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2024-09-01 21:40:32 UTC

Lauren Weinstein on Nostr: In the original novel ("Monkey Planet") by Pierre Boulle, from which the entire ...

In the original novel ("Monkey Planet") by Pierre Boulle, from which the entire "Planet of the Apes" franchise sprung, an astronaut near the end escapes the technologically reasonably advanced planet of apes and returns to Earth, where he finds apes similarly in charge after the very long stretch of time.

For the first film, they simplified both the apes' cultural level and the overall situation, by inexplicably having them land back on Earth in the first place, instead of a planet around a distant star.

This created a logical problem, since astronauts would be certain to recognize Earth's moon in the sky. So they basically just ignored the issue, and had an astronaut mumble something about there not being any moon. Uh huh.

Interestingly, in an episode of the TV series "Space: 1999", the main characters realize they are on Earth (albeit centuries in the past) rather than another planet, when they do recognize the moon.