Teens in the Universe

A crew of young cosmonauts reaches a planet from which a call for help has come. Robots have taken power there. Their sole aim is to make the planet's people happy, but this is how they understand happiness: erase every feeling that causes pain. The result speaks for itself. The young crew try to find the people who are left and give the planet back to them. Richard Viktorov's Soviet film continues the previous one; the two were actually shot as a single film and split in half when there turned out to be too much material. The telling is aimed at children but the idea behind it is serious: take away the capacity to suffer and there is no person left. The sets and costumes are in the familiar manner of Soviet science fiction of the period, faintly comic and faintly unnerving.