Review: Planet Earth (1974) — Gene Roddenberry’s Post-Apocalyptic Draft Folder
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when Gene Roddenberry gets rejected by NBC and decides to throw every single sci-fi cliché into a blender with a budget of three nickels, look no further than Planet Earth (1974).
Starring John Saxon as Dylan Hunt—a name Roddenberry loved so much he reused it for Genesis II—the film follows a 22nd-century man who takes a 200-year dirt nap and wakes up in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. The aesthetic is pure 1970s television: earth tones, bell-bottom adjacent tunics, and sets that clearly started life as a CBS storage closet.
The plot revolves around Saxon’s Dylan trying to navigate a world split between the “Pax,” a peaceful society ruled by women, and the “Tyrants,” who are essentially cavemen with gym memberships. Enter Diana Muldaur, long before her days as Dr. Pulaski on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here, she plays the supreme leader of the Pax, presiding over a militant, man-hating sisterhood. Finding out Muldaur is running a society dedicated to keeping men in check isn’t even a surprise—it genuinely feels like a documentary of her internal monologue during her time on the Enterprise.
Between the awkward martial arts choreography, a civilization that apparently lost the recipe for pants, and dialogue that sounds like a first-year philosophy major trying to sound deep, it plays less like a movie and more like a lost, rejected Star Trek episode where Kirk forgot his communicator and had to wander around a quarry.
If you like your sci-fi with zero self-awareness, questionable fashion choices, and John Saxon looking deeply confused by everything around him, Planet Earth is a masterpiece of camp.
Planet Earth is currently streaming for free on Tubi
