History Main / Outland

* For the comic strip by Berkely Breathed, see ''BloomCounty''.

[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outlandcover.jpg]]
''The ultimate enemy is still man.''

''Outland'' is a 1981 science-fiction film written and directed by Peter Hyams, starring SeanConnery, Frances Sternhagen, Peter Boyle and James Sikking. Set in a mining colony on Io, one of TheMoonsOfJupiter, this underrated film is generally regarded as a SpaceWestern, and often lazily dismissed as ''HighNoon'' [[RecycledInSpace in space]].

The film's hero, Federal Marshal W.T. O'Niel (Connery), is assigned to a one-year tour of duty in Con Am 27, a titanium ore mining outpost on Io. O'Niel investigates a series of violent deaths among the miners, which have been dismissed as accidents or suicides by corrupt mine management, cynical police and indifferent medical staff. He discovers that the dead miners have been using an amphetamine called Polydichloric Euthimal which enormously increases their work output, but eventually causes psychotic behaviour that leads to their deaths in the dangerous mining environment.

O'Niel tracks down and arrests one drug dealer, and follows the trail to Sheppard (Boyle), the administrator of the outpost, who is complicit in the drug-dealing. Sheppard has bribed O'Niel's deputy Montone to turn a blind eye, and it quickly becomes clear to O'Niel that he cannot rely on any of his fellow officers. Even his wife, frustrated that he considers his duty more important than his family, abandons him, leaving a message pleading with him to return with her to Earth.

Undeterred, O'Niel intercepts and destroys a large shipment of drugs. He confronts Sheppard, who asks him why he bothered when nobody else wants the drug shipments stopped, because they make the workers happy, so production is up, so the corporate owners are happy, so Sheppard is happy. O'Niel vows to expose the entire scheme, and Sheppard notifies his contact on the space station who sends two off-world hit-men to murder him.

Sheppard puts out the word that the killers are due to arrive on the next shuttle. As the time to landing counts down, O'Niel's corrupt deputies desert him, and his attempts to recruit help from the mining station staff are met with contemptuous rejection. In the end, only the outpost's medical officer Dr. Lazarus (Sternhagen) helps him in a desperate kill-or-be-killed hunt through the colony.

For the comic strip ''Outland'' by Berkeley Breathed, see {{Bloom County}}. For the downloadable platformer, see ''Game/{{Outland}}''.
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!!''Outland'' contains examples of many tropes, including:

* TheAlcatraz: O'Niel keeps his prisoners suspended in a spacesuit in airless [[ArtificialGravity zero-gravity cells]]. [[spoiler:Unfortunately the prisoner's helplessness makes it all too easy for someone to kill him by cutting his air tether.]]
* BadCopIncompetentCop: Pretty much all of them except O'Niel.
-->'''O'Niel''' (entering the company mess hall): "I could do with some help!"
-->''(Everyone avoids his eye)''
-->'''Rudd''': "''You're'' supposed to protect ''us''! You're the police. It's your job! Where are your men?"
-->'''O'Niel''': "My men? My men are shit!"
* BigBrotherIsEmployingYou: O'Niel can listen in on phone conversations and uses CCTV cameras installed inside the colony to track the conspirators. Later those same cameras are used to track O'Niel when he's fighting for his life.
* BulletproofVest: Or [[spoiler:strangle-proof collar]].
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Sheppard.
* {{Determinator}}: Apart from his general stubbornness, O'Niel [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome plunges his bare hand into a pan full of boiling oil]] to retrieve evidence dumped there by a drug smuggler.
* DrJerk: Dr. Lazarus. "I'm unpleasant, I'm not stupid. I can count!" Fortunately she's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold since she's the only one who sticks by O'Niel when the chips are down.
* FrontierDoctor: Dr. Lazarus. "You know, you haven't your medical all-star here. Company doctors are like ship's doctors. Most are one shuttle-flight ahead of a malpractice suit."
* HeelFaceTurn: Dr. Lazarus, Montone.
* {{Hologram}}. Naked holographic figures dance (and copulate) in the bar used by the miners.
* IKnowThatGun: O'Niel, his deputies, and the bad guys are armed with pump-action shotguns (though the hitmen have advanced electronic night-vision sights on theirs), much to the irritation of people who think they should be using ray-guns "[[TheAestheticsOfTechnology because it's the future!]]"
* MeaningfulName: Dr. Lazarus. O'Niel's persistence pushes the cynical, indifferent doctor, who couldn't be bothered to perform autopsies on any of the dead miners, into discovering traces of the fatal drug in the blood of a recent victim. Inspired by her success, she rediscovers her self-respect and helps O'Niel defeat the assassins.
* MundaneDogmatic: ''Outland'' falls at the hard end of MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness. The hero and the leading lady are middle-aged, unattractive (by movie standards) and cynical. The bad guys are not aliens or galactic emperors, but drug-dealers, corrupt cops and venal businessmen. The weapons are shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io, with the passengers in cryo-freezing units.
* MindScrew: O'Niel to his prisoner, kept in an airless zero-G cell.
-->"You know, you're going to love being here, though most people do start to go a little crazy at night when they can't feel the floor. Oh, and sometimes the air tether gets knotted and the man suffocates but, ah, that doesn't happen too often."
* OfficeGolf: Sheppard.
* OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture: Not a graphic interface in sight.
** The golf videogame is pretty awesome though.
* PatrickStewartSpeech: Subverted. O'Niel looks like he's going to give one of these to Sheppard, [[spoiler:then says "Oh, fuck it!" and just decks the man.]]
* RaceAgainstTheClock: A large digital clock is in the bar showing the exact time-till-arrival of the weekly supply run. When word gets out that the two hitmen are arriving on the [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve 12:00 shuttle]] to kill O'Niel, this clock takes on the role of a Ticking Countdown of Doom.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: From Sheppard to O'Niel, who later admits to Dr. Lazurus that maybe the reason he's sticking his neck out is to find if he really is as worthless as everyone thinks he is.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Montone.
* ScienceMarchesOn: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 reached Io in 1979, around the same time as ''Outland'' was being conceived, but the film did not incorporate any of the new information about the moon's highly unstable volcanic environment. The film ignores the very high level of radiation around Io, which was discovered by Pioneer 10 in 1974.
* SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay: The film aims for an air of gritty realism, but there are plenty of examples of HollywoodScience:
** ExplosiveDecompression: ''Outland'' loves this one! Frequent and messy!
** InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: A classic example. Every space suit has a ring of extremely bright lights on the inside solely to illuminate the wearer's face. At least its [[JustifiedTrope justified]] this way.
** SpaceIsNoisy: In the scenes outside the station in "zero pressure", the environment seems to be just as noisy as if there was an atmosphere.
* SpaceWestern: A frequently-heard criticism of the film is that it is "[[RecycledInSPACE High Noon in space]]", which [[TropesAreNotBad misses the point completely]], as should be obvious to any reader of ''this'' wiki. However the basic concept of a gun-toting lawman in a corrupt frontier mining town, fighting a lone battle for justice, is definitely drawn from the Western genre.
* UsedFuture: ''Outland'' depicts a mining "colony" that is as dirty, cramped, overcrowded and "used" as the crummiest oil-rig of today.

* HeyItsThatGuy: The insane miner who holds a prostitute hostage is played by Steven Berkoff.
** The miner who cuts his suit open at the beginning of the movie would be able to tell you some interesting facts about dying in a vacuum.

* ShoutOut: To ''HighNoon'', with the killers [[ShowdownAtHighNoon arriving on the 12:00 shuttle]].

''Outland'' is a 1981 science-fiction film written and directed by Peter Hyams, starring SeanConnery, Frances Sternhagen, Peter Boyle and James Sikking. Set in a mining colony on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, this underrated film is generally regarded as a SpaceWestern, and often lazily dismissed as ''HighNoon'' [[RecycledInSpace in space]].

** The miner who cuts his suit open at the beginning of the movie [[Cheers would be able to tell you some interesting facts about dying in a vacuum.]]

* BigBrotherIsEmployingYou: O'Niel uses CCTV cameras installed inside the colony to track the conspirators. Later those same cameras are used to track O'Niel when he's fighting for his life.

* {{Hologram}}. Naked holographic women dance (copulate?) in the bar used by the miners.

* UsedFuture: ''Outland'' depicts a mining "colony" that is as dirty, cramped, overcrowded and "used" as the crummiest oil-rig of today.
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<<|{{Film}}|>>

For the comic strip ''Outland'' by Berkeley Breathed, see {{Bloom County}}.

''Outland'' is a 1981 science-fiction film written and directed by Peter Hyams, starring SeanConnery, Frances Sternhagen, and Peter Boyle. Set in a mining colony on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, this underrated film is generally regarded as a SpaceWestern, and often lazily dismissed as ''HighNoon'' [[RecycledInSpace in space]].

The film's hero, Federal Marshal O'Niel (Connery), is assigned to a one-year tour of duty in Con Am 27, a titanium ore mining outpost on Io. O'Niel investigates a series of violent deaths among the miners, which have been dismissed as accidents or suicides by corrupt mine management and cynical and indifferent medical staff. He discovers that the dead miners have been using an amphetamine-like drug called Polydichloric Euthimal which enormously increases their work output, but eventually causes psychotic behaviour that leads to their deaths in the dangerous mining environment.

Undeterred, O'Niel intercepts and destroys a large shipment of drugs. He confronts Sheppard, who asks him why he bothered when nobody else wants the drug shipments stopped, because they make the workers happy, so production is up, so the corporate owners are happy, so Sheppard is happy. O'Niel vows to expose the entire scheme, so Sheppard contracts two off-world hit-men to murder him.

-->'''O'Niel''' (entering the company messhall): "I could do with some help!"

* {{Determinator}}: Apart from his general stubbornness, O'Niel [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome plunges his bare hand into a pan full of boiling oil]] to retrieve evidence dumped there by a drug dealer.

* MundaneDogmatic: ''Outland'' falls at the hard end of MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness. The hero and the leading lady are middle-aged, unattractive (by movie standards) and cynical. The bad guys are not aliens or galactic emperors, but drug-dealers, corrupt cops and venal businessmen. The weapons are shotguns. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io.

** InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: A classic example. Every space suit has a ring of extremely bright lights on the inside solely to illuminate the wearer's face.

* DrJerk: Dr. Lazarus. "I'm unpleasant, I'm not stupid. I can count!"

** It has literal explosive decompression and zero gravity physics are weird...

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: From Sheppard to O'Niel, who later admits to Dr Lazurus that maybe the reason he's sticking his neck out is to find if he really is as worthless as everyone thinks he is.

* SpaceWestern: A frequently-heard criticism of the film is that it is "High Noon in space", which [[TropesAreNotBad misses the point completely]], as should be obvious to any reader of ''this'' wiki. However the basic concept of a gun-toting lawman in a corrupt frontier mining town, fighting a lone battle for justice, is definitely drawn from the Western genre.

* WeWillUseMicrosInTheFuture: Clunky keyboards, and not a graphic interface in sight.

* IKnowThatGun: O'Niel, his deputies, and the bad guys are armed with pump-action shotguns (though the hitmen have advanced electronic night-vision sights on theirs), much to the irritation of people who think they should be using ray-guns
-shot guns have less penentration then other guns. so they won't damage machinery that s keeping them alive, or cause explosive depression.
"[[TheAestheticsOfTechnology because it's the future!]]"

* IKnowThatGun: O'Niel, his deputies, and the bad guys are armed with pump-action shotguns (though the hitmen have advanced electronic night-vision sights on theirs), much to the irritation of people who think they should be using ray-guns "[[TheAestheticsOfTechnology because it's the future!]]"