Forbidden Planet

This article is about the movie Forbidden Planet. For information about the bookstore chain of the same name see Forbidden Planet (bookstore).

Influences

• The 1990s television series Babylon 5 also had a Great Machine beneath a planetary surface, and some of the visual effects of that many have thought were plainly done as a homage to the machine in Forbidden Planet. However, J. Michael Straczynski has claimed that he selected the shots he did of the Great Machine for aesthetic reasons, even though he knew many viewers would immediately recognize the resemblance to the Krell underground city.
• During deceleration from supra-lightspeed, the occupants of the spaceship stand in beams that appear similar to those used in Star Trek's "transporter", although they do not disappear. (The beams apparently freeze the crew in stasis to protect them from the effects of acceleration and deceleration.) The transporter design was admittedly influenced by this feature of the movie.
• The robot "B9" in the television series Lost in Space is quite similar in character to Robby, and also in some mechanical aspects, although far less sophisticated in motion. This is likely due to the fact that both robots were created by the same designer, Robert Kinoshita. B9 combined many of the personal characteristics of Robby - able to calculate, interact socially, yet with a humor that was completely unintended by its (fictional) makers - a situational, rather than a mental wittyness. The domed 'astrogator' unit in the center of C-57-D's control deck is also markedly similar to that featured in Lost In Space's Jupiter 2 spaceship (similarly, both were probably designed by Kinoshita). Robbie shows up in one form or another in Twilight Zone's episodes #2 (One for the Angles) and #153 (The brain center at Whipple's), etc.
• Forbidden Planet set a high standard for plot, characters, and effects in science fiction movies. A combination of elements of this quality would not be seen again until ' and the first ' movie.
• In the 1990s, a tongue-in-cheek stage musical adaptation was made, entitled Return to the Forbidden Planet, which successfully merged the plot of the film with a characters and dialogue closer to that of Shakespear's play.
• The C-57-D saucer model later appeared in several television programs as the de facto standard space ship, including Twilight Zone episodes #14 (Third from the sun), #15 (I shot an arrow into the air), #25 (People are alike all over), #51 (The Invaders), and #89 (To serve man) to name a few.