The Flight Not Taken: An Alternative View of Planet of the Apes

Does anyone who has ever seen the original 1968 version of Planet of the Apes ever remember Lieutenant Stewart, the blonde female astronaut (played by an uncredited Dianne Stanley) who was killed in her sleep by an air leak?

I must confess that I remember her fate from the first time that I saw PotA but I did not remember her name nor even her hair color until I rewatched PotA a few weeks ago. Since then, I can't help but wonder how different the movie would have been if Stewart had survived her time in cryosleep and Taylor (the character played by Charlton Heston) had been the one to perish.

Not that I have anything against Charlton Heston -- he did a great job with the part he had been given and it's no surprise to me that his role in this movie was one of his most memorable roles ever.

But just suppose Stewart had survived in his character's place. Would she do the same things that Taylor did? Would she laugh at the fellow astronaut who had planted an American flag on the shore where they had landed? Would she be so quick to utter misanthropic statements?

Would she be so casual about removing her clothes in an alien environment just so that she could go for a quick swim? Would she be so casual about nudity, period, whether it was in front of her fellow humans or in front of the apes themselves?

Would she be more aggressive than Taylor when she was captured by the apes? Would she try harder to communicate with her captors? Would she attract the attention of her female captor as much as Taylor did and would she be “rewarded” by said captor with a mate of the opposite sex? For that matter, would she welcome such a reward? Would she earn the nickname “Bright Eyes” like Taylor did or would the apes be more fascinated with another part of her anatomy?

For that matter, suppose she and her group had not been captured. Suppose she was more cautious than Taylor and managed to avoid the apes. Would she and her fellow astronauts be able to survive on their own in an ape-dominated planet? Would she survive long enough to become the new Eve or would she suffer an even worse fate than Taylor's companions suffered in the original movie?

For that matter, suppose Dodge (the black astronaut played in the original movie by Jeff Burton) survived the attack by the apes instead of Taylor. Would he do anything different from the things Taylor did? Would he be more wary about dealing with his captors? If he escaped capture, would he play Adam to Stewart's Eve? Or would Stewart choose to play Eve to both surviving males?

Come to think of it, if playing Adam and Eve was such an important part of the mission upon which Taylor's crew were sent, why did they send only one female? Why not send two? Or three? Why not send a predominantly female crew? After all, one would think that it would make more sense to send a group of female astronauts into space than to send a group of males for no other reason that the average woman tends to be lighter and shorter than the average man. Given all the fuss sci-fi writers like to make about the “cold equations” that govern space flight, one would think that it would save more fuel to send someone who was lighter than the average male than to stick with the status quo. Then again, we're talking about 1968 (not exactly a progressive time in regard to feminism). And anyway, people don't always think logically just because they profess to be more scientific.

I could probably spend all day writing what ifs about Planet of the Apes but at the end of the day, I would have to admit that it is still an interesting movie in its own right. Granted, the first time I heard about the movie, I was just a little kid and every time I heard about it, I could not help envisioning a movie about a world full of giant apes. I suppose I should admit to having been just a little disappointed when I first found out what the movie was really about, but I still remember the movie having a huge emotional impact upon me, regardless of my original impression. Indeed, the first time I saw it, I literally could not go to sleep for a long time afterward because of all the thoughts produced by the movie's final image.

I wish all movies were as thought-provoking as the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. Indeed, it says something great about the flick that though it has been the subject of many parodies, it still holds up to multiple viewings. Of course, it does help if said viewings are at least a decade or so apart. It helps even more if you don't try to take the premise too literally. Even as a kid, I knew that apes would be no more immune than humans to the disaster hinted at in the original movie and that the movie worked best as an allegory about the horrors of atomic war and not as a thinly disguised science lesson. But then one would have to live in a madhouse to think differently, right?