place on the fictitious planet of New Aries instead of Mars. It (supposedly) has a higher gravity than Mars, making it somewhere closer to Earth's.
• Jim's little sister, P.J. is the main supporting character. In the novel, this role was filled by his classmate, Frank Sutton.
• The main conflict in the novel was that the colonial governor was attempting to find some way to keep the miners working during the harsh winter months as well as their families need not move during the unbearable time on the planet, as the annual migration could get expensive. In the miniseries, the main problem was missed work as poison in the mine was slowly killing the miners.
• In the novel, Willis is confiscated by the school's headmaster since it is against the rules to have pets. He is then taken from the headmaster by the colony leader, Beecher, in order to sell him to the London Zoo for a hefty sum. In the miniseries, both the headmaster and the colony leader are in on a plot to steal Willis and study his alien physiology to find an antidote to the poison in the mines.

Intent

Karen Barnes, who acted as the vice president of Fox Kids programming, said that Red Planet received the adaptation because it has many "characters that kids can relate to."^[6]

References