As Douglas Trumbull’s futuristic eco-fantasy celebrates its half century, Roger Crow looks back on the heartbreaking saga, and pays tribute to a giant of fantasy cinema.

The late 1970s, and a kid is glued to another night in front of the box. He’s blissfully naive of the BBC screening that will send shock waves through him.

There’s no prior warning; it’s aU certificate after all.

The youngster thinks Silent Running will be a cool little sci-fi movie with a spaceship, robots and a happy ending, because that’s the way it works: danger; adventure, no emotional scarring. Lost in Space and Star Trek had repeatedly taught him that.

Weaned on Space: 1999, he’s used to cool effects, and colourful aliens, but that sucker punch, heart-in-the-mouth emotion? What on Earth was this film?

Decades later and like many others, that ‘kid’ is still in Silent Running recovery mode, so here’s my tribute to a genre masterpiece, and its much-missed creator. But first, let’s rewind this story to the 1960s...

TRUMBULL’S ODYSSEY

Given the fact Donald Trumbull had worked on The Wizard of Oz’s special effects, it was a good bet that his son Douglas would follow in his footsteps. A skilled artist, in his twenties he worked for NASA on To the Moon and Beyond, a short film screened at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. That brought him to the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who hired Douglas for 2001: A Space Odyssey.