Scifi, girl abducted, man and women go into space on a mission
Saw on TV, in late 1990s or early 2000s.
Video was probably made during the same time.
Decent (modern) production value, especially for a space adventure.
Long video, so probably a made-for-TV movie or a TV pilot.
Begins on a distant planet or moon (i.e. not Earth).
World full of humans and a few aliens.
Surface looks like a desert. A
lot of brown tents surrounding a marketplace.
Some broad dusty steps leading to a larger building.
Man with some dark desert garb goes into town, finds a bar.
Unknown occupation. Man receives a mission or finds a job, here.
Later, there might have been a bar fight.
Black-haired woman joins his crew, the next day.
They go off-planet on a ship to complete a job or mission.
Later, on the same planet, a girl is kidnapped
by some aliens. The aliens have creepy faces, but otherwise are humanoid.
They live underground in a bright red cave, with plenty of tunnels. The red is so bright, that it seems like some kind of plant growth.
Above the surface, the aliens wear robes,
and look like some type of religious priesthood. They are doing something
to the kid’s mind, as part of a ritual…
Anyways, man and woman defeat some big bad,
there’s a “gun” fight on the bridge of a bigger ship.
Then they race back to the planet to save the girl.
I don’t think the movie / pilot was well-received.
The video did not seem like the generic:
alien invasion,
time travel,
monster, or
space exploration molds,
so it is really hard to place.
Firefly (2002)?
Thanks for the guess, Alex. Loved Firefly, but the show lacks aliens, AFAIK. The closest I think they get to aliens are Reavers, but the movie confirms that these are really humans. I think the agents with blue-gloved hands were modified humans, too. The one I am thinking of is definitely another show or movie.
“The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy” (1998 TV movie)?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142973/?ref_=rvi_tt
Also known as The Osiris Chronicles. Below is the full movie.
Hmmm. . . not this one either?
Solved!
Thank you, Livinghead! You rock.
Just watched it, again!
I think my memory was plain wrong about some parts.
I definitely remembered the blue faces of the Engineers,
once I saw them again.
The description of the marketplace/town matched well.
The fact that both my parents loved Northern Exposure,
means that if John Corbett was on TV, in the 90s,
they’d probably not change the channel.
I remember seeing this on TV,
so I must have seen it during the only reported airing, January 27th, 1998.
When I was about 7 years old, hehehe!
I’ll issue some corrections to my original post,
because I was wrong about several details.
In case anyone googles for this movie, later.
CORRECTIONS/ADDITION (after re-viewing):
No bar fight. It was a brown-haired woman, not a black-haired woman.
Kidnapping occurs before people go on a mission.
Red cave was really a large, red creature that you meet later in the story.
Occupation of man: thief/smuggler.
No big battle on the bridge of a ship, at the end.
My memory is most likely wrong, or I’d blurred this with another 90s scifi movie.
Sheesh, there are so many.
RECOMMENDATION:
Most importantly, I imagined there was a resolution to the story.
But this didn’t actually happen… perhaps a bit of overboard, childish optimism,
but the lack of a resolution is probably why the memory of the movie stuck in my head.
From some more research, it was truly a TV pilot (designed for a future TV show), but later turned into a TV-movie, ***with plenty of unanswered questions***. Despite that, it made a big impression on me, and I would compare much scifi up against the vague memory of this movie.
If you liked the Foundation series or Andromeda, (and are OK with a B-ish movie)
then you’ll probably like it. I’m glad I had the opportunity to watch it, again,
the villians of the story had a lot of potential… Every space opera needs
a good villian.
Interestingly, the Wikipedia article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180720032746/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warlord:_Battle_for_the_Galaxy
has a completely different description of the ending
to this movie (happy ending), than the Youtube video’s ending (sad ending).
Perhaps there are two different cuts for the failed pilot.
Well, the Youtube videos ending isn’t sad, per se, it’s just open-ended…
Thank you lemonnab! Yes, I think there are at least a couple of versions of this one. This WAS a TV pilot and is somewhat open- ended, but was never picked up for a series, unfortunately. I was surprised to see it was directed by Joe Dante! That makes it worth hunting down a copy! Thanks again.
Marking “solved.”