Land of the Giants (TV Series) A Place Called Earth (1969) User Reviews

At last back on outright science fiction at Giants world!!

[elo-equipamentos · 7/10 · 4 October 2020]

The writer William Welch is back at early premise on Land of the Giants of the first season in this resourceful episode where two earthlings from the fairaway future have a mission to going back two centuries before, instead the leader Olds (Warren Stevens) induces his partner Fielder (Jerry Douglas) to joint forces to imply his bold plan to rule the Earth, they must looking for a place on Giant planet to bring around a hundred ones from Earth, meantime they will spread on Earth in 5.477 a deadly bacteria to kill all civilization, hoping returns after hundred years when the planet recovers itself and hereinafter becomes the life enduring to they living safe, also both travellers have a communication power by telepathy to hide their intentions and have a powerful and lethal device at their medallions, ours friends at first sight stay exited to finally return to Earth, mainly the foolish Fitzhugh, due by the Earthlings appear on US Navy's outfits, Steve suspicious that the story didn't match, actually has loose ends, but later appears a messenger (Scott Thomas) with a task to find out why they backward in time three thousand years, hitherto a rare episode at second season, a true enlightened plot and screenplay, delivering the proposal whom the series was draw up, plus for the first time directed by Harmon Jones!!

Resume:

First watch: 1971 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.75

A Place Called Irwin Allen Valley

[StuOz · 1 October 2006]

Very arrogant criminal time travellers from the future (one is Warren Stevens) wish to "rule the universe" but first seek out material from the land of the giants...and will kill giants to get it!

Everything described above happens in the short teaser at the start of the episode! The totally cool Richard LaSalle scored teaser, which also contains the Lost In Space space pod, is one of the finest and most memorable moments in the history of Irwin Allen TV. If only things happened this fast in other episodes of Land Of The Giants. I loved watching it in my 1970s childhood and it still looks cool in this century!

Another poster has noted that this hour contains memorable lines and I very much agree. I might add that one line - "You'd better surrender...unless you want to see this young lady blown to bits" - was actually cut from G-Rated Australian prints but was finally heard in the 1990s re-runs when the world was more ready for it.

The pilot, The Crash, is without question the best directed and best made Land Of The Giants episode, but A Place Called Earth contains the most memorable lines of any episode in the series. Granted, the story is partly taken from a 1967 Time Tunnel episode called - Chase Through Time - but Valerie and the gang give the hour a unique identity that you will long remember.

It is more about "the little people" or more about the time travellers than the giants but the giants play a role in the hour and are not just thrown in to stick with the premise of the series (as was the case with time travelling hours Home Sweet Home and Wild Journey).

Great stuff!

Time Travelling From the Year 5477

[mgmstar128 · 9/10 · 16 October 2016]

It was nice to see Betty back in an episode, and it is obvious that the actress Heather Young was still pregnant.

It was fun to see Warren Stevens as "Olds." As I watched the episode, I kept telling myself I knew him from somewhere else. Then it finally dawned on me that it was from the old STAR TREK episode "By Any Other Name" where the crew of the Enterprise is reduced to chemical blocks. He also was in the MGM classic FORBIDDEN PLANET.

It was also a kick to see and hear so many LOST IN SPACE sound effects and even to see the LOST IN SPACE space pod used too. You have to give Irwin Allen credit for his clever use of recycling whenever he could!

Mork, Calling Orson! Come In, Orson! Mork, Calling Orson! Come In, Orson!

[richard.fuller1 · 5/10 · 5 August 2006]

What can be said about this episode? We get two little alien humanoids in silver outfits who threaten our heroes as well as earth, might as well threaten the giants as well.

When I saw this show was on a station I didn't receive, I asked someone to record it for me, and they did. That was in the late 1980s.

This was the first episode I ever watched and was completely fascinated by the show.

It would be well over a decade before I would see another one.

Talk about patience.

What amused me most of all about this program was the ending.

Our silver-attired villain is holding Valerie, Steve, Mark and Don hostage, frozen, unable to move.

Suddenly we hear the alien commander.

"You will be returned to our homeworld to be punished. It would have been better had you never been BORN!" -- Shades of George Bailey! So the bad guy disappears, and the foursome unfreeze.

"Where did he go, Steve? What happened to him?" Valerie shrieks.

"I don't know," Steve responds in barely a whisper. He sounds like he is about to faint.

Then we get our ending.

"I can't believe those men were traitors," Barry says, something to that effect.

"Well, all I know is this," Fitzugh begins, with Valerie and Betty standing behind him.

"They were nothing but . . . but . . . . but . . . . . " "Imposters, Commander Fitzugh?" Valerie chimes.

Was something supposed to have been obvious here? Betty certainly looks like it was.

It's lost on me.

How could an episode be so hokey and completely draw me in? Well, it did.

Says a lot about me, I suppose.

lol!

Richard LaSalle score plagiarism -- nonsensical plot

[reprtr · 6 April 2015]

Before anyone praises Richard LaSalle's score for this episode too much, let it be said that the opening segment -- especially over the flight of the "space pod" or whatever it is called here, quotes quite liberally and directly from Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Sinfonia Antartica" (Symphony No. 7), composed in the late 1940s and still very much under copyright, then and now. As to the episode itself, the plot is loonier and loopier than the worst ideas that Irwin Allen permitted to be foisted on VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, with time travel and alien omniscience making most of what's gone on not much more comprehensible to us than it is -- which is not at all -- to the stranded Earth travelers. It's stories and episodes like this that helped bring LOST IN SPACE (which had worse, I agree) to a premature end, and killed this series after only two seasons (well, LAND OF THE GIANTS did have higher production costs, too . . . .)