Italy's first 'big' space opera (and second modern science fiction film after 1958's "The Day the Sky Exploded"), this early Antonio Margheriti film presents a novel story and good miniature work but is hindered by a terrible script (at least in the dubbed version I watched) and amateurish acting. The Alpha II, a spaceship with an experimental photon-drive that generates high-temperature fields 5000 kilometres wide is approaching Earth. The ship's human crew is dead and the 'electronic brain' that's in control is programmed to bring the ship into Earth orbit, close enough to the planet to incinerate all life. The heat-fields thwart attempts destroy the ship with missiles and the only hope is whether the intrepid crew of the BZ-88 can navigate a narrow gap between the fields and get close enough to the Alpha II to deal with the problem. The film has a simplistic framing device, with reporter Ray Peterson (a wooden Rik Van Nutter) on assignment in outer space (hence the alternate title), providing expositional voiceovers and serving as 'second man' in a gratuitous love-triangle subplot. Peterson is only interesting in that he is rejected as a useless outsider (who "smells Earthy") by the real 'spacemen', suggesting the development of an insular 'off-Earth' culture (this dichotomy is a common trope in science fiction novels, for example Larry Niven's stories about conflicts between 'belters' and 'flatlanders'). Peterson is also unusually whiney and self-pitying for a hero. The miniature sets (such as the base on Venus) are quaint by modern standards but are fun to look at and some effort was made to design spaceships that don't all look like V2 rockets or flying saucers. The concept that Earth could be destroyed by a computer that was simply executing its programming is fairly sophisticated for this kind of film, as is the use of 'hibernation' tanks for long distance space travel. Unfortunately, the terrible script (dubbed or original) undermines many of these pluses. What ever biotechnology is used in the hibernation' tanks, it is almost certainly not 'congealing' and a grade-school science student could tell chemist Lucy (Gaby Farinon) that plants generate oxygen from CO2, not from hydrogen). The cast is nondescript other than the unusual (for the era) inclusion of a black actor playing one of the most competent and brave members of the crew (especially odd as the actor was noted dancer Archie Smith). The film has some odd touches: everyone in space has an alphanumeric name (as well as their regular name, Lucy is Y13), which seems pretty futuristic except for the fact that the alphanumeric names are emblazoned on their backs with tape (the whole point of the name dichotomy may have been simply to allow Ray and Lucy to 'meet cute'). In general, despite the acting and the script's stilted dialogue and glaring errors, the premise and some of the visuals are reasons enough for fans of the genre to watch the film.