Silent Running

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Silent Running is a science fiction movie made in 1971, directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Bruce Dern as the protagonist Freeman Lowell. It was made with a very limited budget but has since achieved a cult following.

The movie depicts a dystopian future, in which all plant life on Earth is extinct and only a few specimens have been preserved in greenhouse-like domes attached to a fleet of three American Airlines "space freighters" positioned just outside of the orbit of Saturn. Lowell, a crew member aboard one of these ships, the "Valley Forge", is in constant disagreement with his other, human crewmates, who are anxious to return to a bleak and deforested yet familiar Earth. Lowell has a better relationship with the humanlike drones who also inhabit the ships.

The science and technology depicted in Silent Running are not always plausible, but Trumbull's special effects are on par with those he created for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the melancholy message is powerful.

The soundtrack songs are performed by Joan Baez and the film score was composed by Peter Schickele.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

When orders come from Earth to jettison the domes that contain the plants, destroy each dome with nuclear bombs, and return the space freighters to commercial service, Freeman Lowell decides it is his mission to save the plants on his ship, the "Valley Forge." Each ship carries six domes and when one of his crewmates comes to set a bomb in Lowell's favorite forest, Lowell strangles him with the handle of his shovel. In the struggle, Lowell's right leg is injured. He then traps the other two crew members in a dome that is about to be jettisoned, and they are killed when Lowell releases the dome and detonates its bomb. Lowell then overrides the programming of the ship's three service robots (drones) so they can perform surgery on his leg, and renames them Huey, Dewey and Louie.

The ship passes through the rings of Saturn. The three drones are outside the ship; Louie's leg gets stuck and he is ultimately blown away from the ship. Later, Huey is badly damaged in an accident when Lowell runs into it with one of the ship's buggies. After weeks alone in space, the radio again begins chattering - "Valley Forge, this is Berkshire." Lowell realizes that his crime is soon to be discovered by a rescue spacecraft, and not only will he face imprisonment or worse, the dome will be destroyed after all. Lowell chooses to leave Dewey in charge of the last dome, jettison it to safety, and destroy himself and the "Valley Forge" with the last of the onboard nuclear weapons. The final, poignant scene is of the forest greenhouse tended by the sole remaining robot, with a battered watering can.

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Trivia

Trumbull had been involved with creating effects for Jupiter for 2001 and these were recycled for Saturn in Silent Running.
The cult show Mystery Science Theater 3000 began as a spoof of Silent Running.
The interiors were filmed aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45).
There are three freighters seen in the film, they are the "Valley Forge", the "Berkshire" and the "Sequoia". Five of the habitats that are carried in the domes are also named they are the "Yellowstone", "Arcadia", "Blue Ridge", "Glacier" and "Mojave" each of which are named for a national park in the U.S.
The original "Battlestar Galactica" series used stock footage of the space freighters in several episodes. On that show, they were called "Agro Ships," and were the source of all the food in the rag-tag fleet. Initially there were three of them, but two were destroyed by the Cylons. In the current incarnation of Galactica, there is one "Agro Ship" in the fleet, which is of a different, but clearly derivative design.
Mike and The Mechanics (Genesis's Mike Rutherford's band) paid tribute to the movie with their song "Silent Running". (This is disputed, as the lyrics of the song have nothing to do with the film Silent Running, and no one in the band has ever confirmed this allegation. It is more likely a meaningless coincidence.)
The "drones" were played by double-amputees, an idea inspired by Johnny Eck.
The forest environments were originally intended to be filmed in the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the production budget forced the sequences to be shot in a newly-completed aircraft hangar in Van Nuys, California.