The colorful footage of that 1955 George Pal sci-fi classic has been made black and white here for a TV pilot that has some moments of intelligence but can't hold a candle to its source. A cast mixed with veteran actors and obscure newcomers offer a look into man's desire to explore space in spite of the dangers that are present and the debate over what is best for the world as far as space exploration is concerned. The film is actually at its best with a court hearing, where some of the dialog for and against the journey into the unknown, which follows a sequence that mixes new footage of a meteor shower and footage of the giant circular space station from "Conquest of Space". Of the veteran actors, Cecil Kellaway and Edward Platt stand out, with John Agar commanding as one of the military leaders. It's rather short and quickly forgettable, made rather cheaply for pilot season, although the inserted footage looks seamless. Ironically, the best sequences are not the newly filmed outer space scenes, but the hearing itself where what is usually overfilled with scientific assumptions and dull exposition is actually made to be quite amusing. I ironically got a copy of this along with "Conquest of Space" where the two films together show as to why the follow-up didn't quite make it onto TV.

"Destination Space" was a pilot for a series that networks declined to accept. I can understand why--this show was a bit talky and slow (which to some degree is necessary for a first show). I think more action and less talk might have resulted in the show being given the green light.When the show begin, there's an accident aboard the space station orbiting the Earth in this sci-fi show set in the near future. A bombastic congressman takes advantage of this and the leader of the project (Harry Townes) has to go to Washington to defend his program and the high costs. Later, the action finally goes to the station and a space launch from this station is about to occur--presumably to be followed up in subsequent episodes. But there's nuclear explosion to contend with first...When you see this today, the special effects look crappy. But for 1959, they're actually pretty good. I also appreciate that this is not a distant sci-fi show with bug-eyed monsters but a look at where folks back in '59 thought we might be in the next decades Not a great pilot but one that makes you wonder how the show might have progressed.

I'm a hard core 1950s science fiction fan, and this movie baffles me. It uses footage from Conquest of Space, specifically "The Wheel" and the spaceship. It's a black and white film, so it was weird to see that footage which I know to exist in color displayed in black and white. To be honest, I fast-forwarded through 3/4s of the movie, it's THAT bad. Way too much yakking and virtually no action. The climax involves one of the spacemen working to free a valve after crawling down a tube which reminded me a lot of the "Jeffries Tube" on the original Star Trek series. Another small bright spot is Ed Platt's role. He was "Chief" on "Get Smart" in the 1960s. Overall, even if you are a hard core collector, this is just a deadly boring movie.

As a pilot for an unmade TV series this decent, if dull, little effort shouldn't be judged too harshly. I am glad it has survived.The special effects are slightly above average for the period - as they should be, since they all seem to come from The Conquest of Space. The action scenes at the beginning and end are quite well staged and reasonably tense, but the middle section is just establishing characters and situations that would have been developed later in the series, so it is inevitable that it does not have the momentum of a stand-alone movie. The acting is 'so so'.This is just an oddity of mild historical interest only, but I feel it is worth acknowledging its existence, because it is actually the most convincing depiction of the dawning of the space age to appear at any time in the Fifties. It is certainly more convincing than the Pal movie it pillaged for its special effects.It is the first time that space travel was shown in a plausible political context. The first time it was ever suggested that space travel was not just a technological triumph and a great adventure: that cost and financial justification was part of the equation as well.These are small merits in what is, in truth, a fairly tedious fifty minutes, but I am glad to have seen it and have a slight regret that there was not at least one season of the show.Check it out if, like me, you have a particular fondness for Fifties' SF and a stamp collector's desire to see everything that was made in this era.Just don't expect an undiscovered minor classic.