Samples of life taken from some of the Earth's great forests are used to recreate them in miniature inside domes attached to gargantuan commercial freighter spaceships orbiting Saturn.
Many years later the crews are informed the domes are to be jettisoned and destroyed and the freighters brought back into commercial service.
Aboard the Valley Forge, most of the crew are happy to be cutting short a long boring tour of duty. One though, Freeman Lowell an ecologist who has dedicated his life to the project, simply says...
"No"
Laced with 60s environmentalism and a load of unspoken anti-capitalism (look at the logos on the shipping containers) this is a movie that really had an effect on me in childhood.
Having rebelled, killed his crewmates and taken the Valley Forge for a joyride, Lowell sets about anthropomorphising the three robots he's left with for companionship.
Eventually guilt and the growing knowledge of his eventual 'rescue' that will shortly become arrest leads to a very melancholy conclusion.
Beautiful to look at still but Bruce Dern kind of disappoints once he's got nobody to play off other than the robots, cute as they are.
It's a cautionary tale but one that moves very slowly, 6/10 and if you're expecting 2001 it's not as complex.
I still want one of the buggies though.