Dave-Platt@LADC (08/02/85)
From: Dave Platt <Dave-Platt%LADC@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA> While sitting around my hotel room at a computer conference last year, I happened to catch a B-grade (or worse) "sci-fi" flick called "Space Raiders" (or some such). Basic plot-line: independant, semi-piratical spaceship jockies struggle against the all-powerful "company" which has a monopoly on starship-fuel supplies; The Company sends out a completely robot-controlled killer ship to hunt down & destroy the raiders. Son of a company bigwig happens to stow away on a raider ship, is adopted (sort of) by the raiders, finds out they're actually better people in many ways than his family & friends. Lots of weird-looking aliens, odd spaceships, and so forth... all of the usual trappings. The thing that struck me most strongly was that all of the spaceship shots were either identical to, mirror-image reversals of, or clearly shot with the same models as those used in "Battle Beyond the Stars" (a.k.a. "John-boy goes to space" to the cynical). Sedor's command ship (with the "stellar converter") was back as the berserker-like robot ship; Nestor's glowing-blue ship made a short appearance, as did Zed the Corsair's cyberneticized ship (Nell?) shaped in a way reminiscent of certain human organs (at least to my moderately dirty mind). The same music was used, too (at least for the credits). As far as I can tell, this turkey aired only on pay-TV (HBO, I think) and has never seen the light-of-day in a network broadcast (or on any independent station in the Los Angeles area when I've been watching). Question: does anyone out there have any insider information about the relationships between these two movies? Were the backers of "Battle" trying to recoup some additional $$ from their investment in models and film? What's the story?