MovieChat Forums > The Martian Chronicles (1980) Discussion > Let's discuss how the surviving humans w...

Let's discuss how the surviving humans will repopulate Mars

posted 19 years ago by A_Minor_Blip
9 replies | jump to latest

okay...

Christopher Connely, who is hooked up with a robotic woman, will have to wait till Rock Hudson's daughter (who grew up a hottie) is of age and he will have to be her mate to have babies (we don't want McGavin having a go at her, that'd be gross; plus he's married).

Rock Hudson's son, when he's of age, is going to have to make Bernedette Peters come off her high horse and knock her up.

Rock's character has his wife and his wife is young and can have more babies; and I'm sure Darrin McGavin and Joyce Van Patten are too old.

So that's about it then I guess.

Boy what a planet that's gonna be.

[–] dcabigail 18 years ago

OMG! thats a hysterical thread! good work.

No one else has any thoughts on this?

[–] okalars 18 years ago

Who said that there were not others? We are only see one city on Mars and a few certain places on Mars. But then we know that they were other settlements!
Nah I think others stayed realizing that war wes going to come on Earth and that Mars was mankinds second chance.

[–] dustinthewind25 18 years ago

See, this is where a couple of years make a big difference.

Let's put Rock at 54. That's his age when the show airs. His wife (in the show) is 37. So it's feasible that they could do their part in repopulating Mars.

But poor Darren is only 3 years older than Rock. And he's already being relegated to the scrap heap by the OP. His wife is 45, I grant you probably on the tail end of being one of the one's to help in the repopulation. And when push comes to shove, she'd probably pass anyway. But she is just 7 years older than Gail, and not unattractive, but man, those look to be a crucial 7 years when you're making these calculations.

[–] Polaris01313-1 17 years ago

There were probably others who chose to stay on Mars, instead of closing down the colony and other settlements, and returning to Earth to fight in the Third World War.

There were, of course Fathers Perengrine and Stone. I'd say, there are more than the ones we had seen in Part Three of the mini-series.

[–] davidd-16 17 years ago

I recall reading in one of the many science fiction publications that Ray Bradbury had written for that something about Mars causes living things to reproduce asexually.

So, while the idea of a withered up Darren McGavin gettin' it on with himself is disturbing it does answer the 'repopulate Mars question'.

On a more philosophical note, why does Mars need to be repopulated? All of Bradbury's fiction paints the people of the future in a very unflattering light. They're super-consumers, burn books, apparently they kill Martians without a second thought. It's almost for the best if humanity just quietly goes away.

[–] Wicked_Genius 15 years ago

I would hump the bejeesus out of Bernadette Peters and create an army of her and my spawn

[–] frumwannabe 15 years ago

Great question topic and responses.

We can assume they brought greenhouses to Mars, perhaps hydroponic ones as in Star Trek. Fresh fruit and vegetables are necessary for good health. It's too expensive to bring every bit of food on the shuttles from Earth. There has to be a protein source, too. Chickens and rabbits only need a small living space.

Families have children on Mars. Fresh milk is a good source of calcium, although we can imagine there are supplements available. But fresh is always better. They have sheep or goats, even cows. It's expensive to carry large animals on the space shuttle. Are they grown from frozen embryos? The technology was already in use for livestock. Artificial insemination was also used for livestock. If they can artificially inseminate the few females, there would be no ethical questions about young women mating with unattractive men.

When the movie was first made, there was the first successful real life in vitro fertilization of a human. If they can grow human embryos independently from the women's bodies, it would be much faster to grow a new population.

[–] scribe1270 14 years ago

In the original short story collection that makes up The Martian Chronicles part of the story about Wilder's family has him talking to his wife about how at least another rocket is due to arrive with the family of some friends of theirs (the other family has at least two daughters) and I imagine within the framework of the fictional world of TMC that space travel was supposed to have become fairly common by then much as space tourism is being talked about in the possible not to distant future in reality. So some might have escaped back off of Earth and traveled back to Mars as well. And as the population would be small at first there would probably be some inbreeding as well down the road. I mean say you have a population of 10,000 people. At first they would be from all over the place (back on Earth) and so there would be some genetic diversity, but eventually everyone will probably be related to everyone else. That very thing was common not so long ago in the real world prior to modern transportation (like trains). Most people were born, lived their lives and died in the same area and if they married there was a good chance that somewhere down the line the husband/wife was a distant cousin.

[–] flurng-1 10 years ago

NO, no, no, ya got it all wrong - see, all the settler who stayed in their villages were too old to reproduce or had no mates, and they all eventually starved to death 'cause they never learned "the Martian Way", like Wilder & his family did. Speaking of Wilder's family, little Billy and his sister Marie, the only viable breeding stock on the planet, grew to young adulthood, became lovers, and had lots of little inbred babies, who then bred with their siblings, parents and children, to create on big, happy, LOVING family!