The premise of “The Starlost” was as promising as could be. Earthship Ark, a gigantic spacecraft housing dozens of communities, races and cultures in separate biospheres, was en route to settlement on a distant star. One hundred years into the voyage, an accident drives the Ark off course toward certain collision with a sun light years away. Each biosphere is sealed off from the other, with no communication system linking everyone. Three hundred-plus years later Dullea's character, a shunned resident of biosphere Cypress Corners, stumbles into a portion of the ship that contains the true nature of its mission and information about the accident. It fell to Dullea and two comrades from Cypress Corners to get the Ark back on course before the sun destroyed them all.
With people like Ellison and Trumbull aboard, the storytelling could have gone in many versatile directions, whether exploring different biospheres and relating them to present-day issues in allegory form, or connecting with outside forces impacting the Ark, whether civilizations on other universes or unnatural phenomena. Trumbull anticipated “The Starlost” as a platform for innovative special effects through Magicam, a two-camera process where characters could realistically move through Imax-like backgrounds.
The end result never came close to fulfilling any of the premise's promises. Chalk it all up to execution --cheap production values via videotape on