YMMV / The Phantom Planet

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was Frank really delirious after returning to his normal size and thinking the incident on Rheton was All Just a Dream or was he Obfuscating Stupidity to keep the rescue team from trying to learn more about the people of Rheton so Earth would leave it alone?
• Designated Hero: Like many sci-fi heroes from his era, Frank's "heroism" amounts to him reacting to his surroundings and complaining about how Rheton sucks. His sole heroic action is saving Zetha from the captive Solarite, but even before that Sessom has declared that Frank will someday lead the Rheton people, and rescuing Zetha isn't so impressive compared to Sessom and Herron defeating an entire fleet of Solarite warships a few minutes earlier.
• Fridge Logic: It's explained that Chapman has to leave Zetha behind because she would be tiny and therefore never fit in on Earth. But... she wouldn't really, would she? Exposure to Rheton's atmosphere was able to turn Chapman tiny, and exposure to Earth's atmosphere would return him to his normal again, so wouldn't the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere also change Zetha to normal human size?
• Narm:
  • "You know, Captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful. If you just take the time to look at it."
  • After Makonnen is hurled out into space, he begins reciting the Lord's Prayer. This works for the scene in concept, but the utter disconnect from how utterly silly the scene looks actually makes some of the MST3K cast laugh as their first reaction.
  • "[Humans] don't seem to worry that our Sun might be cooling off in several million years."
  • "Being mute, [Zetha] is unable to defend herself!" Herron might mean "defend herself" as in "speak in her defense" given the context of the line, but it still sounds pretty silly.
  • The Duel of Rheton, which consists of two people trying to push each other onto high-gravity plates using a giant, I-shaped stick.
  • Not to mention the gravity controls being operated by waving one's hands over the instruments, which the MST3K crew compares to playing water glasses (or turntables) and uses to give the leader the nickname "Kool Moe Grandpa".
  • The Solarites' appearance.
  • "But I am deeply plagued with regret when I am forced to destroy," said as casually as one can.
• Retroactive Recognition: Although it's impossible to recognize him since he's dressed in a rubber suit, Richard Kiel (who would later famously play Jaws) plays the Solarite the heroes fight off. It was his first acting credit ever.
• So Bad, It's Good: While the film not be considered anything overly competent on a technical level, it still manages to remain quite enjoyable from an artistic and imaginative point of view despite all of the Narm.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The planet's appearance, which is probably the real reason the Solarites are after it — it resembles a giant, space-faring chicken nugget.
  • The Solarites themselves aren't particularly scary either.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: This is Francis X. Bushman briefly discussed his performance in this movie. Per Chris Bushman (the man's grandson and the documentary's narrator), Francis considered the movie campy and cheap but nevertheless sought to give Sessom the kind of gravitas befitting a civilization's leader.
• Ugly Cute: The Solarites.