REMEDIAL SF 101: War of the Robots

I find myself, now, in the unusual position of having to write a positive review for the sequel of a movie I recently panned as being the worst film ever made.  This is not to suggest that "War of the Robots" is anything close to being a good film; it's just far more comprehensible than its predecessor, "Battle of the Planets." 
 
In fact, it would not surprise me to find out that some disgruntled ex-employee of the production company responsible for these films, hadn't swept up everything he could find lying about on the cutting-room floor, and hastily pasted it together to release "Battle of the Planets" in order to discredit and embarrass his former employers.
 
This is because "War of the Robots" seems to be the film that generated the odds and sods that went into "Battle of the Planets."  It features the same actors, the same sets, the same costumes, the same lame special effects, and the same general premise, only it actually has something of a plot.  Even The Mighty Wurlitzer is back, only this time it's just a non-sapient computer.
 
"War of the Robots" also has the dubious distinction of being the only film I know of that named its starship after the company which provided the uniforms worn by the characters.  This was either brilliant product-placement or pure laziness as they didn't want to spend the time ripping the logo patches off all the suits.
 
At least this time they didn't have to wear those stupid helmets!
 
The story is about a mission to rescue a scientist and his female assistant who were kidnapped by aliens a friend of mine dubbed "The Peter Tork People" because they all have identical blond pageboy haircuts.  So I guess you could subtitle it "Attack of the Peter Tork Clones."
 
The acting and plot actually make sense in this one.  It's not by any means a good film, but it's at least comprehensible even to the stone cold sober.
 
Not that there aren't weirdnesses.  The girl with the butch haircut gets an unexplained name change, and in this one she's pining for the Captain, who is himself sort of hot for the scientist's lab assistant.  This turns out to be rather unfortunate, because she...no, wait, I can't skip to that part just yet.
 
The scientist is also hot for this chick, but since he's considerably older than she is, there's an ick factor involved.  Anyway, these two get kidnapped by aliens, leaving behind a ticking doomsday machine that only the professor knows how to turn off.
 
So the space heroes in the sartorially-named starship go off in hot pursuit.  Damaged in a shoot-out with three of the aliens' flying saucers, they make a forced landing on a planetoid.  Once they land, they leave the ship in the hands of the peroxide permed second in command, who at this point suddenly remembers he's a Texan and puts on a pair of cowboy boots and a really bad accent.  This, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the rest of the story.
 
The away team comes upon the same bald, pointy-eared green aliens from the other film, only this time they're wearing clothes, and have been enslaved by the blond moptops in the silver jumpsuits who kidnapped the Professor and his lab babe.  There still doesn't appear to be any women in the species.  After first being mistaken for a party from the planet Anthor, and therefore the mortal enemies of the bald guys (maybe it's the wigs?) the Earthlings are about to be killed when a group of the Peter Tork People arrive and attack the bald guys.  The group from the Trissi pulls out their weapons and successfully frees the bald guys, which wins them over as allies.  However, they seem to have something weird going on with their eyes, because their asteroid world is really rotten with radiation, and the only one who doesn't have thick scales over his eyes is--you guessed it, the same dude they picked up in the last film.  He agrees to act as their guide to the stronghold of the Peter Tork People.  I think he just wanted off that lousy asteroid.
 
When they arrive on Anthor, there's absolutely no security perimeter set up, and our intrepid heroes can pretty much waltz right in.  And yes, they do think this is suspicious.  Not that this stops them at all.
 
Then some stuff happens that didn't make it into my short term memory, and the team is brought as captives to stand before the Empress of Anthor--who happens to be the foxy lab assistant!  Somehow she and the Professor talked the aged beings who control the Peter Tork Clones into letting the girl act as their Empress.  It seems that the Professor had also invented a machine that can create matter, and this naturally means it can grant immortality, which the crusty old buggers of Anthor want very badly.
 
Using her position as Elected Empress of Anthor, the hot chick in the nice dress cons the Professor into setting the Trissi's crew free, in exchange for her favors.  Despite being a major brainiac, the Professor buys this.  What geek past his sell-by date wouldn't trade his soul for a chance to get some action with a sexy babe?  Or any babe, really?
 
Then some more stuff that didn't make it past my spam filters happens, and the Trissi crew engages in a very long, very dull battle with the blond silvery guys, who turn out to be robots.  Oh, good, that explains the title, sort of.
 
They also fight using a kind of cheapass light saber which reminds you that this flick came out the year after Star Wars and makes you feel very, very sad because somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, there were actually good special effects going on.
 
The crew manages to escape, even though one of the female crewmen gets fried in an invisible force field, and they drag the unwilling Professor with them--they need him to disarm that nuclear thingamajig back on Earth, remember?  Unfortunately, the Professor has other plans, and commits suicide.  Then the crew finds out that they're being pursued by an invasion fleet from Anthor, and that's when the Empress reveals that she has grand ambitions to become the Queen of Outer Space--oh, wait, that's next week's movie.  Anyway, some of the robots board the ship, there's yet another fight, and the Empress escapes to one of the pursuing flying saucers.
 
The Earth won't allow the Trissi in through their satellite defense system, because that would make them vulnerable to the couple dozen Anthorian saucers right on the Trissi's tail, so the Trissi has to fight off the invasion fleet all by itself.  This means four pilots get into fighters which are only shown as pretty immobile cockpits with flashing light effects behind them--and you thought the original Vipers of Battlestar Galactica looked bad?--and an incredibly tedious battle sequence commences, which culminates in the Trissi's Captain having to make a choice between the hot Empress chick, and the butch crew-woman who he has only recently realized is in love with him after she saved his ass a few times.
Guess which one he chooses?
So with the Empress and her wrinkly-faced Anthorian allies and their boy-band-gone-wrong robot army vanquished, the nuclear device is successfully turned off in the final seconds of its countdown with the help of some data cards that were conveniently lifted from the Professor's lab by one of the Trissi crewmen, and Earth is saved.
 
The effects are bad, the story is tolerable, but way longer than it needs to be, the music sucks boulders, and the acting is on par with any episode of a late-seventies television science fiction show.  Compared to "Battle of the Planets," this is Oscar material.
 
Meaning, it should be in a trash can.