Journal, which found similarities in the plot of Doppelgänger: "... the spacemen find a few bugs in their 'LM' and crash on the planet. And do they ever have their hands full in getting back to Earth!" Suggesting that the performances are hampered by an excess of technical dialogue, the review concluded: "... the makers of this space exploiter may get lots of mileage at the box office, but Neil, Buzz and Mike did it better on TV." It has also been suggested that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes, both released the year before, set a high standard for Doppelgänger and other films to follow. Erickson argues that Doppelgänger is inferior to 2001 for presenting a "working future" that is still dominated by commercialism. Comparing the visual style to that of 2001, he notes similar use of "psychedelic" images and close-ups of human eyes but calls such imitation "fluff without any deeper meaning". Film4's review describes the final scene featuring the elderly Webb as "hell-bent on recreating the enigmatic finale of 2001 by using a mirror, a wheelchair and a tartan blanket." Rovin argues that Doppelgängers effects "[occasionally] outshine" 2001s", going on to state that it "attempts to kindle a profundity similar to that of [2001] in its abstract philosophising about the dichotomy of dual worlds, but fails with a combination of meat-and-potatoes science fiction and quasi-profound themes." He argues that Doppelgänger is "neither a kid's film nor a cult film" but rules that "the elements that comprise the finished effort are more than individually successful." Martin Anderson compares Doppelgänger to other science fiction films like Solaris, identifying a "lyrical" tone to the dialogue. However, he concedes that Doppelgänger "doesn't bear comparison with Kubrick or Tarkovsky", the directors of 2001 and Solaris. Both commentator Douglas Pratt and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London compare the film to "The Parallel", an episode of The Twilight Zone in which an astronaut returns to Earth to find his world bizarrely changed and realises that he has ended up in a parallel universe. S. T. Joshi likens Doppelgängers theme of duplication to the premise of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which a race of extraterrestrials called the Pod People abduct humans and replace them with alien doubles. Legacy Despite the film's failure, Grade gave the Andersons further commissions with live actors. The first of these was the TV