Fireball XL5 (film)

Fireball XL5 is a 1964 British science-fiction puppet film directed by and  in their feature directional debuts, produced by  and  and written by, based on the  television series of. The film follows the missions of Fireball XL5, a vessel of the World Space Patrol that polices the cosmos in the year 2062. Commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac, XL5 defends Earth from interstellar threats while encountering a wide variety of alien civilisations.

Produced by the Andersons for, the film was released in the United Kingdom by on 5 March 1964, followed by a United States release on 18 December 1964, to generally positive reviews from critics and fans. The film then became a box-office success in the United States, grossing $225 million.

Plot
In the year 2062, the starship Fireball XL5 reaches the distant planet Colevio to determine the fate of an expedition sent there 20 years ago. Colonel Steve Zodiac, the pilot and commanding officer, warns the ship not to land because he cannot guarantee their safety, but Professor Matthew "Matt" Matic ignores the warning and lands.

Steve, Doctor Venus and Matt are met by Robert the Robot and Zoonie the Lazoon, who transport them to Steve's residence. Steve describes how all other members of the expedition had been killed one by one, by a "planetary force" and how their starship had been vaporized as the last survivors tried to leave in it. Only Steve, his wife (who later died of natural causes) and their daughter Colleen were somehow immune. Steve offers to help the newcomers leave for home, but Matt says he can’t without further instructions from Earth.

At the World Space Patrol headquarters, Commander Zero notices something on the scanner. He tells Lieutenant Ninety that a small spacecraft is heading for Earth with a Planetomic bomb.

Fireball XL5, on board Steve Zodiac, Venus, Professor Matic and Robert the Robot, are told to intercept. They fire a missile but before it reaches the spacecraft, it explodes. They work out that there must be a crew aboard. They fire another missile while using a jamming beam.

They destroy the spacecraft. Then they are told that the spacecraft was launched from Planet 46, so Fireball XL5 goes on to investigate. Once they arrive, Steve and Venus head out in the front of Fireball XL5, while leaving the Professor and Robert back on the craft. Once they arrive on the planet surface, they get out on their jet mobiles to investigate the surrounding areas. They find a cave and enter, where they find the door of a base. Without warning, aliens known as Subterrains, come in through rayproof tubes and shoot Steve with Coma Rays.

When Steve comes to, the alien leader tells him that they have put Venus on board a spacecraft; similar to the one they faced earlier. The leader says that they will release Venus, if Steve instructs the rest of Fireball XL5 to land in a certain position. Having no choice, Steve instructs the Professor land the Fireball XL5 at the position instructed. When it lands they find that Fireball XL5 has landed in a quick-sand pit and cannot escape. This was a trap set up by the aliens. Steve then finds out that they will not release Venus and the spacecraft is launched. The aliens are distracted for a brief moment because of a malfunction on the spacecraft. This gives Steve the change to grab a gun while no one is watching him. After the aliens have fixed the malfunction, Steve knocks them all out with the gun. He heads back to Fireball Junior, takes off, and connects back with Fireball, which allows it to fly out of the quicksand, They recover Venus and stop the alien spacecraft from destroying earth.

While Steve Zodiac and Venus are on holiday, Johnathan Zero is looking after Zoonie. When, with Zoonie, he goes into the main control cabin of Fireball XL5 one night, Zoionie gives the order, "Full power". Robert The Robot obeys and launches the spacecraft. This starts an alert and Commander Zero, with Lieutenant Ninety, take off after XL5 in Fireball XL1. They find it in space, on fire and when they get aboard discover Johnathan and Zoonie unconscious. Zoonie has, however, put the fire out with a ray extinguisher.

The Fireball XL5 crew are sent to investigate a new planet which suddenly appears and the disappears. Fireball XL5 is pulled across the planet, and when the crew are able to leave the ship, they find that everything around them is in total darkness. A glass door in the blackness reveals a corridor, which leads to a room. Suddenly, two dome-headed aliens, (Magar and Proton), appear and tell the crew that they cannot be allowed to leave their planet and their Earth memories will be erased. Robert is put on a conveyor belt leading to a furnace, but is able to escape and rescue the crew.

At Space City, heavy interference has knocked out most communication. Commander Zero and Lieutenant Ninety believe it’s caused by a cloud of gas in space that is getting closer to Earth, so they send in Fireball XL18 to disperse the cloud. As it gets closer, a strange voice is heard over XL18’s radio. XL18 enters the cloud, but suddenly explodes.

They then send Fireball XL24 to investigate. Commander Zero instructs the pilot not to get to close to cloud. On another planet, Dr Venus is inoculating everyone at a base for Restameisa. A space disease that is spreading fast around space quickly. Once she is done, they head back to earth in Fireball XL5. Soon XL24 arrives at the cloud. The pilot gets the interceptor missiles out, ready and armed. Once again, the strange voice is heard over the radio. XL24 flies above the cloud. Suddenly it explodes.

On board XL5, Steve, The Professor and Venus have just watched XL24 be destroyed on the monitor. However, Steve doesn’t think that XL24 exploded for no apparent reason. He is quite sure something came out of the cloud. They play the recording of it in slow motion. They see that a missile was fired at XL24 from out of the cloud destroying it. Because of this they are able to work out that there must be some kind of invasion fleet in the cloud.

Soon the cloud reaches earth, all communications are down and all the ray guns are disabled. Suddenly a fleet of space ships come down from the clouds and land around Space City. Two aliens make there way to the control room where they order Commander Zero to inform Fireball XL5 it’s ok to land. However, Commander Zero refuses. So the leader of the aliens gives him five seconds to make up his mind or he’ll shoot him.

Unexpectedly, Zero’s son (Johnathan ) enters the room. The aliens get Johnathan Zero at gunpoint and force Zero to call XL5 and bring the ship down. When Steve receives the orders he decides to go down and land knowing there’s not much they can do in space.

As XL5 begins the descent, the alien leader orders three missiles ready to fire. He begins the countdown and suddenly the Leader collapses. It turns out that the aliens fainted because they caught Rystamesia, and so Venus suggests the others should be inoculated. Zero, however, suggests Ninety goes first, whilst he makes a break for it.

Fuel Tankers from the planet Earth continue to disappear in space. When Fireball Xl5 goes to investigate, they come across a hypnotic sphere. In Fireball XL5, Professor Matic spots a lone satellite on the map. As they get closer they discover it’s a fuel tanker from Earth. Steve Zodiac tries to contact the tanker, but gets no reply. When they arrive at the tanker Steve and Professor Matic go across to it by using the thrusters packs. When they’re on board they discover the pilot of the tanker alive but in a state of hypnosis. They arrive back on earth and explain to Commander Zero what they discovered. He tells them, that this is the fourth incident that has happened of the past few weeks Steve comes up with a plan.

In space, Fireball XL5 is escorting a different fuel tanker with a pilot on board (Joe), on the same route the other tankers took. During the journey they come across spherical craft directly in front of them. As they go past it, the sphere starts to glow. Very slowly they all start to feel tired. A voice on the speakers tells Steve to change their course and land on planet Suventa. However, he tries to fight the hypnotic sphere and tells Robert the Robot to continue on course. Soon, everyone besides Robert has passed out and the fuel tanker pilot has obeyed the sphere and headed to the planet.

Fireball XL5, however is heading for the fiery planet of Mirana, since Robert is staying on the current course. Just before they hit the planet surface, Steve wakes up and manages to pull Fireball out of the collision. Venus and Matic wake up wondering what happened. Matic, knowing that Robert records everything he hears, suggests playing it back. They listen and discover that the spheres glowing causes the hypnosis and the voice is just a command. They then decide to return to the sight where the sphere appeared. They cover all the windows on Fireball XL5 so they wont be hypnotised again.

When the sphere arrives, they all pretend to be hypnotised. Steve lands the ship at the destination that the voice tells him to. When they land, they are instructed to enter a room in a small base on the planet. Inside the room is a brain inside a glass container. They discover that the Brain wanted to use the fuel, which would power thirty more spheres. Then they would go out and hypnotise the universe and the brain would become in charge of everything. Steve stops pretending to be hypnotised and kills the brain by destroying the heat system, causing the brain to freeze to death.

At Space City Fireball XL5 is refuelling and will take off once Fireball XL7 gets back from its patrol. At Venus’s beach house, Venus and Professor Matic are having a quiet evening. Suddenly Zoonie starts to make strange noises. This is because he is getting telepathic thoughts that there is something wrong from outer space.

On board XL7, Captain Ken Ross has lost control of the ship as it heads towards a planet of it’s own will. He contacts Space City informing them of the situation. After a few minutes, they loose contact.

So Steve, Venus and Mattic get ready for lift off at 9:30. Once it is the right time to blast off they wait for the moon to rise. After two hours over due, the moon finally rises, however it unusually far away.

So Fireball XL5 takes off and heads towards the moon to investigate. After half an hour of travelling the moon is still as far away as when they took off. So Steve increases the velocity of Fireball XL5 and finally starts getting closer. However, they then discover they are going to fast towards the moon and can’t slow down. With the speed of XL5 getting faster and faster they all one by one fall unconscious. It appears that Fireball XL5 will crash into the moon. But just by a few inches they miss it. Once they all regain conscious they realise they are still out of control and are heading the way that XL7 was, to the planet Magneton.

As they get extremely close to Magneton, Steve manages to turn Fireball XL5 around and turn on the thrusters so they don’t crash on the planet surface.

Steve, Venus and Mattic go out side on their Jetmobiles. They discover a complex, which seems to have no entrances, except one! There is a conveyer belt that is haling garbage into the complex. Among that garbage is the wreckage of Fireball XL7. Believing it is the only entrance into the complex, they enter. Without time to react, Mattic is scoped up by a grab and is dumped on a pile of garbage where he discovers Captain Ross alive and well.

Steve and Venus have entered the control room to the complex where they meet the invisible Solars. They are the inhabitants on Magneton and their plan was to bring the earth’s moon to them so the could have light. Steve is so intent in preventing their plan, he begins to fire relentlessly at them and before long he has managed to destroy them all.

Once they have rescue Mattic and Ross from the garbage pile they notice that the moon is still heading towards the planet. In order to stop it they must find the master switch and turn it off. Finally Mattic finds the switch and turns it off allowing the moon to head back to earth.

Voice cast

 * as Colonel Steve Zodiac, the pilot and commanding officer of Fireball XL5.
 * as:
 * Doctor Venus, a doctor of space medicine, of French origin. Zodiac personally selected her to be a member of the XL5 crew.
 * Eleanor Zero, Commander Zero's wife.
 * as:
 * Professor Matthew "Matt" Matic, XL5 's engineer, navigator and science officer.
 * Zoonie the Lazoon, Venus' lazy, semi-telepathic pet from planet Colevio.
 * Space City's assistant controller. He is young, inexperienced and the one most often on the receiving end of Commander Zero's scathing attitude (although Zero also refers to him as "the best lieutenant Space City has"). In one episode he is shown training to be an XL pilot.
 * The Subterrains, a race of hostile aliens from Planet 46.
 * as Robert the Robot, the co-pilot of XL5, a transparent robot invented by Professor Matic and Earth's most advanced mechanical man.
 * as:
 * Commander Wilbur Zero, the operational commander-in-chief of the World Space Patrol and chief controller of Space City. Despite his gruff exterior, he shows great respect and care for his subordinates, especially Zodiac. Zero's rank appears to be above that of Colonel but below that of Space General.
 * Jock Campbell, Space City's chief engineer, of Scottish origin.
 * Captain Ken Ross, pilot of Fireball XL7. He often needs rescuing by the XL5 crew.
 * The Subterrains, a race of hostile aliens from Planet 46.
 * as Jonathan Zero, Commander Zero's wife and young son.
 * Rimuru Wagner as General Scheel, Robert the Robot's co-inventor.