It’s a sci-fi movie, I’d guess early 70’s, possibly late 60’s. Astronaut(s) take off from Earth, but when they land, the Earth is different. Kind of like there was an alternate history, the commies won, etc… It turns out there was another earth-like planet that orbits the sun directly opposite of our earth, so we never knew it was there, and he landed on the wrong one, and he has to break into earth2’s space shuttle type place and steal a rocket to get back to his earth. I don’t recall if he was successful or not.
Any takers?
I would say “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun,” by the same folks that gave us “*Stingray,” “*Captain Scarlet,” “UFO,” and “Space: 1999,” but it wasn’t an alternate timeline. It was the same one–it was just on the opposite side of the sun.
*marionettes
Right. Just history on that Earth had taken a different course than ours. That’s what I was trying to say.
Thanks.
It also sounds like “The Stranger”, a 1973 made-for-TV movie (and failed TV pilot), starring Glenn Corbett and Cameron Mitchell. Corbett played a US astronaut who is the only survivor of his spaceship’s return to Earth. Eventually, he discovers that he’s on the far side of the sun, on a duplicate Earth. On this Earth, a dictatorship known as the Perfect Order runs everything with an iron fist. The Perfect Order fears that Corbett as an unwanted presence and chase him around. He does try to get back to Earth on a space ship, but I believe it blows up before he can make his getaway, leaving him stranded on the counter-Earth.
MST fans know this movie as “Stranded in Space” (episode 305).
That does sound a lot like it… are you sure it was made for tv though? It doesn’t seem like they show those kinds of movies much after they come on tv, and '73 is a little before my time. I’m thinking it would have been late 80’s/early 90’s when I last saw it. It does sound very close to the plot though.
I think that it’s “The Stranger”/ “Stranded in Space”. I’ve seen “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun”, and there’s no alternate time line or anything. In fact, at first the astronaut thinks he’s landed on HIS earth, because everybody and everthing is apparently the same. It takes him a surprisingly long time to learn that everything is also backwards (writing, handedness, etc.) The counter-earth is evidently mirror-image from his. His ship crashes when he tries to link up with his (actually his twin’s) orbiting ship. As soon as the electrodes make contact everything shorts out – polarity’s reversed, too.
That’s the whole plot. It’s astonishingly boring. Don’t try watching this at home. Ergo, JTTFSOTS isn’t the film the OP wants to identify. God knows there’s no end to bad sf out there, but “The Stranger” seems to fit the bill.