This film is often grouped with Gene Roddenberry's "Genesis II" and "Planet Earth." The big difference is that Roddenberry didn't participate in this film. For those who are not fond of Roddenberry rather campy style of writing, you'll find this film a more sober depiction of his imagination. This film completely lacks the campiness and bulges at the seems with seriousness. There's nearly zero humor in this film. The astronauts (except Saxon), and many of the characters they meet, maintain a stoic demeanor. The director's choice to hold shots during dialogue adds an additional layer of subtextual realism. The entire film maintains a sense of dis-ease. However, the first episode/story suffers from poor set and costume design. The second episode fares much better.

Even though Roddenberry chose not to be involved with this third revival of his Genesis II series project... the core problem was prevalent in all three attempts. Roddenberry should have known better on Genesis II and the sequel Planet Earth... because the reason Star Trek was so popular was because it was a Utopian futuristic society which had risen above wars, violence, disease, poverty, racism and discrimination. It depicted mankind learning from its mistakes and building a peaceful society of exploration, cooperation, invention and forward progress.This Trilogy did exactly the opposite. It showed the degradation of society. Each film, while claiming Pax peace... was filled with violence, segregation, themes of hatred and slavery. Themes of technological regression. These were the very things that this generation of viewers hated. No one wanted to see shows depicting societal disintegration and backward momentum into archaic, violent existences. These were offensive themes which no one wanted to view even once, let alone on a weekly episode. Even worse, the writers interpretations of ideal societies as depicted on these shows such as an ancient Rome type of society... were the perceptions and desires of people born in the 20's instead of the views of the generations who were the target audience... the baby boomers.Our generation hated wars and poverty, discrimination, big brother, environmental damage and establishmentarianism most of all. They wanted to see peace, progress, no poverty, no disease, clean air, no fossil fuels, technological advancement... just like Star Trek.This trilogy was just the opposite of the themes preferred by both the peace generation or the yuppie generation that followed. Both were antiwar. This PAX series was one violent conflict after another despite the fact that they called their society by a name for peace. It was just the opposite. Even worse, the core character from the past was a violent man who managed to judge and then destroy one society after another. In this final story, he managed to kill an entire city with no more conscience than. "Oh well." Sure, they tried to kill him... but he spilled the first and last blood with death. Who would want to watch this every week. I had to fast forward through the violent scenes which went on and on. Same mentality as a fist fighting western. I didn't need to see people punching each other in the face for 10 minutes straight. Even the good citizens were killed along with the bad ones. It was still the death of an entire city and society by the lead characters... and they wonder why this series attempt kept failing.It had the same core problem whether it was the first 2 written by Roddenberry or this last version which he was not affiliated with. They simply did not get it... which is surprising considering that Roddenberry was the one who originally understood the concept of the Utopian society during the strong anti-war, pro-peace sentiment of the 60's and 70's.Perhaps if they had created a truly peaceful, technologically advanced, futuristic society for this series... it might have worked. But all three of these movies were simply unpleasant to watch. Most of us watched them out of respect for Roddenberry in the hope that he had come up with a new series. We continued to hope that they would learn their lesson in the 2nd and third movie but no such luck. It just went downhill from the onset.At the time these pilot movies were made, we had no conception that society would truly degrade as it has over the past 10 years. Who could imagine that it would go backward and not learn from its mistakes. Fortunately, Roddenberry never saw what society finally became in the 21st century. But when these shows were made, our generations still believed it would improve. How could we have guessed otherwise. While there may be some truth in how a post apocalyptic society might degrade in some distant future... our target generations were not interested in seeing it. We wanted to see forward momentum and progress... not the opposite. Thankfully, they brought back Star Trek until Berman finally managed to destroy that as well... with the same narrow minded thinking as was depicted in this violent trilogy.

This was the third attempt to get a series from Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II concept, this time without any involvement from Roddenberry. The basic plot is similar to many SF series with returning astronauts traveling across a new Earth after some sort of cataclysm, searching for remnants of their civilization. As an example of what the regular series might look like, the pilot is broken into two separate stories. The first involving a culture who may have discovered the secret of immortality. But, at what cost? The second, more elaborate episode follows the astronauts into a battle for survival against a tribe of primitive forest dwellers. Well made and cast with well known actors, the pilot is action packed and interesting, but tired at the same time.

Possible spoilers (but unlikely).I saw this movie on TV in 1975. I don't remember much. All I actually remember is a shot of star John Saxon using a crossbow he made from an old automobile leaf spring. The premise of the film is similar to two previous TV movies written by Gene Roddenberry:Genesis II, starring Alex Cord as Dylan Hunt (1973)Planet Earth, starring John Saxon as Dylan Hunt (1974)I don't know whether Roddenberry had anything to do with this 1975 John Saxon film, or whether Saxon's character was Dylan Hunt. The IMDB database does not say. I suspect there was no official connection between this bad 1975 film and the film Saxon made in 1974 for Gene Roddenberry.